Iterations

Once your data app is in production, you ask your Crew for what you need, and it keeps improving your data apps. Each change to a data app follows the same loop: you make a request, you review a preview, and your Toucan expert validates the release before it goes live.

Make a requestCopy Anchor Link

A request is how you talk to your Crew, and it covers more than your data apps. You can ask for:

• A change or an improvement to one of your data apps.
• An analysis of your data.
• Your users: add someone, remove someone, or change what a user sees.
• Your metrics: change the definition of a metric, a calculation method or a business rule.

During the first month, you make your requests to your Toucan expert, who passes them on to the Crew. Then the Requests page appears in Toucan AI, and there are two ways to ask, both in Toucan AI:

• From the Requests page. Select New request, give it a title, and describe what you need, who it is for, and by when. You can set a priority and attach up to five files.
• From the data app itself. To change a screen, open it and select Comment or Annotate: point at the element, or draw on the screen, and say what should change. Your comment is sent as a request, with a capture of the screen. On some data apps, Annotate is not available: use Comment to comment on the whole page.

Ask in business terms: what you want to see or decide, who it is for, and which data it concerns. You do not need to say how to build it. A good request states the outcome. For example, "Regional managers need to compare this quarter's results with the previous one before the Monday meeting" is easier to deliver well than "add a second chart".

Your Crew's project management agent follows your request and keeps you posted, while the other agents do the work on your real data.

Follow your requestsCopy Anchor Link

The Requests page has two tabs:

• To handle lists what waits for you: a question from your Crew to answer with Reply, or work to review with Accept or Reject.
• All Requests shows every request in five columns: To do, In progress, Blocked (your Crew needs an answer from you), To Review and Done.

Open a request to read its detail and to exchange comments with your Crew.

Review the previewCopy Anchor Link

When you create a request from the Requests page, tick Needs validation if you want to sign the work off yourself. When the work is ready, your Crew moves the request to To Review and waits for your answer. Requests sent with Comment or Annotate do not ask for your validation.

• The preview is a draft version of your data app. Your end users do not see it. Open the data app and switch from Published to Draft to see it. Use View as to see it as one of your users would.
• Accept signs the change off. Reject sends the request back to To do, with a comment that says what is missing or what to change.

Pilots, the people in your organization who steer the Crew, make requests, review them and accept them. Explorers, your end users, only see the published data app: they do not see requests or drafts.

PublishCopy Anchor Link

Once you have approved the preview, your Toucan expert validates the release, and only then is it published to your users. A preview usually comes the same day, and the release usually goes live the next business morning, after the Crew's overnight checks. If a check finds a wrong number, the release does not go out: the previous version stays live and your Crew tells you why.

What stays under your controlCopy Anchor Link

• Nothing new reaches your users without your Toucan expert's validation, and without your approval when you asked for it.
• Every version of the data app is kept, and your Crew can put an earlier one back.