UPDATED 03:00 EDT / FEBRUARY 13 2019

BIG DATA

Tableau Software adds Ask Data so users can query data with their natural voice

Tableau Software Inc., whose mission is to make insights from big data more accessible, today took a big step further with the addition of new natural language processing capabilities.

The new feature is called “Ask Data” and allows Tableau users to ask questions using their natural voice and get instant visual insights that will hopefully provide the answers they’re looking for. The feature is aimed at workers who don’t have any special expertise in programming or using data.

Francois Ajenstat, chief product officer at Tableau, said Ask Data is aimed at making analytics available for anyone to do. Tableau Software had previously acquired a natural language processing startup called ClearGraph, and that company’s technology was used as the foundation of Ask Data, Mark Jewett, vice president of product marketing at Tableau, told SiliconANGLE.

“ClearGraph’s focus on the intersection of language and visualizations aligned with our conversational approach to natural language, making their team and technology an obvious fit to help fuel our efforts with natural language processing,” Jewett said.

Ask Data incorporates artificial intelligence in the form of sophisticated algorithms that work to understand the user’s intent, rather than basing its results on specific keywords. So for example, if a user says, “Show me our sales data for American furniture,” Ask Data knows it needs to filter the results according to the product category “furniture” and that the country category must be set to the “United States.”

“Furniture” is a common value for the “product category” field and “America” is a synonym of the country “United States,” the company explained, adding that inherent support for synonyms allows people to get insights while using different terms to represent the same field, such as “sales” and “bookings.” The capability helps Ask Data to provide much more accurate results, Tableau said.

The software is also able to understand the meaning of questions that could be interpreted in multiple ways. It does so by correlating the questions with users’ past history of queries to try and understand exactly what they’re getting at.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said Ask Data looks to be a promising innovation from Tableau because voice provides a more intuitive way for people to get software to do what they want.

“As with all innovation, the proof lives in adoption, and that will only happen if the new Voice UX for Tableau works as planned,” Mueller said. “If it does, it’s a key milestone for the future of work with business intelligence apps.”

Ask Data is available now and comes fully integrated with Tableau Server and Tableau Online, at no additional cost.

The offering is just one of several new features in Tableau’s two main products, which have both been updated. Others include a new mobile application for Android and iOS with a dashboard and visual insights that have been customized for smaller screens. There’s also a new Google Ads connector for marketers that enables Tableau to be used to analyze website data.

The company has also launched an entirely new, separate product called Tableau Prep Conductor, which comes with data management capabilities to prepare and manage data from disparate sources.

Photo: Tableau Software

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU