ThoughtSpot Cloud Documentation

ThoughtSpot Cloud™ is our hosted and managed Software as a Service (SaaS) offering. ThoughtSpot Cloud is available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Customers can choose the cloud and region where they would like their ThoughtSpot Cloud service deployed.

ThoughtSpot Cloud offers multiple advantages over deployment form factors that you have to manage and maintain within your own organization.

Find topics for the common types of ThoughtSpot users.

What’s new in ThoughtSpot Cloud

May 2024 9.12.0.cl

Features marked as Beta are off by default. To enable them, contact ThoughtSpot Support.

Ask Sage Beta

You can now conversationally search ThoughtSpot using natural language on a Liveboard visualization, asking follow-up questions for further clarification or to take your analysis in a new direction. This conversational approach allows you to begin with a simple question, and ask successive questions to refine the answer you receive. ThoughtSpot translates each natural language question into a query, and answers in chart format. To enable this feature, contact ThoughtSpot Support.

For more information, see Ask Sage.

Ask Sage

Forecasting Beta

You can now use SpotIQ analysis to forecast future trends for your KPIs. ThoughtSpot uses machine learning models that learn from past trends, growth, and seasonality to project how the target metric will trend in the future. To enable this feature, contact ThoughtSpot Support.

For more information, see Forecasting.

Forecasting

Sage Coach

We made the following enhancements to Sage Coach:

  • Sage Coach shows the feedback from the selected Org-ID only.

  • Renamed the labels for Sage Coach under the Data tab as Sage Feedback - Queries and Sage Feedback - Fragments.

  • Added an Edited by column to indicate the last person to edit specific feedback in both Fragments and Queries pages.

  • Added a Rating column to the Fragments page to record whether the original Answer was rated accurate or inaccurate.

  • Added a Chart preference column to the Queries page.

  • Added an Access column to the Sage Feedback - Fragments page to record whether the access level is user-level or global to make it consistent with Sage Feedback - Queries page.

Collibra integration

Collibra integration is now available to all users and on by default. You can now see verification status and descriptions on tables and columns imported from Collibra. This information appears when you click on the corresponding table or column in Search data. Once connected, this information is visible to all users. For more information, see Collibra catalog integration.

Catalog integration

Show underlying data sources

ThoughtSpot now shows you which data sources are used in a Liveboard. A Liveboard may contain visualizations from many data sources. Authors may choose to use this feature to provide other Liveboard editors with access to the underlying data sources.

The data sources appear in the Show Liveboard details modal under Data source.

Data source
If a data source is unavailable due to permissions, a message appears to indicate that in place of the data source name.

For more information, see Details about a Liveboard.

Support for Excel (XLSX) attachments in Scheduled Liveboards

ThoughtSpot introduces support for scheduling Liveboards with Excel (XLSX) attachments, in addition to the existing PDF and CSV options. This allows users to explore tabular data from these reports by using the XLSX data files. For more information, see Schedule a Liveboard job.

Filters are now available for Liveboards with hidden columns included in a visualization

You can now change the filter values on Liveboards that have visualizations that include hidden columns, or a formula created from a hidden column.

Liveboard filters are now accessible to all users who have view or edit permissions to the underlying data source.

Previously, users who did not have edit access to the underlying worksheet of a Liveboard with filters, could not update the Liveboard filters if the Liveboard used a hidden column. This was the case even if the user had view access to the underlying worksheets.

For more information, see Liveboard filters.

Mobile app updates

  • Ask Sage on mobile

    • You can now use Ask Sage on mobile version 3.0.0. You can ask a single natural language question on any AI enabled data source to get instant AI generated answers. You can ask by typing the question or use voice commands. You can save and share answers to facilitate collaboration.

Remember personalized columns in change analysis

Personalized columns are now available to all users and on by default. Users with edit permissions on a Liveboard can set their preferred attribute columns through the change analysis window and select Apply to all users to keep those selections for any subsequent change analysis calculations on that Liveboard. Individual users can still override these preferences for their own calculations.

For more information, see Remember personalized columns.

Personalized columns

Drill down in change analysis Early Access

You can now drill down on specific columns in change analysis, in order to identify change drivers within your data. For example, if you run an analysis on sales monthly and find out that the 'jacket' item type changed the most, you can easily drill down on jacket sales and identify which region contributed the most to the change in sales. To enable this feature, contact your administrator.

For more information, see Iterative change analysis.

Iterative change analysis

Semi-additive measures with first and last values Early Access

A semi-additive measure, also known as snapshot data, is a measure that is usually aggregated for all attributes except for date and time. For certain measures, like inventory, you want to know what the value was at the beginning or end of a period. In that case, you can use the last_value function to find the inventory at the end of a month, rather than aggregating all values over the month. Similarly, you can use the first_value function to find out your stock at the beginning of a month. To enable this feature, contact your administrator.

Version control for Liveboards and Answers Early Access

Now teams of analysts can more easily collaborate on content development of Liveboards and Answers. You can enable version control on specific Liveboards and Answers. With version control enabled, every time you save the Liveboard or Answer, a new version is created and stored. You can browse the version history in ThoughtSpot and restore any saved versions whenever you need to. To enable this feature, contact your administrator. For more information, see Liveboards and Answers.

ThoughtSpot Sync

We made the following enhancements to ThoughtSpot Sync:

  • Using ThoughtSpot Sync, you can now sync data directly from an Answer or a custom SQL view, to Excel.

  • You can now click the preview link when you create a Sync from the Data Workspace to see a preview of the resulting Answer, Liveboard, or Custom SQL view. Answer, Liveboard, and Custom SQL view previews appear in a new tab.

  • When running a Sync, you can see the following information depending on the destination:

    • Slack: channel name

    • Microsoft Teams: team and channel

    • Sheets: file name and spreadsheet name

    • All others: object name and operation name


Other features and enhancements

Collibra catalog integration

Collibra catalog integration is now available to all users and on by default. You can now import metadata information related to your tables and columns from Collibra into ThoughtSpot. From the Data tab, you can set up a connection to Collibra to import column descriptions, column verification status, table descriptions, and table verification status.

For more information, see Collibra catalog integration.

Redshift AWS IDC OAuth

We now support Redshift connections using AWS IDC OAuth. For more information, see Configure AWS IDC OAuth for a Redshift connection.

Snowflake secondary role configuration for External OAuth

ThoughtSpot now supports secondary role configuration when you create a Snowflake connection using External OAuth. When you set secondary roles to ALL, you can access all tables that any single role has access to and combine them in a single SQL query without having to switch roles.

For more information on primary and secondary roles, see Enforcement model with primary role and secondary roles and Add a Snowflake connection.

Multiple configurations for Snowflake connections Early Access

You can now create multiple configurations for each Snowflake connection. This allows you to allocate a separate Snowflake warehouse for different ThoughtSpot users or groups, eliminating the need to duplicate Liveboards and configure multiple Snowflake connections and helping you with cost tracking and chargeback. You can also use this for your search indexing so that you can control and balance the computing load. In addition, this allows you to easily test a set of Liveboards against different environments (dev, qa, prod), and configure different databases for multi-tenancy / multi-org deployments. For more information, see Creating additional configurations for your Snowflake connection.

Manage onboarding configuration at the Org level

You can now manage onboarding configuration at the Org level. Now an Org administrator can update their onboarding configuration in the Admin panel without the need to contact the tenant administrator. This feature helps to reduce possible service interruptions by allowing you to make configuration changes per Org instead of taking the whole cluster down.

Enabling GIT integration for version control of Liveboards and Answers Early Access

Administrators can now enable version control of Liveboards and Answers. You enable version control for your ThoughtSpot Org by connecting it to a Github repository. Once enabled for the Org, version control can be enabled individually for any Liveboard or Answer. Each time a user saves changes, a new version of the Liveboard or Answer is created and stored in your Github repository. Users can easily browse and restore an older version from the Liveboard or Answer itself. For more information, see Version control for Liveboards and Answers.

User Adoption Liveboard

You can now use the User Adoption Liveboard to understand how ThoughtSpot is saving you time with ad-hoc insights, and how many users are accessing ThoughtSpot and creating new insights every month. For more information, see User Adoption Liveboard and User Productivity.

Connection TML

You can now use the table TML file to make changes to connection details like remapping columns and changing data type, rather than using the connection.yaml file. This allows you to make small changes to a Connection without the need to resolve all possible errors first. You can also edit or export the Connection TML file from the Data Workspace. For more information, see TML for connections.

Demo data publishing on Enterprise Orgs

ThoughtSpot now supports demo data access at the Org level. Customers can leverage this functionality to allow users to try building Answers and Liveboards. This is available to all users in the Org, and users are added to Demo Data Retail group by default. Org administrators can remove users from this group to remove their access to Demo Data.

For the Developer

For new features and enhancements introduced in this release of ThoughtSpot Embedded, see ThoughtSpot Developer Documentation.

What’s coming in the next release

June 2024 9.12.5.cl

Features marked as Beta are off by default. To enable them, contact ThoughtSpot Support.

Redesigned home page Early Access

In this release, you can try our redesigned and customizable home page, where you can ask natural-language questions with Sage, view your watchlist, favorites, library of Answers and Liveboards, and more. With the new left-hand navigation, you can go directly to your Liveboards, Answers, SpotIQ Analysis, and Monitor Subscriptions.

This new home page experience is disabled by default. Contact your ThoughtSpot administrator to enable this feature for your cluster. After that, open your user profile, and in the Experience section, set the Navigation and Homepage to New experience. Note that this setting also enables persona-based navigation.

New homepage design

New persona-based navigation Early Access

In this release, you can try our completely redesigned navigation experience organized by persona. The new app switcher allows business users, analysts, data engineers, administrators, and developers to work in separate contextual sections designed specifically for their needs. In addition, each app has left-hand navigation to create better consistency and ease of use for users switching between the different apps.

This new navigation experience is disabled by default. Contact your ThoughtSpot administrator to enable this feature for your cluster. After that, open your user profile, and in the Experience section, set the Navigation and Homepage to New experience. Note that this setting also enables the redesigned home page.

Persona-based navigation

Drill down in change analysis

Drill down in change analysis is now on by default and available to all users. You can now drill down on specific columns in change analysis, in order to identify change drivers within your data. For example, if you run an analysis on sales monthly and find out that the 'jacket' item type changed the most, you can easily drill down on jacket sales and identify which region contributed the most to the change in sales.

Iterative change analysis

Forecasting Early Access

You can now use SpotIQ analysis to forecast future trends for your KPIs. ThoughtSpot uses machine learning models that learn from past trends, growth, and seasonality to project how the target metric will trend in the future. To enable this feature, contact your administrator.

Forecasting

Note tile enhancements

ThoughtSpot introduces the ability to customize note tiles. You can now customize the appearance of note tiles. You can also edit hyperlinks and iFrames that previously had to be deleted and replaced to make changes. Images within note tiles are now responsive to screen size.

Note tile new features

Query sets Early Access

You can create query sets, which can be used to classify values in a list that you can then reuse across multiple analyses. A query set is a custom group of values from a collection of objects in your database. Query sets are community objects which remain when you navigate away from the Search Data page and can be used by any user with view access to the underlying Worksheet. To enable this feature, contact ThoughtSpot Support.

Sage Coach enhancements

We made the following changes to Sage Coach:

  • Only users with Worksheet editing rights can promote feedback to the global access level so that it applies user queries on the Worksheet.

  • Once feedback is promoted to global access level, users without worksheet editing access cannot take any actions on it. For more information on the changes in the permission model, refer to Sage Coach permissions.

  • When a Worksheet column is modified, such as a column name change, the changes are reflected in Sage Coach feedback. When a column is deleted, any feedback using that column is also removed. While saving a changed Worksheet, you have the option to review the impacted feedback, ensuring accurate updates upon confirmation.

  • You can now edit query fragment text before submitting feedback. Additionally, you can edit the natural language query terms along with the Answer tokens through the Sage Coach flow.

    Edit feedback

Save table layouts in the schema viewer

ThoughtSpot introduces the ability to save table layouts in the schema viewer. Table location and size are now maintained and saved in the schema viewer.

Language updates

ThoughtSpot now supports Korean and we’ve also added synonyms for date and time based keywords in German and French for a more accurate experience.


Other features and enhancements

Rules to sort TML

ThoughtSpot introduces a consistent sort order when exporting the TML of an object (table, SQL view, Liveboard, etc.). This ensures that unnecessary differences don’t show up between TML files when the objects haven’t really changed, and makes it easier to compare TML files.

Role-based access control Early Access

Role-based access control (RBAC) is now available to all users. RBAC allows for more granular access privileges. Use RBAC to apply privileges customized for your organizational needs.

To enable RBAC, contact ThoughtSpot Support.

Once you enable RBAC it cannot be disabled.

For the Developer

For new features and enhancements introduced in this release of ThoughtSpot Embedded, see ThoughtSpot Developer Documentation.


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