Tableau is constantly looking for ways to make data easier to access across organizations. It will announce at the #Data21 customer event that it will allow you to query your data within Slack using natural language. This announcement is a continuation of previous integrations with Slack.
Francois Ajenstat was the chief product officer and spoke at a press conference on Monday. He explained that the new integration brings the full power of Tableau data to Slack, where people can collaborate in different ways. This means that you will be notified when data changes occur and can interact directly in Slack with the data without switching applications.
"Slack is also a place where users can ask data questions so they can find all their content in one place. They don't have to leave Slack. They can search the whole Tableau repository, including all dashboards and all data sources," he stated.
However, the key is to be able query that data. "And if it's what I need, I can jump in and begin [typing] questions. In this instance, we are using Ask Data which is Tableau's natural-language query interface for asking questions using natural language. It is very easy and accessible to all," he stated.
This capability is actually built on functionality that Amalgam Insights announced earlier in the summer, such as Ask Data and Explain Data. Hyoun Park (CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights) said that this capability was actually a continuation of some previously announced capabilities. These capabilities, particularly the query feature, are believed to open up data analysis to people who were not able to interact with data deeply in the past.
There have been other integrations between Slack, ThoughtSpot and other analytic tools that use natural language such as ThoughtSpot. Park explained that this announcement is one of the most significant to date to allow millions of users to access analytic tools via natural language.
This approach, he says, does more than make this data available. It also makes Slack the user interface to the core Tableau product. He also points out that the approach builds on Einstein Discovery, which allows Tableau to use Salesforce's AI engine.
This Einstein capability, according to the company, "provides predictions in work flow." AI predictions can be run by business people on their most valuable business data. These AI predictions will produce intelligent predictions that identify the leading causes and make recommendations for next steps.
Tableau was purchased by Salesforce in 2019 for $15.7 million. Salesforce bought Slack in 2019 for $27 billion at the close of last year. It's not surprising that the company is looking for ways to combine its costly purchases. These announcements are part to make Slack the interface to many pieces of the Salesforce platform.
Salesforce announced the first Slack integrations to Salesforce products in August. Slack also announced additional integrations for September.
