Introduction to Parabola
You probably already know what you want to automate. But getting it done can be a different story—especially if you don’t have the time, resources, or technical background to do it.
Enter Parabola: the workflow builder that makes it easy to organize and transform messy data from anywhere—even PDFs, emails, and spreadsheets—so you can automate the work you thought would always be manual.
Teams at fast-moving companies like Brooklinen, On Running, and Flexport use Parabola to save hundreds of hours and finally take on the projects that used to feel out of reach. Whether it’s reconciling inventory across multiple 3PLs, auditing invoices, or manually exporting the same report every Monday, Parabola gives teams the power to automate it—all without needing engineering support.
How do I use Parabola?
To use Parabola, just describe what you want to build in plain language. Parabola will figure out the steps you need to create that automation and guide you through the process.
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As you build, Parabola will guide you through four types of steps:
- Ingest messy data from anywhere—including PDFs, emails, systems, and spreadsheets
- Clean, standardize, and transform your data
- Action on your data—which could include steps that enable you to create a dashboard, update a Google Sheet, or send a Slack message (just to name a few)
- Document your workflow with detailed process notes
Not sure where to start? After signing up, simply type what you’d like to build into the sidebar. If you prefer a more guided experience, check out Parabola University or our Template library.
Who should use Parabola?
In short: anyone who has ever worked with data and thought, “there has to be a better way.”
The only thing you need to use Parabola is the ability to describe in plain language what you’re trying to automate. Our most successful customers come from the world of spreadsheets, emails, and PDFs with no background in computer science, data analytics, or BI tools.
Check out our case studies to learn how operators are building magical automations for their teams.
What's possible in Parabola?
Operators have deployed tens of thousands of distinct use cases in Parabola. While every workflow is unique, most follow a few common patterns:
- They start with unstructured data from siloed sources like emails, spreadsheets, PDFs, or systems like Shopify and Google Sheets
- The data needs to be cleaned, combined, and transformed
- The processes are recurring—running daily, weekly, or whenever new data comes in (like an email or upload)
- They require collaboration across teams and partners, so the data must move seamlessly across internal and external systems
- The processes evolve frequently as new partners, data sources, and requirements come into play
- The details are highly bespoke—making it hard or impossible to solve with off-the-shelf software
What does this look like in practice? Think about use cases like…
- Reconciling inventory across siloed systems
- Digitizing and auditing freight invoice PDFs
- Extracting information from an email and pushing it to a database
- Recurring reporting processes
Want to explore more?
Check out our use case library to browse templates and real-world examples.
What AI features exist in Parabola?
At its core, building in Parabola is like chatting with a teammate who is an expert on Parabola. That teammate just so happens to be an AI model trained on all of Parabola’s documentation, Templates, best practices, and pre-configured steps—and can also take action by adding steps and troubleshooting errors in your Flow.
AI is also injected into the way that Parabola ingests and transforms messy data:
- Extract important information: Whenever you’re pulling messy data into Parabola—think emails, funky Excel files, and PDFs—Parabola uses AI to add structure to that data as it’s pulled in. All you need to do is specify how you’d like your data to ultimately be structured.
- Clean and transform data: Parabola also offers powerful steps that allow you to do things like categorize and standardize your data with AI—similar to running your data through ChatGPT at scale. You can also use AI to build your own data transformation steps based on plain language instructions—giving you the ability to deploy wildly complex functions by just writing out what you’d like to accomplish.
To see concrete examples of AI use cases in Parabola, check out this blog post.