Ask data for Viewers & new guided search interface. New in 2021.2
Ask Data is now open to every viewer, and the new guided search actually understands what you're trying to ask.
- From 2021.2, viewers (not just creators) can use Ask Data on Tableau Online and Server, though access depends on permissions set by content authors
- Lenses are author-built, focused subsets of a published data source that strip out unneeded fields so you can concentrate on a specific question like shipping or profitability
- The new guided search interface offers contextual suggestions as you type, understanding aggregations, field names and individual field values across the whole data set
- You can switch visualisation types and sort results on the fly, and a bar chart league table often beats the auto-chosen map for questions with no geographic correlation
- An equals sign next to a field marks it as a calculated field built by an author, so connect with the people building your data sets to understand the terminology and logic baked in
0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In 2021.2 Tableau have
0:02made the Ask Data experience available for
0:05all viewers.
0:06Now in the previous videos I actually
0:08already done a video showing creators how
0:10to create a lens
0:11and I've also shown a video of how to set
0:13up ask data inside of a dashboard so
0:15viewers can
0:16experience it inside of a desktop. This
0:18video is for viewers and so in this video I
0:20'm actually
0:20logged into my Tableau Online instance as a
0:23viewer so you can see what it's like to use
0:25Tableau
0:26if you're just an everyday consumer on
0:28Tableau Online or Tableau server. Let's get
0:30stuck in.
0:31As a viewer you don't have much oversight
0:33as to what's actually going on in the
0:35background,
0:35you don't know where the creators have
0:37given you the right permissions, you don't
0:38know what's going
0:39on. So I'm going to try and give you a few
0:40pointers as we go through this as to you
0:42know
0:42where to look and who to ask for help if
0:44there's ever a problem. Okay, so in here I
0:47'm in here as a
0:48viewer obviously you can see that I'm
0:50signed into Tableau Online I have far less
0:52sort of going on on
0:53my left hand side and I have access just to
0:54one visualization that's this overview
0:56dashboard. Okay
0:58now if I go into it you'll see that I have
1:00just you know just normal access. Now one
1:03thing I do
1:03have is as a viewer on this particular work
1:05book I have access to all of the controls
1:07that you have
1:08across here at the top and that's important
1:10because in some instances you don't always
1:12have
1:12that so if you can't see an option up here
1:14at the top don't worry it's probably just
1:16the permissions
1:16or setting that a creator or an author on
1:19your Tableau server hasn't enabled for you.
1:21If you
1:21want to know who the author is and if you
1:23just go to the workbook you can always see
1:25who the owner
1:26of the workbook is here and sometimes they
1:28even put a description so you can get in
1:29touch with a
1:30specific team that's responsible for
1:32developing that particular workbook. Now if
1:35I go back to my
1:36explore tab you'll obviously see that in
1:382021.2 Tableau have added the capability
1:42for viewers to
1:43use our status so what I'm going to do is
1:45show you sort of the two ways of doing that
1:47and the first
1:48way is actually an old way it's actually
1:50been possible for creators to do this for
1:51some time
1:52but it's essentially to just go to a data
1:54source and just start working with it. If
1:57there's a
1:57published data source that you have access
1:58to and you have the rights to see
2:00everything in the data
2:01source you can essentially arrive at this
2:03view this is essentially a data source in
2:05Tableau server or
2:06Tableau online and you can see that all the
2:09fields are on the left hand side. Now
2:11someone in a you
2:12know authoritative position who is an
2:15editor of this content has the ability to
2:17go in and change
2:18things like synonyms and controls but
2:20essentially the key thing to be aware of is
2:23that in 21.2
2:24they've essentially added a new feature
2:26called lenses. Now lenses are a way for the
2:28authors who
2:29build your content to give you a more
2:31focused view on a specific question so you
2:33can see here
2:33that I actually have two lenses one's
2:35called shipping and one's called
2:37profitability.
2:38Essentially these might be perspectives
2:39that you might look at if you are shipping
2:41products and you
2:42want to look at how that's performing or if
2:43you're only interested in profitability you
2:45might go to
2:46the profitability lens. These are like subs
2:49ets of this data source so if I go into this
2:51shipping
2:52lens I expect to see everything that I see
2:54here on the left hand side essentially it's
2:56exactly the
2:56same data source it's just removing all the
2:59things I don't need it allows me to focus
3:01in on the
3:02question I'm trying to ask and so what I
3:04can do now with this is I can just go ahead
3:06and start
3:07using this and with our status so now you
3:09'll see that I've arrived at this and I've
3:11got two lenses
3:12and it's essentially asking me look where
3:13do I want to start which lens do I want to
3:15start with
3:16so I can go ahead and select the shipping
3:18lens and once I've done that the shipping
3:20lens allows
3:21me to ask a series of questions and you'll
3:23actually get this really nice pop-up here
3:25showing you how our status works it's
3:27actually really nice I encourage you to
3:28take the tour if
3:29you haven't already done so it's really
3:31well curated and well looked after if I
3:33close that
3:33box and then I go here you can see I get
3:35more teal tips so it tells me exactly where
3:37to go and
3:38I can essentially start typing questions so
3:41I can say what was the average days to ship
3:44and you can
3:46see that it notices what's going on inside
3:48of the view so this is actually an enhanced
3:50feature it's
3:51called guided set as you work with this so
3:54as I start to type things in here and if I
3:56say by city
3:57you'll see that it it gives me some sort of
4:00indication of what I can ask I can do it by
4:02weekday by month by month whatever I can do
4:05it by pretty much anything but it's also
4:07able to go into
4:08the individual fields you'll see here that
4:11it even has context of what's in the
4:12product name in case
4:14that's what I'm actually trying to sort of
4:15talk about but that's not actually what I'm
4:17interested
4:17in I'm just going to group by and I'm just
4:20going to type in city here and that's I
4:22type s-c-i-t
4:24sorry you can see that it looks at all the
4:26different cities in my fields but actually
4:28the
4:29top one is the contextual field name so you
4:31can see here this is city this is
4:32essentially if I
4:34just bring out an arrow this is essentially
4:36this field and all these items here all
4:39these items
4:40here in blue are essentially coming from
4:43this city field so if I go into the list of
4:46cities
4:46or everything in blue is what I'd expect to
4:49see if I was just filtering that with
4:51things that say
4:52city hence New York City, Oklahoma City are
4:54all in there now when I find a selection
4:57that I like I can
4:58just go ahead and click it and it auto
5:00completes that and so what you get is sort
5:02of two views
5:02you've got you know what you typed here in
5:05this little blue section and then above it
5:07you've got
5:07like essentially the the analytical
5:10question this is sort of computer speak so
5:12it's going to go and
5:13do an average and it's going to go use the
5:15days to ship calculation which has been
5:18done for me by
5:18my creator and author and it's going to
5:20break that down by city so this is a nice
5:22way of sort of
5:23looking at this and really working with
5:25this so if I go ahead and hit enter now
5:27this is the one
5:28bit I've never really liked it sends you
5:29somewhere else it doesn't sort of just keep
5:31you in the same
5:32window I'd love that to stay the same but
5:34now you can see here that we have a map and
5:37it's chosen
5:38this map because actually in a previous
5:40video I myself chose a map as a different
5:42user so it's
5:43assuming that is a map that someone else is
5:45going to like now it's not necessarily the
5:47best way to
5:48show this because geography has no real
5:50correlation here with the time it takes to
5:52ship there's
5:53probably more of a correlation with the
5:55size of the order or whether it's in stock
5:57or not so
5:58if I go in here and I break this down as a
6:00bar chart I can actually do like a league
6:02table which
6:03makes more sense so I can see here that
6:05some of these cities here at the top on
6:07average take a
6:08long time seven days to ship their items
6:11which is sort of interesting if I scroll
6:13all the way down
6:14you can see the average I know the average
6:16is actually 3.98 I'll tell you how I know
6:18that in
6:19a second but this is a much much easier way
6:21to work with now as I did there what I did
6:24is I
6:24simply changed the visualization type so if
6:26I want this as a table I can go ahead and
6:28just select text
6:29table and it just gives me a list if I go
6:31in here again and I do a stacked bar chart
6:33that doesn't
6:34really make sense in this context because
6:37if I'm stacking these cities on top of each
6:38other it
6:39doesn't doesn't make much sense a heat map
6:41doesn't make too much sense either because
6:43the size of
6:44each square represents the average days to
6:47ship and to be honest it's the legend doesn
6:49't really
6:50help me sort of figure out the difference
6:51between these because there's a whole range
6:53of sizes in
6:54between zero and seven and again a tree map
6:57kind of works the largest items here being
7:00here on the
7:00top left the smallest being on the bottom
7:02right but again the better thing to do here
7:04is actually
7:05a bar chart and sort it from largest to
7:07smallest or smallest to largest depending
7:10on what you're
7:10looking at if you want to know the slowest
7:12you do this if I wanted to actually change
7:14this so it was
7:15the fastest to the slowest I just go down
7:17here to the bottom and I can just click on
7:20this little
7:21icon and that will change the the way it's
7:23sorted and now that I can see Billings, C
7:26airnham, Montem,
7:27Port Harwich and Rockhill I think are
7:29shipping on the same day essentially
7:30something gets ordered
7:32and they all ship the same day some of
7:33these other ones take a bit longer maybe
7:35half a day or
7:36and longer so you can see this is a really
7:38really nice feature now if I want to clear
7:41this out I can
7:41just go here to clear all and select clear
7:44all and what it will do is it clear the
7:46questions so each
7:47time I ask these questions they're sort of
7:49just there for me to you know ask questions
7:52the key
7:52thing you want to be aware of here is that
7:54a lot of these perspectives you can't save
7:56them so let's
7:57just say the average and notice as I type
8:00average I did a misspell there I do that
8:03deliberately and
8:04you can see here that it's actually able to
8:06sort of compensate for that as well and it
8:08knows it's
8:08an aggregation so let's go click average
8:11days to ship and I'm just going to select
8:14the auto
8:14completed version and this time I'm not
8:16going to break it down by anything and hit
8:17enter what we
8:18should get here is the number 3.958 that's
8:21how I knew what the average days to ship
8:22because I was
8:23actually able to ask it now the key thing
8:26that makes this work really really well is
8:28if the
8:29terminology that you typically use in your
8:31business has been baked into the data set
8:33sometimes when you store data you don't
8:35actually store it with the same field names
8:36that you use
8:37when you're analyzing the item in other
8:39industries you might have a field that says
8:41profit but
8:42depending on which part of the business you
8:44're from you might calculate profit in
8:45different ways
8:46so it's really really important that when
8:48you're using this feature you connect with
8:50the people
8:50who are building these data sets for you
8:52and you make sure that you understand what
8:53's going on
8:54behind the scenes because essentially if if
8:56there are calculations here that you know
8:58you don't
8:59understand you need to get to know how that
9:01works a nice tip if you want to know what's
9:03a calculated
9:04field and what's come from the database you
9:06sometimes see this little equal sign if I
9:08show
9:08you here days to ship size of order and I
9:11think profit ratio which is not in this
9:13perspective
9:14because it's a shipping one these two are
9:15calculated filled because they have the
9:17equal
9:18signs and excellence that essentially shows
9:19you that's something that someone has
9:21created
9:21using existing fields in this data source
9:24okay so that's a really really sort of
9:26quick overview of
9:27our Stata be sure to check out my channel I
9:29've actually been doing videos on our Stata
9:31for a
9:31long long while so there's a whole wealth
9:33of content from the past and but the really
9:35cool
9:35thing is that viewers now have access to
9:37this today and in terms of the guided
9:40experience I
9:41think this is a much much much improved
9:42experience before when you typed in here
9:44you didn't get much
9:46assistance and now if I just you know if I
9:48just to some it knows what some is is it an
9:51aggregation
9:52am I talking about the city or am I talking
9:54about the customer it really has the
9:56context of the
9:57whole entire data set and this makes it
9:58easier to sort of click your way through to
10:00the right answer
10:01and you can start to break things down I'm
10:03not gonna lie it's gonna take a little bit
10:05of getting
10:05used to and this stuff is never perfect
10:07when it's launched it's always going to be
10:08trying to learn
10:09from you but the more people that use this
10:11in your business two things are gonna
10:13happen these
10:14recommended visualizations are going to
10:16become much much better and it's also
10:18possible for your
10:19admins to see what questions people are
10:21asking and all these filters and all these
10:23sort of really
10:24nice contexts you can have over time and is
10:27going to really really help people work
10:29with this in a
10:30lot better way so I'm really happy for this
10:32I'm happy that this is available and I'll
10:34do another
10:34sort of bigger deep dive into our state at
10:36some point in the future but I just wanted
10:38to touch on
10:38those two things our state if a viewers and
10:41the new improved guided search experience
10:43in our state
10:44Alright, thanks for watching and I'll catch
10:45you in the next video.
10:46[BLANK_AUDIO]
Ask data is now available to all users meaning viewers can benefit from curated insights alongside the flexibility to ask their own questions either using the new Lens system, using it inside of a dashboard and lastly using it on a published data source you could before.
“We’ve broadened the reach of Ask Data by making it available to Viewers. Everyone with a Tableau license can now use Ask Data! We have a completely redefined natural language experience for business users, including seamless integration into dashboards with a new dashboard button. Additionally, a new content type, Ask Data Lenses, makes it easy to curate data with the definition of column and value synonyms and suggested questions so you can better leverage existing published data sources.”