Build charts and reports with Halo AI

Describe a chart or a report and Halo AI drafts it for you to save, then get help with formulas, SQL and field descriptions.

Halo AI can draft a chart or a whole report from a sentence, write a formula or a query, and describe a dataset's fields. Each comes back as a proposal: nothing changes until you press a button. The one exception is Generate with Halo and Rebuild with Halo on the Reports page, which leave you a draft to check. Halo AI never publishes anything.

Build a chart

Open the Halo AI panel with Ask Halo or ⌘J, and describe the chart: the measure, how to break it down, and the period.

Show revenue by channel by month for the last 12 months, as a stacked area.

Halo AI picks a dataset you can read, builds the chart, and runs its query as you. The chart in the answer is live.

A chart like this one comes back live in the answer. Hover for values, or press the legend.

From there:

  1. Check it. Show the rows shows the numbers behind it.

  2. Ask for changes in the same conversation: "Make it a line" or "Only the North region".

  3. Keep it:

    • Save to charts saves it as it is, in the dataset's workspace, or in the first workspace you can edit. Halo offers to open it.

    • Open in the chart editor starts a new chart with the same fields and filters, ready to adjust and save yourself. See Exploring charts and chart types.

Saving needs a role that can create content. Viewers can ask for charts and read them, but the save button doesn't show.

Draft a report

Ask for a report by its purpose. Say who it's for and what they care about.

Draft a monthly report for the board: revenue against last year, the top regions, and which channel grew most.

Halo AI writes a plan, which appears as a card in the answer: the report's title, its pages and their charts, and the text it wrote, so nothing lands in a report unread.

  1. Read the card, and ask for changes in the conversation.

  2. Press Create report. Halo creates the report in a workspace you can edit and opens it in the report editor.

  3. Adjust it like any other report. It's a draft, and readers see nothing until you publish it.

A report plan usually takes 2,000 to 8,000 credits on Sonnet, against a few hundred for a chat answer. See AI credits and limits.

Or from the Reports page

On the Reports page, Generate with Halo writes a whole report in the background. Say what it should cover under "What should it cover?", pick a Workspace, and choose Generate. You can leave: Follow it opens its job, "Generate a report with Halo", and you get a draft to check when it's done. It can take up to 40 steps, so it's among the most expensive things Halo AI does.

Or from a report in another tool

Rebuild with Halo, on the Reports page, rebuilds a report from a PDF or screenshots of another tool, so you don't start from nothing when you move to Halo.

  1. Upload the PDF or screenshots, in reading order: up to 20 files and 20 MB in all, and 5 MB for any one image.

  2. Pick up to 10 Datasets to use, and where the draft goes. Under Anything it should know? you can add a note, such as what a metric is called here.

  3. Choose Rebuild. You can leave the page: Halo tells you when the draft is ready, and the job's page links to it.

The draft has the old report's pages, charts and scorecards, reading your datasets. Numbers in the old file are never copied: charts and any figure in the text read your data, with each reader's row policies.

Nothing publishes on its own. Check the last page, To check, which lists what Halo AI couldn't match to your datasets and asks what each should be. Charts keep the period the old report showed, as fixed dates, so you can compare the numbers with it. If the report repeats, change them to a rolling period such as last month.

A report costs credits like anything else Halo AI writes: about 1,300 on average across our test reports, more for long ones. An Admin can turn Rebuild reports off in Halo AI settings to save them.

Propose a goal

Ask Halo AI to set a goal, such as "a goal of 5% up on last year for revenue". It proposes one, with Review the goal, which opens the goal form filled in. Nothing is saved until you choose Create goal. It takes a target you give it and doesn't invent one: if you name no numbers, you fill in the values on the form. You need edit access to the dataset.

In the report editor

While a report is open for editing, Ask Halo or ⌘J opens the Halo AI panel at the far right, as on every page, so Settings stays open beside it.

  • Generate with Halo…, in the Add menu, drafts a chart or a whole page from what you say you want to show. An empty page offers the same, under "Or generate it with Halo".

  • Add to the report, on a chart in an answer, places it on the page.

  • Change it in words. Ask for a change to the report or to a chart in it. Halo AI's answer is a proposed change: choose Review the change, then Changes to see what it would do, and Apply or Discard.

If others are editing with you, they see Halo AI in the row of people as "Halo AI, for" your name, and you see "Halo AI, for you", with what it's doing: Thinking, Reading the data, Writing, Waiting for you to review or Made a change. They never see what you asked. Versions it helped with list "Halo AI (for" your name")" among who contributed. A chart's editor shows it the same way.

Write a formula

In the editor for a calculated field, press Write with Halo above the formula box.

  1. Say what the field should compute under "What should the field compute?", such as "average revenue per customer".

  2. Press Write it. Halo AI writes a formula from your dataset's fields, and Halo checks it. If it fails the check, Halo AI repairs it.

  3. Read the formula and its explanation. If it still doesn't check, Halo says "It still has problems" and lists them.

  4. Press Use it to put it in the field, or Try again.

If a formula is already in the box, Halo AI starts from it, along with any errors it shows. So you can also use Write with Halo to change or fix one. Formulas don't need the Write custom SQL permission.

Write or fix SQL

The SQL editor has the same button, and its name says what it'll do: Write with Halo for an empty editor, Change with Halo for a query, and Fix with Halo when the query has errors.

Say what the query should return under "What should the query return?", then press Write it. Halo AI writes from the connection's tables and columns. Check the query before you press Use it: you're the one who runs it. Custom SQL needs the Write custom SQL permission. See Build a dataset.

Describe with Halo

Descriptions help everyone who picks a field, and they help Halo AI too.

  • On a dataset's Fields tab, Describe with Halo proposes descriptions for every visible field that has none. Pick the ones you want, and the button says how many it'll use, such as Use 4.

  • In one field's details, Describe with Halo proposes a description for that field. Press Use it.

Descriptions go into your draft of the dataset. Save the dataset to keep them. See Fields.

Get better drafts

  • Name the measure, the breakdown and the period. Halo AI asks less and guesses less.

  • Give fields clear labels and descriptions. Halo AI reads them to choose fields.

  • Hide fields people shouldn't use. Halo AI can't see hidden fields, as What Halo AI can see explains.

  • Have an Admin add your terms to What Halo AI should know in Settings, Halo AI.

  • Ask follow-ups in the same conversation. Halo AI remembers what it built.