Now in beta: Ask questions of your data with natural language, schedule your Tableau Prep flows

Ask Data is here with Tableau 2019.1. You are now able to use plain language to ask questions from any of your published data sources. Type a question and get answers in the form of a viz. Ask Data is the easiest way to analyze your data-no need to drag and drop or understand the nuances of your data's structure.

As you explore your data source, Ask Data makes it easy to refine your question, change your viz type, and save your analysis as a Tableau workbook. Ask Data takes advantage of Tableau's powerful analytical capabilities including sorting, filtering and aggregations. For example, you can ask 'monthly furniture sales,' which sounds like a simple question, but behind the scenes Tableau is automatically creating an aggregation on sum of sales, adding a filter on category, grouping the data by month, and displaying the result as a line chart over time. Ask Data also understands vague language like 'earliest' and 'most popular,' and incomplete questions.

Ask Data is integrated into Tableau Server and Tableau Online, and works with any published data source, live or extract. The data model that defines each data source can be customized on the fly with definitions, calculations, and synonyms unique to your organization. It's free for Tableau Creators, Tableau Explorers, as well as existing Tableau Online and Tableau Server customers with maintenance.