The augmented analytics functions in Tableau 2021.2 cover improvements to the Ask Data feature with personalized experiences, Explain Data with a new user interface and natural language search tools and reporting integrations with Salesforce. Salesforce has said it is increasingly selling Tableau along with its core clouds. 

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Among the key functions in Tableau’s latest release:

Ask Data, which allows people of varying skill sets to answer business questions in natural language, is getting tools to guide users on how to ask relevant questions as well as personalized dashboards. Ask Data is available to all roles and users for Tableau Server and Tableau Online. Explain Data is getting a new UI designed for a wider audience that highlights drivers behind a data point. Explain Data will search for explanations in a data source beyond what’s in a visualization. Ask Data for Salesforce is enabling Salesforce users to ask any question in Tableau CRM using natural language and semantic search. Answers will appear as insights, reports and recommended dashboards. Einstein Discovery for Salesforce Reports, which will analyze data from Salesforce reports and surface insights with charts and explanation.

Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer at Tableau, said the new tools are aimed at democratizing data and creating an analytics-driven culture. He cited customers such as Jaguar Land Rover that scaled Tableau deployments to 70% of the business in 9 months after the CEO requested that all board reporting be done in Tableau. Ajenstat said: Here are two screen shots of the Tableau and Salesforce integrations.  Tableau 2012.2 also includes Collections, which organizes content on Tableau Server and Tableau Online. The company is also adding an integration tab that will make it easier to connect and analyze data from Salesforce Sales and Service Cloud on Tableau Online. In addition, Tableau added transition tools from web authoring to Tableau Desktop to improve workflows. Other items in Tableau 2021.2 include: