synthBI

Guides

Short, practical walkthroughs for everything Synth-BI does.

Build your first dashboard

  1. On the home page, drop a CSV, JSON, or Excel file (or click Choose a file).
  2. Click Add your first tile. In the Data tab, pick what to Group by and a Measure, like Sum of Revenue. Date columns can be grouped by year, quarter, month, or day.
  3. Optionally Split by a second column to get one series per value, or add a Filter. The SQL for your picks is always shown underneath.
  4. Open the Visual tab to choose a chart type, then Format for colors and titles. The preview updates as you go.
  5. Click Add to dashboard. Drag tiles by their title bar; resize them from the right edge, bottom edge, or corner.

Prefer SQL? Switch the Data tab to SQL. Tiles are read-only queries (SELECT or WITH), so a tile can never change your data.

Import Excel workbooks

Upload an .xlsx file directly. Every sheet with data becomes its own table: a one-sheet workbook is named after the file, and multi-sheet workbooks use the sheet names. Empty sheets are skipped.

  • Formulas: Synth-BI reads each cell's calculated value, the same thing you'd get copying and pasting values.
  • Dates: stored as yyyy-mm-dd, so they sort correctly and can be grouped by month or year.
  • Headers: the first non-empty row is the header row. Spaces in column names become underscores so they work in SQL.

Several related sheets (say Orders and Customers)? Open the Relationships tab to confirm how they join, and the AI assistant will use those joins.

Use the AI assistant

Sign in (it's free) to turn on the assistant in the panel beside your dashboard. It has two modes:

Ask

Ask about your data ("which region sold the most last quarter?") or how to do something ("how do I make a stacked chart?"). For data questions it writes a query that runs in your browser and shows the result under its answer. The assistant never sees the result. Click Make a tile to turn any query into a chart.

Build

Describe what you want: "revenue by month as a smooth line, split by region, in blue". The draft opens in the tile editor as a preview, where you can change anything before adding it. You can also ask it to change an existing tile ("make the treemap a doughnut on a dark background") or add a title text box.

The assistant only ever sees your column names and types, never your rows.

Colors, text, and layout

  • Colors: open a tile's Format tab (or the tile menu → Colors & format). Pick a palette, then click any series or slice to give it its own color. Charts default to Synth green.
  • Chart options: data labels, legend, gridlines, smooth lines, and number formats (currency, percent, compact) are in the same tab.
  • Tile look: title, subtitle, title size and alignment, background color, and an outline.
  • Text boxes: click Text in the dashboard header. Double-click a box to type; lines starting with # become headings and - become bullets.
  • Canvas: Style sets the background, free placement (tiles stay where you drop them, like a slide) vs. snap-up, spacing, and corner style.

Export to Power BI

  1. Click Export in the dashboard header, keep Power BI checked, and download the .zip.
  2. In Power BI Desktop: Home → Get Data → Excel workbook, then pick one of the .xlsx files.
  3. In the Navigator, tick the Table (not the sheet) and click Load. Numbers and dates arrive already typed.
  4. Repeat for each table, relate them in Model view if needed, and rebuild each visual using tiles.txt, which lists every tile's chart type, fields, and SQL.

Export to Tableau

  1. Click Export, keep Tableau checked, and download the .zip. Unzip it.
  2. Keep each .tds file in the same folder as its .xlsx.
  3. Double-click a .tds. Tableau opens connected to the data, with friendly field names, types, and measures vs. dimensions already set. If it asks where the file is, point it at the matching .xlsx.
  4. Rebuild each visual on a worksheet using tiles.txt, and use dashboard.png as your layout reference.

Save and reopen dashboards

Signed in, click Save to cloud in the dashboard toolbar. After the first save, tile, color, and layout changes save automatically; adding, renaming, or deleting a table asks you to save again. Saved dashboards appear under Your dashboards on the home page, with a preview, and reopen with their tables, tiles, relationships, and assistant conversation. Click the dashboard's name in the toolbar to rename it.