Tableau Software Inc. wants to reduce the amount of effort involved in creating dashboards using its popular data visualization platform.

The company today debuted a new release of the product that aims to streamline several key parts of the workflow, starting with the task of preparing information for use. Tableau 10.3 employs machine learning algorithms to inspect how the analysts at a firm access internal data and then generates suggestions based on the most common actions.

If a user is working to visualize the company’s most recent quarterly results, the software might point out the accounting systems that colleagues have drawn upon in the past for similar projects. The mechanism can also highlight opportunities to augment the data in a project with records from other sources. For a user building a financial dashboard, Tableau might suggest integrating the accounting numbers with information about pending deals from the sales department.

It’s similar to the approach that the Accel-backed Trifacta Inc. has taken with its data science platform. Tableau’s new machine learning feature doesn’t cover as much ground as the startup’s software, but it can still save a great deal of time, because preparing information is one of the most tedious parts of analytics projects.

The new machine learning features are complemented by six new integrations that aim to streamline another major pain point: importing data from external systems. The most notable of the bunch is a new PDF connector designed to let analysts extract the information in their companies’ documents without the manual wrangling that was needed until now.

Users of Tableau Online will also be able to manage data sources more easily in the wake of today’s update. The service has received a new feature called Tableau Bridge that provides the ability to quickly import information from a company’s on-premise systems. Removing the need for analysts to write custom queries for pulling in-house information should make Tableau Online more competitive in the usability department against the numerous rivals out there.

Image: Tableau