We are super excited to announce the general availability of the latest new version  of Zoho Analytics today! The release brings in 100+ updates that you will find quite powerful and useful. Whether you are a business user, a data analyst, a data engineer, a data scientist, a BI developer, or a data expert, there's something for everyone.

Let's go through the release in detail.

Powerful Data Management Hub‍

To enable our users have a strong data management foundation, we have deepened the data integration and management functions in Zoho Analytics 6.0.

• To make complex data workflows easy, we now have a Visual Data Pipeline Builder, which will help you build the whole data pipeline, through a drag-and-drop interface.
• We now have added 25+ new Data Connectors in this release. Like Databricks, Dremio, Yellowbrick, Neo4j, Oracle Netsuite, Qualtrics, Expensify, Monday.com, Pipedrive etc.
• We now support Streaming Data Analytics, for analyzing data from IoT sensors and applications that are funneled through Google Pub/Sub, Kafka, PubNub and other processors.
• We are now introducing a Live-sync option for Zoho CRM data with Zoho Analytics, providing real-time sales insights.
• With the Unified Metrics Layer, you can create & manage all business metrics in a single place, ensuring consistency, reliability, reusability, and access control. Metrics can be used to create reports and dashboards, or consumed independently through API.

Insightful Visual Analytics‍

Visualizing data and visual analysis is an core part of Zoho Analytics, and 6.0 brings in quite a few enhancements.

• The release adds more options to the already existing variety of visualization tools. New chart types like Sankey, Sunburst, Treemap, Racing etc., and visualization options within pivot table cells like Sparklines, Databars, and Waterfall.
• Map chart now supports multiple layers. With the same map, you can lay multiple metric layers, making data analysis easy.
• Whenever you create a new report, you can get other appropriate chart types suggested by Zia Suggestions.
• Zoho Analytics now has a new Dashboard Designer. And more new cool looking Dashboard Themes.

Gen-AI Infused Analytics‍

We are infusing AI across the service to accelerate the adoption of analytics by business users.

• Getting descriptive insights with AI's help is now passé. Zoho Analytics has gone one step further and now provides Diagnostic Insights for you to know 'Why' something happened, and take smart decisions.
• Ask Zia is now available within Microsoft Teams. You can converse with the Microsoft Teams bot, and get insights from Zoho Analytics as an answer, without leaving Teams.
• Zia Insights now provides Visual Narratives too (previously, it was only textual narratives).
• Ask Zia is now multi-lingual, and you can now converse with Zia in English, Spanish, and French.

Predictive AI‍

New prebuilt AI models for anomaly detection, forecasting and clustering are being introduced to further power up advanced analytics.

• Data points deviating substantially from the normal can be identified as anomalies and marked.
• You can now set alerts (send email, pop-up a notification alert, post to Microsoft Teams and Slack) to be sent whenever an anomaly occurs.
• Zoho Analytics now supports cluster analysis. You can visualize your data grouped into clusters using a variety of ML models (k-mean, k-mode, and k-prototype).
• Zoho Analytics now supports multi-variate forecasting. With this you will be able to set multiple influencing (dependent) factors to be considered to arrive at the best forecast of a business metric.

Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio‍

Build custom machine learning models for your specific analytical requirements with DSML studio.

• You can now build custom machine learning models (for prediction, and clustering) with AutoML our No-code assistant.
• You can also develop custom models and data transformations using Python code studio. Build them from scratch or import them from other sources.

Platform Extensibility‍

Zoho Analytics is not just an analytics app or tool, but a complete platform. Meaning, you can extend it to solve your specific analytical requirements easily.

• Set up Workflows to trigger actions contextually from alerts and data pipelines. Use seamless integration with 'Zoho Flow' to configure workflows, or invoke URLs/webhooks to trigger actions.
• You can now build Custom Data Connectors to niche business apps. If you are a developer or partner you can list the connector on Zoho Marketplace and monetize them.
• Enterprises typically use multiple BI/Analytics apps. Zoho Analytics now provides a BI Fabric layer and brings it all together, making it easy for you to look at insights from Tableau, Power BI, and Zoho Analytics, all from a single dashboard or portal.
• Zoho Analytics now provides a JavaScript Client SDK. Extend and customize the user experience of the embedded reports to your needs.

That's not all, as Zoho Analytics 6.0 packs in lots more enhancements. Want to find out more about the 6.0 release? Join our experts and learn everything about Zoho Analytics 6.0 through a series of interactive webinars. Register now!