Tableau Pulse uses AI to make data more accessible

Tableau, the data visualization platform acquired by Salesforce in 2019, is beginning the roll-out of Tableau Pulse, an AI-driven experience designed to make data more accessible to everyone regardless of expertise with data visualization platforms.

Pulse will also allow a user to create a custom metrics homepage based on KPIs relevant to that user. It will act as an automatic data news feed, eliminating the need for manual filtering. Tableau Pulse is available to all Tableau Cloud users.

Three layers. Pulse is architected around three layers:

• A metrics layer that allows metrics and KPIs to be set once and used consistently across the organization.
• An insights platform that automatically generates insights surfaced according to the metrics and KPIs previously defined.
• Next-Gen Experiences, delivering insights to users in their preferred workflows: Slack, email, etc.

Generative AI is at the heart of this offering. Users can query the insights platform using natural language; genAI creates summaries of data for Next-Gen experiences.

Why we care. AI is a technology of staggering complexity, but what we continue to see is ways AI simplifies things for its users — from metadata tagging to coding to sentiment analysis. Data visualization was supposed to be a big step on the way to making data accessible to business users who were not data scientists. Now we see a layer of AI allowing those users to talk back to the data, ask it questions and have accessible data digests delivered in their workflows.

Future features. Tableau plans to continue to add features to Pulse during the rest of 2024. These will include:

• Access to Pulse via the Tableau mobile app.
• Goals and threshholds for metrics.
• Additional metrics types.