Introducing embedded visualizations on the canvas and live Flow editing

Automating your most manual spreadsheet, email, and PDF processes in Parabola just got a lot more powerful.

We’re excited to share three related updates that will enhance the way Parabola users build and interact with Flows: 

1. Visualizations on the Canvas: Parabola is all about connecting the substance of a report to the underlying logic so that anyone can understand how and why data was combined and transformed. With this update, users will be able to drop dynamic visualizations (like charts, graphs, and tables) directly on the canvas so they can see reports update in real-time as they build. 
2. Dynamic dashboarding capabilities: With this update, we’ve doubled-down on providing operators with a dashboarding suite that makes it easy to create BI-quality dashboards with spreadsheet-level knowledge. The visualizations you build on the canvas stay connected to the visualizations on your dashboard, so you can share a high level view and still jump into the detailed logic when needed. ‍
3. Live editing & powerful drafts: Editors can now edit Flows in real-time without needing to create drafts for every change — they can just edit the live version of their Flows, and updates will automatically save. Drafts are optional, but more powerful than ever: Dashboard views can now be safely edited from a draft, too.

The TL;DR

This update introduces: 

• A new 📊 Visualize step used to display data as charts, styled tables, and key metrics directly on the canvas. Tables are now just for data storage.
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  • Note: Expect to see Visualize steps automatically added to your Flows. Learn more here.
• You can now edit live Flows directly, and drafts are even more powerful with their own dashboards

A new way to build 

Existing Parabola users will feel an immediate difference in the way they interact with Flows. 

By adding visualizations to the canvas — and allowing live editing — users can build and receive feedback quickly and with more visibility than ever.

And new Parabola users should also get to their ‘aha’ moment before they even run their first Flow: While seeing the output of a Flow tends to be clarifying for a builder, having the chance to actually visualize the data while building should shorten time to launch by making the Flow’s end results clearer along the way.  

Fundamentally, we are excited to see how this release will decrease the learning curve for operators graduating from Spreadsheet Land to the world of automation. We know it's important for your processes that nothing gets trapped in a black box while building and that there’s as much transparency as possible.

These new updates give teams visibility into how their data moves, step-by-step.

Designed to cut through bad data

Whether you work in supply chain, finance, or any function in between, the data you work with day-to-day is likely complex and rarely clean or in the correct format. This makes the process of becoming acquainted with your data and exploring its edge cases half the battle. This reality creates a painful feedback loop: build workflow → create dashboard or report → identify edge cases → update workflow → repeat. 

By speeding up the feedback loop in Parabola, the process is now even closer to: build workflow and identify edge cases → create dashboard or report.

Speeding up the feedback loop 

The new Flow experience is a big win for all use cases built with a ‘guess and check’ approach. These types of use cases often require a constant feedback loop to ensure accuracy and data quality as you build. 

Instead of building and running an entire Flow just to then discover issues with the resulting dashboard, having visualizations directly on the canvas means you can watch your charts and graphs evolve in real-time as you update your workflow. 

We just saw this play out with a customer building a spend categorization dashboard: This customer was pulling in an internal expense report and building a bar chart to visualize spend across categories. By adding a visualization to the canvas while building, they noticed their X-axis included both “SG&A” and “Selling, General, and Administrative” — so they quickly applied a “Find and replace” step and immediately corrected that dashboard. 

Seeing the updates in action

To celebrate this announcement, we're doing something we've never done before – sharing exclusive access to an ops sandbox. 

Check out this collection of free demo Flows to see how companies like Brooklinen and Caraway run parcel invoice audits, inventory reconciliations, and order consolidations in Parabola. 

Let us know what you think, and happy building!