Thoughtspot Analytics: Use-Cases, Insights and Reviews | 2024 Cuspera

ThoughtSpot Leads 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics & BI | MarTech Cube

ThoughtSpot, the AI-Powered Analytics company, today announced Gartner Inc. has positioned the company in the Leaders quadrant in the 2024 ...

Introducing Multiple Snowflake Configurations per ThoughtSpot Connection

Organizations leveraging cloud data warehouses like Snowflake The AI Data Cloud require the ability to efficiently manage and optimize their data connections. Without this, data teams will face challenges with various use cases, such as workload distribution and environment testing.Â

Recognizing the need for greater flexibility and control over data connections, ThoughtSpot developed a powerful new feature: Multiple Configurations per Connection. Below, we’ll outline some of the challenges with the legacy connection object and discuss the new ThoughtSpot solution so you can feel confident implementing Multiple Configurations per Connection with your own ThoughtSpot + Snowflake environment.Â

Why Multiple Configurations per Connection matters

Previously, data professionals such as administrators, data managers, and data engineers responsible for creating and managing connections with their Snowflake instance experienced some challenges performing various use cases. Here’s how that changes with Multiple Configurations per Connection:

1. Workload distribution

Previously, users were limited to using a single Snowflake warehouse for all ThoughtSpot queries and search indexing. This meant that all computational tasks, regardless of their nature or resource demands, were funneled through a single configuration, leading to potential bottlenecks and suboptimal performance. To overcome this, Snowflake customers had to duplicate Liveboards and configure multiple connections to distribute workloads across different computing configurations. With the new feature, administrators can allocate separate Snowflake Warehouses to different ThoughtSpot users or groups, streamlining workload distribution and making end-users lives easier.

2. Search indexing optimization

Customers often need a separate connection configuration for search indexing to balance the computing load effectively and avoid performance degradation such as increased latency in data processing and retrieval. The previous setup utilized the same connection for both querying and indexing, providing a unified approach. The enhanced feature allows for distinct configurations for search indexing and other background processes, improving control and performance.

3. Cost tracking and chargeback

Snowflake bills at the warehouse level, making it challenging for clients to isolate credit spend. Assigning warehouses per user or group facilitates cost tracking and chargeback to internal departments, a common request from customers. This granular mechanism helps measure adoption and resource usage more accurately.

4. Environment testing

Enterprise customers with separate development and production instances struggled to test liveboards against different environments. The new feature enables easy configuration of different environments (dev, QA, prod) on a single connection, eliminating the need for manual updates or duplications.

5. Multi-tenancy and multi-org implementations

In multi-org use cases, administrators lacked the option to set different connection configurations for each org, forcing them to duplicate connections and table selections. The enhanced feature allows for distinct connection parameters, including different schemas or databases, simplifying multi-org implementations.

The solution

To address these challenges, ThoughtSpot's enhanced Connection object introduces several key improvements:

1. Separate Snowflake warehouses: Allocate different warehouses to ThoughtSpot users or groups, distributing the workload efficiently.

2. Distinct configurations for indexing: Set separate connection configurations for background processes like indexing and querying.

3. Environment configuration: Configure different environments (dev, QA, prod) on a single connection for seamless testing.

4. Multi-tenancy support: Configure different connection parameters for each org, eliminating the need for duplicate connections.

How to get started

The setup for Multiple Configurations Per Connection is straightforward, making it easy for Snowflake and ThoughtSpot customers to take advantage of this opportunity. Here are a few things to note before you begin to ensure you have the best experience:

• Be sure to update your Thoughtspot instance to the most up-to-date version.

• Follow the instructions on Adding a Snowflake Connection.

• Configure your warehouse to ensure your ThoughtSpot IP address is accessible from Snowflake, and be sure your Snowflake tables are visible to this role.Â

When you create your Snowflake connection, you enter a default configuration. Leveraging this new feature, you can create additional configurations for your Snowflake connection. Here’s how it works:

1. Select Data in the top navigation bar.

2. Open the Connections tab in the left navigation bar.

3. In the list of connections, find the connection where you want to add a configuration.

4. In the far right of your Connection page, click the ellipsis to open the More menu, and select Create configuration.

5. In the Add configuration details window, specify the following:

• Authentication type

• User

• Password

• Role

• Warehouse

• (Optional) Advanced Config

6. Click Continue. Depending on the authentication type, you may have to sign into your Snowflake account.

7. If the Snowflake sign-in screen appears, sign in to Snowflake. Then, when a message appears asking you to allow your connection access to your Snowflake account, click Allow. The connection is then validated by ThoughtSpot, and the Describe your configuration window appears.

8. Create a name and optional description of your configuration, and click Continue.

9. In the Select policy type window, select from the following options:

• No Policy: Choose this if you want to save the configuration, but you do not want to apply the policy to your connection at this time.

• Users and groups: Choose this if you want to specify users and groups who can use the connection.

• Processes: Choose this if you want to use this configuration for search indexing. Make sure Sage indexing is checked.

10. Click Continue. Your additional configuration is complete and appears below your connection’s name on the Connections page.

Unlocking optimal performance and efficiency

The Multiple Configurations per Connection feature represents a significant enhancement in ThoughtSpot's data connection capabilities. By addressing key challenges and offering greater flexibility, it empowers organizations to optimize their data usage, improve performance, and streamline operations.Â

With this update, ThoughtSpot empowers organizations to optimize their data environments, making it easier to handle complex workloads and track costs accurately. This advancement represents a significant step forward in providing our customers with the tools they need to drive insights, efficiency, and innovation. If you’re new to ThoughtSpot, learn more about our partnership with Snowflake, and schedule a live demo today!

Embedded analytics in the age of generative AI

Every company around the globe is trying to get in on the GenAI wave to simplify user experiences with natural language. And this is especially true in the realm of data and analytics.

Imagine if you could enable all of your marketers to evaluate the performance of their campaigns with a simple question?

Or, if you could provide all of your insurance risk managers with the ability to analyze the risk profile of their claims with the power of search and automated insights?Â

By harnessing ThoughtSpot Embedded, you can accelerate data-driven decision-making for all your employees, customers, and partners with the power of generative AI. The enhanced ThoughtSpot Embedded Developer SDK, along with new resources and pricing for both developers and product teams, empowers you to seamlessly integrate AI-powered analytics into your web applications and portals.

Our vision: Invisible analytics, visible outcomes

No, that’s not a typo. As of today, we are renaming our embedded analytics platform, ThoughtSpot Everywhere, to ThoughtSpot Embedded—a name that reflects our vision of the future.

ThoughtSpot Embedded allows your application and portal to become an analytical powerhouse for your end users by embedding all of ThoughtSpot’s AI-powered analytics including natural language search, interactive charts and reporting, and advanced analytics like forecasting and anomaly detection into your application. You can now make your application data come alive by enabling your users with true self-service analytics to make timely, data-driven decisions.

GenAI represents the biggest wave of opportunity for data and analytics, redefining the speed at which businesses can turn data into insights and drive meaningful outcomes. We’re helping our customers ride this wave by making analytics experiences seamless and invisible, while simultaneously ensuring the delivered impacts remain strikingly visible.Â

As Wayne Eckerson, a distinguished analyst and thought leader in this field, says, “Analytics becomes pervasive when it disappears.�

This sentiment is also reflected in the data. In a Product Led Alliance survey, more than half of the respondents say embedded analytics directly results in increased engagement and revenue. Other cited benefits include customer retention, activation, and acquisition.Â

As we continue to enhance every aspect of ThoughtSpot, including our product, pricing, and go-to-market strategy, our goal is not just to make analytics capabilities available everywhere, but rather, to seamlessly embed analytics into every data application and user workflow so our users can focus on the outcomes.

How ThoughtSpot Embedded brings analytics to everyone

In this way, ThoughtSpot is helping businesses make the most of every moment—find six real-world customer examples here.Â

Whether you’re looking to make real-time, data-driven decisions, reshape the future of your business with generative AI, or both, ThoughtSpot can help you achieve this mission. Let’s look at some of the product innovations bringing this vision to life.

GenAI-powered search tailored to your applications

In January this year, we launched ThoughtSpot Sage Embed—an all-new natural language search experience powered by GenAI—in our Visual Embed SDK.

Overnight, this meant our software customers could simply call a single SDK function and integrate best-in-class search experiences into their products with just one line of code. A line of code that completely revamped data experiences provided by embedded analytics customers such as MDAudit, Act-On, and many more.Â

Try ThoughtSpot Sage Embed now for free.

With just a few more lines of code, you can now tailor the styling and look-and-feel of ThoughtSpot Sage—making it truly yours. Of course, how you want to implement natural language search to achieve an outcome for your customers is also unique to you.Â

With that in mind, we have included a ton of new enhancements including:Â

• AI-suggested questions

• Customizable UI elements and buttons

• Greater control over user actions

Here’s what we mean by user actions: Perhaps you want the user to self-serve and save their search into an Answer, pin it to Liveboard, or simply have the experience live on as an ad-hoc search within your app? With enhanced user action controls, the choice is yours.

Developers get a productivity boost

In our customer chats, we also heard that your dev team has a few items on their wish list: simplified hosting, deploying serverless back-end and front-end projects to quickly build your cloud web applications, and wanting to use Vercel for all of that.

That’s why we recently launched ThoughtSpot Embedded on the Vercel Marketplace. If you’re already a Vercel user, you know that this new app listing helps you quickly embed ThoughtSpot into your apps. And with Vercel handling the hosting and infrastructure, all you need to do is follow the in-listing prompt wizard, and you’ll embed AI-powered analytics into your apps in no time.

We also understand that not every question is a support ticket. Sometimes you may have one-off coding questions, or maybe you’re looking for some suggestions from an embedded analytics expert. This is especially true when it’s crunch time on a looming product deadline.Â

Our new Discord channel empowers you to engage directly with a ThoughtSpot Embedded expert. With available reps across time zones, this channel is designed for developers who need quick answers about the Embed SDK, REST API, or debugging an embedded analytics project. The Discord channel is also the foundation of the ThoughtSpot Embedded developer community so developers can help each other speed up their productivity.

Not feeling the time crunch but still want to get plugged in? Join the channel to discuss all things ThoughtSpot Embedded, interact with subject matter experts, and assist others. All developers are welcome.

A new edition to fit your building

You told us that a 14-day free trial is not enough time to fully explore and test all of the ThoughtSpot Embedded capabilities. We listened. That’s why we are introducing an all-new freemium offering: the Developer Edition.Â

If you are a developer using ThoughtSpot's Free Trial, you can now switch to the new Developer Edition after the initial 14-day period and get free access to ThoughtSpot Embedded for one year. This now provides you plenty of time to develop and finetune your applications with embedded analytics before pushing them into production.

We are confident these updates will help you target new markets with greater platform access and pricing flexibility. I encourage you to visit the new ThoughtSpot Embedded pricing page to learn more about the features included in each edition.Â

Better training and certification programs for every developer

Last but not least, we are also re-launching our ThoughtSpot Embedded training courses to all members of ThoughtSpot University. Available for free, ThoughtSpot University now offers three new instructor-led courses that cover everything from the basics of embedding ThoughtSpot to advanced embedding, and even a course on utilizing our REST API framework.

If you’re looking to attain formal recognition of your skills and knowledge in AI-Powered Analytics (and tell the whole world that you’re great at it), we invite you to attain a new paid certification, the ThoughtSpot Embedded Developer.Â

We’re putting GenAI to work for your business and appsÂ

As ThoughtSpot’s Chief Development Officer, Sumeet Arora said:

â€�It’s an exciting time to be in the world of data and business intelligence. And it’s only getting more exciting from here.â€�Â

We can’t wait for even more customers to put our platform to the test, solving the world’s most interesting challenges and reshaping the future of your fields with data-backed, AI-powered insights delivered at the speed of thought.Â

If you’re ready to spark your own Data Renaissance with ThoughtSpot, request a demo or start a free trial today.

Leverage Google Gemini on ThoughtSpot AI-Powered Analytics

Over the past couple of years, ThoughtSpot and Google have collaborated on a series of seamless user experiences—enabling deployments on Google Cloud Platform, creating the ability to live query entire Google BigQuery analytics catalogs, and integrating key Looker Modeling functionality just to name a few. This type of co-innovation helps mutual customers get the most value out of their data.Â

Today, we are proud to say we are continuing that legacy of co-innovation by leveraging Gemini across several features in the ThoughtSpot platform. While natural language search and other AI functionality aren’t new to ThoughtSpot, generative AI solutions like Google Gemini are sparking a Data Renaissance.Â

As a GenAI partner with Google, ThoughtSpot is making enterprise-grade, AI-Powered Analytics a reality and revolutionizing the way users interact with their data. Here’s what that means for your business:

Change analysis leveraging Gemini

Many organizations struggle to extract value and insights from their data. Whether those barriers are created by data literacy or technical challenges like the inability to access granular details, this deficit often leaves your teams making costly decisions without critical insights. In fact, HBR reported 87% of survey respondents say their organization will be more successful when frontline workers are empowered with data.

We're working to reduce these barriers. Powered by our AI-driven insights engine, SpotIQ, ThoughtSpot’s change analysis feature quickly highlights which dimensions drive changes to critical business KPIs. All of this is done within seconds—not minutes, hours, or even days.

Leveraging Gemini, ThoughtSpot is taking this one step further, decreasing the time from insight to action. Gemini runs on top of ThoughtSpot, seamlessly converting these insights into a natural language narrative. Armed with transparent, trustworthy, and relevant insights, your business users are empowered to make real-time business decisions.

"ThoughtSpot's partnership with Gemini models not only accelerates data-driven decisions but fosters innovation and speed in bringing new ideas to market.�

How it works

While viewing your KPI in ThoughtSpot, simply tap on the change explanation or make comparisons to instantly access automated insights. From this window, you can explore every attribute with auto-generated charts and natural language descriptions.

The most commonly used attributes are organized in the left-hand column, allowing you to explore how each attribute impacts changes in your selected KPI. At the top of each attribute explanation, you’ll find the Gemini-generated natural language insight narrative that summarizes the data analyzed by SpotIQ. If you’re not seeing an important attribute, you can personalize your SpotIQ change analysis attributes and save your preferences for future analysis.Â

Are you a current ThoughtSpot customer interested in accessing the change analysis feature leveraging Gemini? Talk with your account manager about a beta preview today!

What’s next for Google Gemini x ThoughtSpot

We’re just getting started. Following the release of change analysis leveraging Gemini, we have several exciting co-innovation initiatives on the product roadmap.Â

AI Highlights using Gemini

You can think of AI Highlights as the executive brief or the TLDR for your Liveboard, showing users what’s changed since they last checked in so they can quickly get up to date with their most important metrics. Gemini will support the natural language narratives in AI Highlights.

Gemini on ThoughtSpot Sage

We’ll also leverage Gemini on Sage, our AI-powered natural language search experience built with enterprise-grade security on the world’s most robust relational search engine. Through this integration, you’ll get all the speed and intelligence of Gemini GenAI backed by ThoughtSpot’s patented human-in-the-loop feedback system. Together, we’ll give customers the confidence to ask business questions in natural language and trust the accuracy and relevancy of their answers.

As a Google GenAI Partner, ThoughtSpot is committed to co-innovation. Together, we’re helping customers tap into new levels of productivity, capitalize on GenAI’s momentum, and unlock unprecedented value from Google Cloud investments. Learn more about the partnership between ThoughtSpot and Google, and stay tuned for new, exciting integrations.Â

For a hands-on experience, schedule a ThoughtSpot demo today.