Skip to main content
Analytics Chat is Cube’s conversational analytics experience — ask questions in plain language and get trusted, AI-powered insights without writing queries or building visualizations.

How it works

The AI agent interprets your questions, generates queries against your semantic model, and presents findings in natural language. The agent can create multiple queries to answer complex questions and perform ad hoc analysis while maintaining full data governance through your semantic layer.

Key features

  • Natural language queries – Ask questions in plain language without knowing SQL
  • Multi-query reasoning – The AI creates and synthesizes multiple queries for complex questions
  • Python analysis – For work SQL can’t express — forecasting, cohort analysis, statistical tests — the agent can run Python and render the result inline, then save it as a re-runnable workbook report or exploration (in preview)
  • Semantic model integration – All queries run against your semantic model with proper access control and security, honoring the active security context—including an override applied by a developer or admin. You can also ask the agent to run a query under a given security context
  • Voice input – Dictate a question instead of typing it, then edit it before you send
  • Queued messages – Send follow-up messages while the agent is still processing
  • Save your results – Ask the agent to save a result as a report inside a workbook, or as a standalone exploration when you don’t want to create a workbook
  • Organize saved work – Ask the agent to save an exploration into a specific folder, or to list, create, rename, move, or delete folders in your workspace — folder actions run immediately, and deletion destroys less than the Workspace page but checks less too
  • Link saved artifacts – The agent can link an existing exploration, workbook, or dashboard to the conversation, on request or automatically when it creates or edits one, so you can reopen it from the thread later
  • Schedule dashboards – Ask the agent to list, create, change, or delete a published dashboard’s scheduled refreshes, with their data alerts
  • Find past conversations – Reopen earlier chats from History

Discover available fields

You can ask the AI agent what’s available in your semantic model before diving into analysis. This is useful when you’re new to a deployment or exploring an unfamiliar view. Try prompts like:
  • “What fields are available?”
  • “What measures and dimensions can I query in the Orders view?”
  • “Describe the fields in the Customers view and what each one means.”
  • “What does the lifetime_value measure represent?”
The agent uses the descriptions and AI context defined on your views, measures, and dimensions to answer. Well-documented semantic models produce better answers — see AI context best practices for guidance on writing descriptions the agent can use.

Queued messages

You can send follow-up messages while the AI agent is still processing a previous request. These messages are queued and processed in order once the agent completes its current task. This allows you to:
  • Refine your question before the agent finishes, if you realize you want to adjust the scope or add constraints
  • Queue multiple questions to ask a series of related questions without waiting for each response
  • Provide additional context to give the agent more information that it can incorporate into its next response

Voice input

You can dictate a message instead of typing it. Click Dictate in the message input (in the workbook chat sidebar and other side chats, the microphone icon), speak, and finish the recording. The transcript goes into the message input at the cursor, with punctuation and without filler words. Edit it if you need to, then send it. Dictation never sends a message on its own.
Dictation detects the language you speak. The names of views, measures and dimensions in your semantic model, and the names you used earlier in the chat, are spelled the way they appear there. Audio is transcribed by Cube’s AI provider, which does not use it to train models.

Keyboard shortcut

On desktop, use the dictation shortcut, a right-hand modifier key:
  • Hold the key to talk, and let go to finish.
  • Double-tap the key to talk hands-free, then tap it once to finish.
  • Press Esc to cancel a recording, or Enter to finish it. Press Enter again to send the message.
A single tap does nothing, and the shortcut never starts a recording when you use the key as part of another shortcut. The shortcut works while the Cube tab is active. The default key is Right Option (⌥) on macOS and Right Ctrl on Windows and Linux. To change it, go to Preferences → Voice input → Dictation shortcut. You can pick Right Command (⌘) on macOS or Right Alt on Windows and Linux, or turn the shortcut off. The choice is stored in your browser.

Recording limit

A recording can be up to 2 minutes long. The level bars in the message input turn amber after 1 minute and red in the last 15 seconds. At 2 minutes, the recording stops and is transcribed.

When dictation fails

If dictation can’t produce a transcript, the message input says why:

Availability

Voice input is not available in the Google Sheets add-on and the Microsoft Excel add-in. In an embedded chat, an embedded dashboard, or a Creator Mode embed, the host page has to allow the microphone. Voice input is also not available in some regions. If you see neither Dictate nor the microphone icon, check with an admin that voice input is turned on, then contact Cube support.

Turning voice input off

Voice input is on by default. Admins can turn it off for all users in Admin → Settings → Voice input with Allow voice input in Analytics Chat.

History

What History shows depends on where you open it: from inside a workbook, it lists that workbook’s chats plus any chats not tied to a workbook; from a surface with no workbook, like the Semantic Model IDE, it lists every chat you’ve had in the workspace. Conversations from the Google Sheets add-on or the Microsoft Excel add-in don’t appear here — they’re under Chat History in the Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel pane instead.

Sharing

Click Share in the chat header to grant view access to other members of your account. You can pick individual users, a user group, or flip General access to Organization to make the chat visible to everyone. Use the Copy link button next to Share to grab a direct URL once access is set up. Recipients still need to have access to the deployment and the data the agent used; otherwise they’ll see a “Chat not available” page. A user without access to the chat can request access from its link.
Analytics Chat share dialog
Recipients open the chat at the same URL as the owner and can scroll through the full conversation, expand the agent’s reasoning and tool calls, and explore the charts and tables it produced — but they can’t send new messages. Only the owner can continue the thread, and the header shows a “Shared by …” label so viewers always know whose conversation they’re reading. If the owner asks more questions later, those messages — and the agent’s replies — show up for viewers on the next load.

Embedding

Analytics Chat can be embedded into your applications for customer-facing analytics, internal tools, or white-label solutions.

Learn more