Salesforce Tableau looks beyond business intelligence dashboards with AI-powered Pulse

Salesforce has announced the general availability of its Tableau Pulse technology, offering organizations enhanced business intelligence insights through the power of artificial intelligence (AI). Tableau Pulse, initially previewed in May 2023 and beta-tested in December 2023, leverages generative AI and natural language queries to highlight key metrics, trends, and recommendations tailored to each organization’s unique data. The latest release of Tableau Pulse introduces new insights features, a Slack news digest for data insights, and a metrics layer to help organizations define and interpret data meaningfully.

Southard Jones, Tableau’s Chief Product Officer, emphasized the extensive customer engagement involved in refining Pulse to ensure user-friendly access to critical insights. Pulse aims to provide actionable metrics that users rely on to manage their businesses efficiently and proactively address emerging issues, distinguishing itself from traditional dashboards that often present problems after the fact. By surfacing insights before they escalate into problems, Pulse enables users to make timely data-driven decisions.

A notable success story during the Pulse preview period involved a user leveraging the technology to identify and rectify a product return issue promptly, resulting in cost savings for the company. The new Slack Digest feature complements Pulse by delivering insights through a news feed-like experience via Slack, engaging users who may not regularly access dashboards. Moreover, the addition of a metrics layer standardizes metric definitions across an organization’s Tableau workbooks, ensuring consistency and facilitating natural language queries with improved contextual understanding.

Jones highlighted Tableau’s integration of AI, particularly its use of traditional AI models for generating insight summaries based on statistical analysis and models. The incorporation of Salesforce’s Einstein GPT as a generative AI layer enriches content creation capabilities while incorporating a security trust layer to mitigate risks.

In a bid to empower more users to leverage data for informed decision-making, Tableau Pulse represents a significant step towards democratizing access to business intelligence tools. By offering advanced AI-driven insights in an intuitive manner, Pulse aims to bridge the gap between data availability and actionable business outcomes.

The launch of Tableau Pulse underscores a strategic move by Salesforce to enhance its BI offerings, catering to the growing need for data-driven decision-making in today’s competitive business landscape.