"Ask Your Data" lets you answer questions with your data in your (Tableau) environments simply by formulating the right question. "Ask Your Data" is available in the Orbit One Portal (end your search query with a question mark), and in other places including the dedicated page and Instant Messaging platforms.
How Does It Work?
- A data-related question is asked "to" Orbit One.
- Available data sources, dashboards, etc. will be sorted by how likely they are to provide an answer to your question. To achieve this, Ask Your Data uses metadata such as the title of the entity, but also the fields it contains.
- The most relevant data source or dashboard will be consulted, and the results will be analyzed to find the best possible answer.
The Art of Prompting
As with any technology, crossing the bridge between a question formulated by a human and a (sensible) result generated by a computer involves some subtle nuances. A few tips on prompting and the general use of this feature:
- The matching mechanism to list and sort entities that could answer the question is relatively loose. In other words, we'd rather include a few too many results than accidentally omit the one containing the answer.
- With that in mind, it makes sense to explicitly nudge the results in the right direction by e.g. including a term of the entity title if you know you want to use it to answer the question.
- For example, if you know there is a data source titled "Team Strava Data" and you want to know which team member ran the farthest this month, you might construct your question as follows, including at least one term from the title:
Strava: most distance per team member?.
- Similarly, knowledge about the fields of a data source or dashboard can help improve the results of a query. Including the field names that might be relevant in the query and then fine-tuning in the UI is more likely to lead to success.
