Ask data improvements: New in Tableau 2021.1

0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video I'm

0:01going to be taking you through some new

0:02features for

0:03Ask Data in 2020.1. There's two things to

0:06cover, so let's get stuck in. The first

0:08thing is a new

0:09assistance window that's now available in

0:11Ask Data. To show you this I'm just going

0:13to go to

0:13the explore tab here on the left hand side

0:15and what we need is a data source. So I'll

0:17go here

0:17to the very top and I'll filter this list

0:19to data sources. I have seven data sources

0:22here, I'm going

0:22to choose this one for Superstore and it's

0:24got a stale data quality indicator on there

0:26so if we

0:27click in that you'll see the indicator just

0:29here saying it's stale data. I did this in

0:31a previous

0:32release of Tableau. Now when we get to this

0:35list you will see this for the first time

0:37when you log

0:38in if you're using 2021.1 but because I've

0:41already seen that notification the only way

0:43I can bring it

0:44back up is to click on this information

0:46icon here and it basically loads up the new

0:48assistance

0:49feature. Now this assistance feature is

0:51targeted at two people, essentially users

0:53who use it every

0:54single day and admins who need to be able

0:56to make the function work really really

0:59well for other

1:00users. Okay so let's start with the help

1:02generally for using this function. If you

1:04click on this

1:04online help it opens up a new tab that you

1:07can basically go to and it shows you how to

1:09start to

1:09use this feature. This is useful because

1:12without the help sort of on the page it's

1:14actually quite

1:14difficult for someone to intuitively

1:16understand some of the power hidden behind

1:18some of the

1:19queries you can ask inside of Ask Data and

1:21you can also send them feedback. I just

1:23clicked on the

1:24feedback button here and you can give them

1:26feedback on basically three types of

1:27feedback, problems,

1:28feature requests and praise. So if you want

1:31to send some feedback to Tableau so they

1:32can improve

1:33this feature this is the place to do that.

1:35Now if I close this tab down and we bring

1:37this little

1:38insistence window back up I'm now going to

1:40switch to showing what help they've got for

1:43data owners.

1:43So the setup guide is kind of handy there's

1:45actually a few little things that can

1:47really

1:47really help things like synonyms, editing

1:50what's being indexed and what's not being

1:52indexed that's

1:53all sort of really well laid out here in

1:54this instruction manual. So again if you're

1:57an admin

1:57and you've enabled Ask Data this is a

1:59really good place to go in and understand

2:01how you can start to

2:02use some of the power inside of the tool to

2:04let people start asking their own questions

2:06. Now

2:07another nice feature is that you might want

2:09to know what questions people are asking

2:11and how

2:11often this is being used so the usage

2:13analytics lets you see that and

2:15specifically for Tableau

2:16online customers this is a really good

2:18place to go because you don't have access

2:20to the full

2:21extent of the Postgres database so this is

2:23probably the only place you'll ever see

2:25this

2:25information so on my Tableau online

2:27instance I'm the only one who's actually

2:28used this particular

2:30data set and you can see the top fields

2:32that I'm normally sort of asking questions

2:34about. So this

2:35is actually handy because you can start to

2:38sort of build a metadata sort of

2:39understanding of you

2:41know what metrics are people most

2:42interested in and can we put those metrics

2:44into a standardized

2:46data source that people can work with

2:47across the business or can we build in some

2:49aggregations into

2:50that data source that people have ready to

2:52go so when they can ask questions you're

2:54not having to

2:55sort of ask complex questions to get to the

2:57final answer. Okay and the very last thing

2:59you can see

3:00the questions that have been asking and the

3:02number of resulting visualizations so

3:04essentially what

3:06you can see here is essentially the

3:08different ways people have asked the same

3:10thing so for example

3:11user questions is three resulting

3:13visualization is three that means

3:14essentially that the people

3:16have asked questions in sort of three ways

3:18and it's resulted in three instances of

3:20that visualization

3:21if that makes sense okay so this is a nice

3:24really sort of really nice interface to be

3:26able to see

3:26all of that in one place. Let's head back

3:28to the Rstata interface if I just go back

3:30here you'll see

3:31we still haven't left the main page one of

3:33the things you can also do in this release

3:35is switch

3:36off indexing on a particular field so if I

3:38hover over all of these you'll see if I

3:41just hover over

3:41state for example the way I know that this

3:43is indexed it's funny this disappears as

3:45soon as I

3:46click on my annotation tool so I'll just

3:48hover over this you can see this area and

3:50domain values

3:51are highlighted on screen here without

3:53having to use the annotation tools and you

3:55can see that it

3:56says domain values are California, New York

3:58, Texas and Pennsylvania. In order for Table

4:01au to know

4:01that it has to index the data and what you

4:03can do is you can actually tell Tableau

4:05listen don't

4:06index a particular field because maybe you

4:09don't want it to you know form part of a

4:10really complex

4:11query or you're just basically not really

4:13interested in the information in that

4:15particular

4:15column because it's just not commonly used

4:18so what you can do is you can go to a field

4:20and tell it

4:20not to index that so let's let's go ahead

4:22and click on this and let's tell it not to

4:25index the city

4:26field so if I deselect that you'll get this

4:27small notification saying if you click on

4:30this blue area

4:30here you can re-index the whole data set so

4:32essentially it gets rid of the information

4:34that

4:35it understood about the city okay. Now what

4:39this really means essentially it's not

4:42going to take

4:42that information away from the data source

4:44it's just not going to use it in its

4:46interpretation

4:47and so the good use case here is let's say

4:49you don't want people to be asking

4:51questions that

4:52end up at the city level of detail well by

4:54removing it from the index you're

4:55essentially going to avoid

4:57that and people can bring it into their

4:59questions and they can still use it it's

5:01just not going to

5:02default to visualizations with that in it

5:04if you ask questions if that makes sense so

5:06it's a sort

5:07of a slight nuance but it also adds

5:09performance to the way the queries work and

5:11the way everything

5:12sort of comes together so if I go ahead and

5:14click on this blue space here and you'll

5:16see that it

5:17goes away and re-indexes that and the way I

5:19know that is if I just grab this arrow you

5:21can see this

5:21little progress bar here moving from left

5:23to right that is a real-time sort of index

5:26ing capability

5:27okay now if you're on a Tableau server on-

5:29premise in your organization then that might

5:31take a bit

5:32longer this is on Tableau online so it's

5:34almost instant now that we've removed that

5:36from the index

5:37we're gonna go here and close this tab and

5:39you can see here that I can still ask a

5:42basic question for

5:43example what city had the largest sales

5:46okay all right let's go ahead and type that

5:50and when we hit

5:51enter it goes off and it will build the

5:53same map that we saw last time um I think

5:56it will do that

5:57let's give it a sec and you see it'll build

5:59exactly the same map as last time and I can

6:01still go in here and choose a chart okay

6:03but what it won't do is it won't know that

6:06New York

6:07City is a city because the value New York

6:09City is inside of the city column and so in

6:12order for it

6:13to know that context it needs to have

6:15indexed that column so if we just go back

6:17here and clear all

6:19and if I just start asking this question um

6:22what was the average sales in New York City

6:29okay so New York City and you can see that

6:31it's struggling it's not sort of

6:34understanding what

6:34I mean by the term New York City for it to

6:37know that it has to have indexed the city

6:39field in the

6:39first bit so even if I enter it's just

6:41going to return average sales okay and

6:44whereas if I was

6:45to go to a particular state let's say what

6:49are the average sales in California yeah

6:54and I was to hit

6:55enter you can see here that it understands

6:58uh states to California okay and in this

7:00particular

7:00case what it's doing is it's combining the

7:02first question with the second question

7:04right so if I

7:05hit enter it's going to tack that question

7:07on uh to uh the particular thing I did

7:10actually what I

7:11wanted to do is to clear this and ask that

7:13question again this time in a unique way so

7:16what is the

7:17average sales in California and if I hit

7:20space here you can see it even knows when I

7:24misspell

7:24something uh hit California filter state to

7:27California and now we get the same uh

7:30number back

7:31229 but it understands the context of that

7:33question so that's sort of the difference

7:34between

7:35indexing and not indexing and the ability

7:37to switch that off so that's pretty much it

7:39for 2021 for our

7:40state of here um if you've enjoyed the

7:42video you know what to do hit subscribe

7:44like share and check

7:45out the other videos in this playlist about

7:47the new features and of course keep tuning

7:49in as we

7:49continue to make more videos about

7:51functions and everything to do with tablet

7:53catch you in the next

7:54one