How Does Columns Work?

Columns operates by combining AI capabilities with a user-friendly interface to simplify the entire data storytelling process. It’s designed to make complex data understandable and actionable for anyone, regardless of their technical background.

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Data Integration and Connection

The first step is bringing your data into the platform. Columns supports live connections to a broad range of data sources, ensuring your visualizations are always up-to-date.

• Diverse Sources: You can connect to popular platforms like Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, and various SQL databases. It also handles direct file uploads like CSV and TSV.
• Live Connection: Once connected, you can save these as reusable and shareable data sources. This means your charts and dashboards will automatically update as the source data changes, providing real-time insights without manual intervention.
• API Access: For more advanced users, Columns allows pulling data seamlessly from any app, tool, or website via HTTP API.

AI-Powered Data Transformation and Analysis

This is where Columns really shines, transforming raw data into meaningful insights using artificial intelligence.

• AI Chat: You can ask questions about your data in plain language, and the AI will generate answers, often in the form of visualizations. This natural language interaction makes data exploration incredibly intuitive, even for those new to data analysis. For example, you can ask “What was our best-performing campaign last month?” and get an instant visual response.
• Automated Insights: The platform uses AI algorithms to automatically detect patterns, trends, and outliers in your datasets, suggesting valuable insights you might not have found manually.
• Data Transformation: Columns effortlessly transforms your data into compelling visual narratives. It can help with things like cleaning data, categorizing text, and even translating columns.

Visual Storytelling and Design

Beyond just generating charts, Columns focuses on creating engaging and professional data stories.

• Canva-like Tools: The design interface is intuitive, similar to tools like Canva, allowing you to build stunning content. You can customize every visual element, from colors and shapes to annotations.
• Chart Variety: Columns supports a wide range of chart types, including bar, line, pie, scatter, map, table, gauge, and word cloud.
• AI-Produced Content: The AI can even help by generating titles and summaries for your reports, saving you time and ensuring clarity.
• Story Decks: You can create narrative sequences by combining multiple charts with explanatory text and transitions, similar to a presentation. This is super useful for walking stakeholders through a set of data-driven recommendations.

Sharing and Collaboration

Once you’ve crafted your data story, sharing it is easy and controlled.

• Embed and Export: You can easily integrate visualizations anywhere using iframe code, or export them as PNG, SVG, or CSV files.
• Shareable Links: Generate unique links for each graph or presentation deck.
• Collaboration Features: Columns allows real-time collaboration on projects. Multiple users can work together simultaneously, with changes reflected instantly. It even integrates with tools like Slack for seamless sharing and feedback.
• Access Control: You can control who sees your work and how they interact with it, including domain whitelisting for embeds.

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