# How to add Ask Data to your dashboard: New in Tableau 2021.2

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-06-26
- **Format:** Video · 9 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Analytics
- **Tools:** Tableau (ask data, cloud, dashboards, data modelling)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-add-ask-data-to-your-dashboard-new-in-tableau-2021-2
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVBSodjoUUA

I walk through how to add an Ask Data view into a Tableau dashboard, a new feature in Tableau 2021.2. I cover the published data source prerequisite, using lenses, the new Ask Data dashboard object, and doing it all in the browser, plus a desktop bug I hit on launch day.

## Key takeaways

- Adding Ask Data to a dashboard requires a published data source — it won't work on an embedded one.
- Lenses are new 2021.2 asset types that focus Ask Data on a specific set of questions for a particular team or area.
- In web edit you drag the new Ask Data object onto a dashboard, but you must save the workbook first for the view to come alive.
- On desktop you may need to replace your embedded data source with the published one, and use Replace Data Source to keep everything connected.
- This brings Tableau closer to parity with Power BI's natural-language querying, and I recommend waiting a few months after release before updating to avoid launch-day bugs.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Prerequisite: published data sources
- 0:31 Lenses explained in Tableau Online
- 1:58 Adding the Ask Data object in the browser
- 2:47 Saving the workbook to activate the view
- 3:35 Embedding a lens in the dashboard
- 4:35 Trying it on Tableau Desktop
- 6:18 Desktop bug and closing thoughts

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-add-ask-data-to-your-dashboard-new-in-tableau-2021-2

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena