How to build R Shiny apps that update themselves

The R ecosystem is a really good place right now. In particular, the infrastructure in R that allows people to interact with data through Shiny apps offers incredible potential to reduce the workload of a data analyst.

It is now possible to build Shiny apps that can update themselves on a regular basis, pulling in refreshed data so that people are always looking at the most up to date analysis. So with one up front development sprint, an analyst can reduce their ongoing analytic workload on a particular topic by close to 100%.