The NL Insights visualization displays natural language insights and information about selected dimensions and measures.
NL Insights uses Insight Advisor to generate natural language information about the dimensions and measure added to the chart. The chart updates the insights as selections are made in the app.
Native NL Insights object displaying natural language insights with full verbosity
NL Insights is a native chart type replacing the deprecated NL Insights control from the Dashboard bundle.
By default, NL Insights generates insights for all analysis types supported for the selected fields. The classification of fields in your app logical model determines which fields are available as dimensions or measures. For more information on defining fields, see Defining fields and groups.
When to use it
Use NL Insights when you want to include a narrative or analytical summary of your data. For example, on a sheet focused on sales, you might want narratives summarizing key ranking, correlation, and comparison analyses for sales to complement your other visualizations.
It is also helpful to pair NL Insights with another chart containing the same dimensions and measures. This provides additional context and information for the chart. To do this, configure the NL Insights object to use an input chart that has already been created on the current sheet. The dimensions and measures from that input chart are used to generate the natural language insights, and the NL Insights will update based on changes you make in the input chart.
NL Insights with natural language insights generated directly from input bar chart
Migrating from the Dashboard bundle to native object
NL Insights extension objects from the Dashboard bundle must be migrated to native charts if they appear on a public (base) sheet or published (community) sheet. To do this, follow the applicable steps to make the sheet private, then publish and/or make it public again.
Personal and shared spaces
Do the following:
-
Open the app overview, or open
Sheets from sheet view. -
Right-click the public sheet and select Make private.
-
Open the private sheet and ensure the chart has been migrated.
-
Under your private sheets, right-click the sheet and select Make public.
Managed spaces
Public sheets
Do the following:
-
Open the app overview, or open
Sheets from sheet view. -
Right-click the public sheet and select Duplicate.
-
Open the duplicated private sheet and ensure the chart has been migrated.
-
Right-click the sheet and select Publish.
This publishes the sheet to the Community, under My sheets.
If you instead need the sheet to be re-added as a public sheet, you will need to open the source app in the personal or shared space, then make the sheet private and then public again. Finally, re-publish the app to the managed space.
Published sheets
Do the following:
-
Open the app overview, or open
Sheets from sheet view. -
Right-click the published sheet and select Unpublish.
-
Open the private sheet and ensure the chart has been migrated.
-
Right-click the sheet and select Publish.
Considerations
The analysis types and number of narrative insights generated in the NL Insights chart depend on the volume and variety of data that belongs to the fields selected. A limited number of analysis types and insights might be displayed in the following scenarios:
-
The selected items use the same underlying field with aggregations or selections.
-
The selected items include only measures and no dimensions.
-
The selected items are mostly unrelated.
Limitations
The NL Insights object has the following the limitations:
-
You cannot use the following chart types for direct input into the NL Insights chart:
-
Animator
-
Button
-
Container
-
Date picker
-
Filter pane
-
Text & image
-
Video player
-
-
The NL Insights chart does not provide natural language insights for the following analysis types (even if it uses an input chart generated from these analysis types):
-
Anomaly (spike)
-
Anomaly (trend)
-
Clustering (k-means)
-
Overview
-
Period changes
-
Process control (rolling mean)
-
Year to date
-
-
Expressions with modifiers, either applied directly to the chart or via an input chart, might not provide correct values in natural language insights.
-
The number format accompanying an expression is only applied to narrative statements generated using that expression. Additional narratives that are generated might not adhere to the expression's number format.
-
When using an existing chart as the input for an NL Insights object, certain actions taken on the input chart will not result in the natural language insights being updated automatically. Specifically, switching to alternative measures or dimensions, or customizations made through chart exploration in analyze mode, do not update natural language insights unless those changes are applied and made available for all users.
-
Changing the number format of a measure might not always result in this formatting being changed in all available insights.