Streamlining Embedded Analytics with Dynamic Variables

In 2020, Toucan ventured into embedded analytics, allowing companies to integrate Toucan visualizations directly into their products or portals. After three years of balancing this new use case and our traditional internal communications focus, we decided to concentrate our efforts on embedded analytics. This shift aligns better with our core strengths, offers greater flexibility in integrating with customer tech stacks, and a less saturated market.

Why focus on variables?

Our product repositioning led our product team to analyze the needs of customers and prospects centered on the Embedded Analytics use case.  By focusing on embedded analytics, where we have been most successful, we aim to refine our product to better serve this specific market. We weren't disappointed with the results; every customer we met with identified the same issues and the same needs. One of these issues was the role of variables in personalizing the experience offered by our customers to their audience.

The Importance of Variables

But what is a variable? It's an element that can take on a value dynamically depending on its context. It can be a bit abstract, so let's look at a concrete example:
A first name can be a variable linked to a user. When designing the Toucan application, Michel could ensure that users see "Hello <First name>". In this case, if the user arriving on a Toucan application is called John, then he will see "Hello John", and if his name is Kaylen, he will see "Hello Kaylen".

We have identified several key needs among our customers:

• In-depth personalization and contextualization of end-user experiences.
• Increased autonomy for application designers using Toucan.
• Minimal maintenance to effectively serve diverse customers.

• Display relevant data based on the user.
• Contextualize graphs according to workspace filter values.
• Make layouts and graphs available in multiple languages.

In the example above, we talked about a variable linked to a user. But there is a wide range of variables available. In addition to this, variables can be used in a large number of areas: connecting to a database, preparing data, customizing a display, displaying an app, etc. After meeting with a large number of users to fully understand their use of variables, our team focused on the functional and technical mapping of variables within our product.

Solving the Key Challenges

Through feedback and analysis, we identified three major challenges in using variables:

1. Variable Enumeration: Application designers lacked a central place to consult all available variables.
2. Variable Syntax: The complexity of our product included three different syntaxes for variables, causing confusion, particularly among non-technical application designers.
3. Blind design: In an embedded context, variable values are provided in the user's identification token, making it difficult for application designers to visualize or test their embeds from the user's perspective.
   
   

Our solution

To address these issues, we focused our MVP on three main areas:

• Variable Management Hub: Each application now features a central hub where all variables are categorized. We introduced a new type of variable to unify the objects previously scattered in Toucan.
  • User variables
  • Filter variables
  • External variables
    
    

• Default Values: For user and external variables, designers can now assign default values during the design phase, allowing them to validate their work without waiting for the integration context.
  
  

• Reference to Variables in No Code: We’ve implemented a shortcut ('/') that brings up a drop-down menu listing all available variables in an application. This feature simplifies the process for all designers, regardless of their technical expertise, by promoting a no-code approach to dynamic storytelling.

Conclusion

We are excited to hear all your feedback on this new feature. The Toucan team already has many ideas for improvements and will prioritize them based on any input you share. Our goal is to expand the areas of our product where this simplified syntax is available, allowing you to design layouts faster, more efficiently and with greater confidence in their integration into your software. Share your thoughts here.