3 ms·

Since the discussion started in the comments already, I have a similar question: any recommendations for a solution (don’t care if OSS or not) that has the best

Since the discussion started in the comments already, I have a similar question: any recommendations for a solution (don’t care if OSS or not) that has the best UX for nontechnical people to assemble some data and reports anyhow? I have Salesforce, some mariadb/postgres and (optionally) hubspot as data sources. I can buy or manually provision anything, no technical hurdles or policies from that side. My absolute focus is the raw UX for business people. Suggestions?

arthurwu 3y ago
I'm a co-founder of Dataland.io where we're building a powerful dataset viewer + search engine that can work on top of your Postgres or data warehouse. We designed it specifically to provide an excellent UX to business users while reducing BI burden on the data team. We find that most business users often just need to search, filter, and sort instead of looking at charts to make operational decisions. UX-wise, what sets us apart are: - <1s full-text search (even on billions of rows of data), feels like Cmd+F in Google sheets, but faster - Performance: we stream billions of rows into the web browser, seamless scrolling (no paging of 50 records at a tieme) - Rich cells make tables easier to scan/read (enum strings => colored tags, numbers => color-coded based on value => checkboxes, timestamptz => clear date time pills) If that fits what you need, happy to give you a demo. arthur(at)dataland.io Otherwise, I think the simplest BI (if charts are impt) could be something like evidence.dev or Metabase. But I also think it's going to require some curation on your part. Can you reasonably expect business users to navigate the entire schema/table tree across these three sources? That's where I think the bottleneck often lies -- if your BI tool allows engineering to just expose a subset of curated core tables.
robertlagrant 3y ago
The problem is that developing the perfect UI for nontechnical people to assemble reports probably requires a bespoke frontend for your business, and one that likely lags behind the reality of its changes. Most businesses instead opt to just hire semitechnical people that can do a bit of data work and give answers to the report-writers, as they can accommodate business changes over time and understand how to construct new queries out of the overall business' data sources. Maybe that'll change one day with AI, and when it does that will be bought by every big company in the world (-:
davidarenas 3y ago
Honestly Metabase has given best balance between allowing non-technical users to self-service and technical users to dig in and use raw sql if that's what they want. Also it OSS core so you can self host. It is super feature rich and has most everything in the OSS version as long as you don't need enterprise features like SAML auth, audit log, ...,etc
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  Came here to say this as well. Metabase is the only tool I’ve used where I’ve managed to get non-technical users to actually engage and use to query building tools to answer their own questions.
Aaronstotle 3y ago
If you want a spreasheet interface for business users, Sigma Computing (https://www.sigmacomputing.com/ https://www.sigmacomputing.com/)
tillvz 3y ago
Veezoo (https://www.veezoo.com https://www.veezoo.com) is built to make it as easy as possible for nontechnical users to get answers to their ad-hoc questions. Follows a conversational "ChatGPT-like" approach since already 2016. Info: I'm one of the founders.
- tomschwiha 3y ago
  I dislike about your pricing that it tells me reasonable 29$ and then in the fineprint it says minimum 5 users. I get the reasoning behind your pricing logic, but I really dislike it. Now as solo business owner I'm gone.
  - tillvz 3y ago
    If you have a single data source that you'd like to use you can even use it for free up to 5 users.
mritchie712 3y ago
I'm the founder of Definite (https://www.definite.app/ https://www.definite.app/). We do ETL, modeling, storage and BI in one app ("data-stack-in-a-box"). > has the best UX for nontechnical people to assemble some data If they can use Excel / pivot tables, they can use Definite. They can also just ask in natural language and we generate the report for them. > Salesforce, some mariadb/postgres and (optionally) hubspot as data sources We have pipelines for all of these and can spin up a managed data warehouse to store all the data if you don't already have one. Drop me a note at mike@definite.app if you're interested
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

arthurwu 3y ago

I'm a co-founder of Dataland.io where we're building a powerful dataset viewer + search engine that can work on top of your Postgres or data warehouse. We designed it specifically to provide an excellent UX to business users while reducing BI burden on the data team. We find that most business users often just need to search, filter, and sort instead of looking at charts to make operational decisions. UX-wise, what sets us apart are: - <1s full-text search (even on billions of rows of data), feels like Cmd+F in Google sheets, but faster - Performance: we stream billions of rows into the web browser, seamless scrolling (no paging of 50 records at a tieme) - Rich cells make tables easier to scan/read (enum strings => colored tags, numbers => color-coded based on value => checkboxes, timestamptz => clear date time pills) If that fits what you need, happy to give you a demo. arthur(at)dataland.io Otherwise, I think the simplest BI (if charts are impt) could be something like evidence.dev or Metabase. But I also think it's going to require some curation on your part. Can you reasonably expect business users to navigate the entire schema/table tree across these three sources? That's where I think the bottleneck often lies -- if your BI tool allows engineering to just expose a subset of curated core tables.

robertlagrant 3y ago

The problem is that developing the perfect UI for nontechnical people to assemble reports probably requires a bespoke frontend for your business, and one that likely lags behind the reality of its changes. Most businesses instead opt to just hire semitechnical people that can do a bit of data work and give answers to the report-writers, as they can accommodate business changes over time and understand how to construct new queries out of the overall business' data sources. Maybe that'll change one day with AI, and when it does that will be bought by every big company in the world (-:

davidarenas 3y ago

Honestly Metabase has given best balance between allowing non-technical users to self-service and technical users to dig in and use raw sql if that's what they want. Also it OSS core so you can self host. It is super feature rich and has most everything in the OSS version as long as you don't need enterprise features like SAML auth, audit log, ...,etc

FridgeSeal 3y ago
Came here to say this as well. Metabase is the only tool I’ve used where I’ve managed to get non-technical users to actually engage and use to query building tools to answer their own questions.

Aaronstotle 3y ago

If you want a spreasheet interface for business users, Sigma Computing (https://www.sigmacomputing.com/ https://www.sigmacomputing.com/)

tillvz 3y ago

Veezoo (https://www.veezoo.com https://www.veezoo.com) is built to make it as easy as possible for nontechnical users to get answers to their ad-hoc questions. Follows a conversational "ChatGPT-like" approach since already 2016. Info: I'm one of the founders.

tomschwiha 3y ago
I dislike about your pricing that it tells me reasonable 29$ and then in the fineprint it says minimum 5 users. I get the reasoning behind your pricing logic, but I really dislike it. Now as solo business owner I'm gone.
- tillvz 3y ago
  If you have a single data source that you'd like to use you can even use it for free up to 5 users.

mritchie712 3y ago

I'm the founder of Definite (https://www.definite.app/ https://www.definite.app/). We do ETL, modeling, storage and BI in one app ("data-stack-in-a-box"). > has the best UX for nontechnical people to assemble some data If they can use Excel / pivot tables, they can use Definite. They can also just ask in natural language and we generate the report for them. > Salesforce, some mariadb/postgres and (optionally) hubspot as data sources We have pipelines for all of these and can spin up a managed data warehouse to store all the data if you don't already have one. Drop me a note at mike@definite.app if you're interested

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]