
Plotly
January 23, 2025
Dash Enterprise 5.6 Release: Build Data Apps Smarter With Plotly AI
This year's summer release of Plotly Dash Enterprise was a significant step in our mission to lower the barrier of entry into data application development. As we're about to close the year and move into 2025, this mission only grows stronger, with App Studio, AI-assisted data app and chart generation, and core performance updates allowing users to scale more efficiently.
We at Plotly are excited to announce the latest iteration of our keystone offering, Dash Enterprise 5.6, as well as hefty updates to our open source libraries. These updates are designed to empower data scientists, developers, and enterprises with the AI tools to build scalable, interactive data applications with ease. We discussed these innovations at our recent product launch event.
Read on for a summary of the Dash Enterprise, Plotly, and Dash releases, as well as highlights from the launch event.
What’s new in Plotly Dash Enterprise 5.6?
The 5.6 Plotly Dash Enterprise release focuses on giving you AI tools for faster and more efficient data app generation, with major updates to Plotly App Studio. We’ve also made improvements to enable enterprise scalability, enhanced development workflows, and better data visualization.
Dash app administrators can now stop, restart, and park Dash Enterprise instances to optimize resources and reduce costs. Real-time monitoring tools help DevOps teams quickly identify and resolve issues in critical applications. Expanded data connectors provide seamless access to more data sources, eliminating manual exports. Dash Enterprise is also available on AWS Marketplace, enabling customers to manage subscriptions with AWS credits.
Plotly App Studio updates — featuring Plotly AI
Dash Enterprise is packed with AI features our community is most excited for, bundled with Plotly App Studio.
App Studio allows users to transform Python notebook explorations into beautiful, interactive data apps. In the 5.6 release, users can utilize AI, UI, and code modes for chart and app layout generation based on individual comfort levels with writing and understanding Dash code.
The AI chat mode will speed up data app creation for novice users with an AI-powered chat interface, while the data explorer mode will enable chart creation directly within an analysis workflow.
App Studio will also feature additional enhancements: a SQL cell to simplify SQL authoring and execution in App Studio, and a control cell to easily add interactive Dash controls to the data app. Lastly, application embedding will help integrate data apps into host applications.
Plotly and Dash open source libraries updates
Major open-source updates are coming to our open source libraries, Plotly and Dash. The updates include universal dataframe support with Narwhals for faster back-end processing of big data. Enhanced Typed Arrays allow for faster chart rendering without code changes.
Other improvements include support for anywidget, which allows developers to create interactive plugins that can send information to a notebook’s Python kernel and process the kernel’s replies, which in turn allows a Plotly chart to be updated in a separate notebook without having to re-render it.
The release also features updates to the Kaleido package, which allows the creation of static images from interactive charts, ensuring that standard reporting needs are met in cases where static images are better suited, such as presentations and PDFs.
Event highlights: Build data apps smarter with Plotly AI
As promised, here are the highlights of the product launch event where Plotly team members and community folks came together to discuss all the exciting updates to Dash Enterprise and our open source libraries.
App Studio to build stunning data apps with AI
Coming up first, Chris Parmer, Chief Product Officer at Plotly, gave us an insightful demo of App Studio, enhanced with generative AI tools to create beautiful, production-grade data apps on the fly. The new enhancements to the App Studio make building Python-based data apps faster and more intuitive. Watch below:
We got a sneak peek at Plotly AI Chat, which simplifies complex tasks like making advanced data visualizations by generating both charts and preprocessing code based on user prompts. These features, combined with a flexible visual editor for app customization, empower developers to create, refine, and deploy data applications with ease.
Quantitative research at RA Capital Management
We were very lucky to feature Alexander Martinez-Forte, Associate Director, Quantitative Research & Strategy, at RA Capital Management, who shared his perspective on building data apps with Dash. He shared how analyzing data at scale requires more than just having the data and requires interacting with it effectively. Unlike static tools and spreadsheets, Dash enables real-time scenario testing and instant recalculations through interactive web apps, saving time for exploring strategies dynamically.
“A portfolio manager needs to understand how changes in an analyst assumptions around a company might affect our willingness to invest. They ask the analyst to adjust the model and generate new results. The analyst works on it, sends the updated report, and waits for feedback. This back and forth could take hours or even days. Dash removes this inefficiency.”
Alexander Martinez-Forte, Associate Director, Quantitative Research & Strategy, RA Capital Management
Watch a snippet here:
Notes from Plotly product managers
Next up, we heard from our Plotly product managers, who went more in-depth on the AI features and other cost-saving features that make up the Dash Enterprise 5.6 release.
The new AI chat feature in App Studio transforms data app development by integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT to generate high-quality pandas and Plotly code, using your data schema while keeping proprietary data secure. This allows developers to focus on analytics and visualization, dramatically reducing development time compared to traditional methods.
Dash Enterprise 5.6 also introduces a monitoring dashboard that gives administrators full visibility into app and system resource usage, enabling proactive issue resolution and minimizing downtime. Additionally, new VM parking capabilities let admins effortlessly manage cloud costs, reducing operational expenses while streamlining upgrades and resource allocation.
Tons of open-source updates for our community
We also took an in-depth look at the exciting updates to our open-source visualization library and data app framework, Plotly and Dash. Major releases across the board introduce performance improvements, enhanced Python integrations, and cleaned-up legacy features, all while maintaining backward compatibility. Release candidates for Plotly.js and Plotly.py are now available, with more updates to Dash coming soon, supported by detailed migration guides to ensure a smooth transition. Watch here:
We were also incredibly excited to feature two stalwarts of the open-source community, Trevor Manz from anywidget and Marco Gorelli, the author of Narwhals. They took us through updates like universal dataframe support with Narwhals for faster back-end big data processing, and anywidget’s ability to enable seamless interaction between notebooks and Plotly charts without re-rendering.
Stay tuned for more!
We had a great time with our community at the event. We hope you made it, but in case you missed it, watch the full event replay.
Stay tuned for more product updates coming soon!