New Tableau AI features and Slack integration aim for data accessibility

Tableau, a subsidiary of Salesforce, has launched new AI-powered capabilities to help make data more accessible to business users and improve support for data-driven decisions and analysis.

The announcement comes a week after Salesforce revealed plans to add new generative AI functions to its CRM platform at its Trailblazer DX ’23 developer conference.

Eight out of 10 business leaders agree that data is critical for decision-making, however, many still struggle with how to use it, according to a recent Salesforce survey of 10,000 business leaders. Furthermore, 41% of the business leaders polled said that they did not understand their data because it is too complex or not accessible enough.

In order to help business leaders unlock important data insights, Tableau has added new AI-powered personalization and automation capabilities to its business intelligence software.

The new features include data stories for Tableau Server, which allows customers to use AI to translate graphs, charts and spreadsheets into natural language insights that are easy to interpret and share.

In addition, new user-attribute functions personalize analytics by displaying only the most relevant insights and enforcing security policies based on attributes such as role, department, and location. A new data mapping tool allows users to take ready-to-use dashboards and reconfigure them to match any data source without the use of third-party applications.

Tableau has also announced an enhanced integration with Slack designed to allow users to share Tableau content in Slack and easily search for and share information and visualization previews in direct messages and channels. For example, sales managers will be able to view their team’s fourth quarter sales numbers in Tableau and share data visualizations directly within their team’s Slack channels.

At the start of March, Tableau, a data visualization company that was acquired by Salesforce in 2019 for $15.7 billion, was credited by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff for being part of the driving force behind its parent company’s 14% year-over-year jump in revenue in its fourth quarter of 2023.