Glossary

Code: HTML and CSS you write, with Halo’s code in double braces for values, lists and helpers: in a website’s Code blocks, pages and header, and in Code charts and elements. Nothing in it runs.
Partial: A piece of a website’s code that any of its code includes with {{> name}}, so it’s written once.
Organization: Your company’s space in Halo: its members, workspaces, connections and content. Nothing in one organization is visible to another.
Workspace: A place inside your organization for a team or a topic. Workspaces hold folders, and folders hold reports, charts and datasets.
Connection: How Halo reaches a database or warehouse: its address and a read-only login, kept encrypted. Uploaded files are a connection too.
Discovery: Halo reading a connection’s tables, columns and keys, profiling the values, and suggesting what each column means.
Catalog: A connection’s tables and columns, as discovery found them, with what each one means.
Dataset: The tables a chart reads, joined and named for people: dimensions to group by, measures to add up, and calculated fields.
Dimension: A field you group or filter by, such as region, channel or month. Charts put dimensions on an axis or in a legend.
Measure: A field Halo adds up, counts or averages, such as revenue or orders. A chart’s numbers are measures.
Calculated field: A field written as a formula over other fields, such as revenue per order. It works like any other field in charts and filters.
Formula: Halo’s small language for calculated fields: fields in [brackets], functions like SUM and IF, and operators. It runs in your database.
Time grain: How finely a date is grouped: day, week, month, quarter or year. Changing the grain regroups the same data.
Extract: A copy of a dataset’s rows that Halo keeps and refreshes on a schedule, so reports don’t wait on the source. Without one, charts run live queries.
Live query: A query Halo sends to your database as someone opens or filters a report. It’s the default; results are cached for a while.
Row policy: A rule on a dataset that limits which rows each person sees, for example only their own region. It applies everywhere the dataset is used.
Chart: A saved question over one dataset, drawn as a line, bar, table, scorecard or one of the other types. Reports place charts.
Report: Pages of charts, text, images and filters, laid out for reading on screen or on paper. A dashboard is a report too.
Filter: A control that narrows what a report or chart shows, such as a date range or a list of regions.
Parameter: A value a report’s reader picks, such as a target or a currency, that formulas and filters can use as @name.
Live value: A number or name in a report’s text, worked out from your data each time the report is read.
Goal: A named target for a measure, by period, that charts and reports can compare with. A target is the number it holds for one period.
Reader: Anyone reading a report, whatever their role, signed in or not. Viewer is only the name of a role.
Draft: The version of a report you’re editing. Readers see the published version until you publish again.
Edition: A report frozen for one period, such as March 2026, with a permanent link and a place in the report’s archive.
Snapshot: The answers to a published report’s queries, kept by Halo so public links and embeds open fast without reaching your database.
Public link: A link anyone can open without signing in. It shows the published version of one report and can expire.
Embed: A report or chart placed in another website, with an iframe or the <halo-report> element. Signed embeds also say who’s reading.
Signed embed: An embed whose token your server signs, carrying locked filters and the reader’s attributes for row policies. It expires quickly.
Role: What a member can do in the organization: Owner, Admin, Builder, Analyst, Viewer or External guest, or a custom role. A member can also hold a role in one product, such as Editor in Halo CMS, which says what they do there only.
Release: One publish of a website, frozen as it was. Readers get the live one, and you can go back to a recent one in a minute.
Collection: A kind of content on a website, such as places or events, with its own fields. You write each entry once, and blocks can list them anywhere.
Group: A set of members you share with at once, such as Marketing. Row policies can also compare a field with the names of a person’s groups.
User attribute: A value about a member, such as their regions, that row policies use to choose their rows.
Marketplace data: Datasets Halo maintains and shares with organizations through the Marketplace. You use them like your own, read-only.
Package: A bundle of Marketplace data, charts and templates that members browse and request in the Marketplace.
Halo AI: Halo’s own AI, which answers questions, drafts charts and reports, and explains changes. It runs on Claude, Anthropic’s AI model.
Ask Halo: Asking about your data in plain English, in the Halo AI panel, in Halo Data and on shared reports.
AI credits: How Halo AI’s use is counted: each answer costs credits by the model and the work it did. Plans include a monthly amount.
Insight: A change in a measure you’re watching, flagged by a check and explained by Halo AI.
Data alert: A number one person follows, which tells them when it crosses a line or moves by a percentage. It reads as them, and only they see it.
Halo MCP server: Lets members' own AI tools read datasets, charts, reports and goals as them, with their permissions. An admin turns it on.
Job: Work Halo does in the background, such as discovery, an extract refresh, an export or an email delivery. The job center shows each one.
Trash: Where deleted things wait for 30 days, ready to restore, before Halo removes them: reports, charts, datasets, connections, folders and workspaces, goals, images, websites and what’s in them, and listings and businesses.
Listing: A place, something to do or buy, or something with a date, in your Halo CRM directory. It stays a draft until someone publishes it.
Proposal: A change from outside your team, waiting in the Inbox with where it came from, until someone says yes or no.
Extranet: Where the businesses in your directory look after their own records and see how they’re doing. Their people sign in with an emailed link and aren’t Halo users.
Member: Someone in your organization, with a role that says what they can do. Members sign in to Halo; the contacts in your directory don’t.
Product: One of what your organization has from Halo: Halo Data for data and reports, Halo CMS for websites and Halo CRM for your directory. One sign-in opens them all.
Website: What you build in Halo CMS: pages and collections, published as releases at your Halo address or your own domain.
Business: Who you deal with in your Halo CRM directory. A business has contacts, its listings and perhaps a plan, and can look after its own record on the extranet.
Contact: A person at a business in your directory, with what they handle and whether they agreed to hear from you. Contacts aren’t members.
Source: Where your directory hears facts from automatically, such as a calendar, a spreadsheet or a website. What a source finds waits in the Inbox.
Feed: What sends your published listings to a website’s collection, as drafts that reach readers at the website’s next publish. Halo CRM keeps what it writes, so you change those fields in the directory.