What's new
in Parabola?

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March 18, 2024

Integration with Microsoft SharePoint & OneDrive

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Brand-new integration, hot off the press: we now support connecting to Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive!

We want all teams to be able to access their data as easily as possible. With these new steps, you can access any XLS and CSV files in SharePoint or OneDrive. Pull your files into a Flow, create new files, or update existing files.

This integration is available to all customers. Please refer to our documentation for more details!

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March 7, 2024

Introducing (really) Smart PDF Parsing with AI

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Our latest release is next-level: it converts even your gnarliest PDFs into usable data, with really simple configuration. 

Now combining two elements of AI—battle-tested OCR and cutting edge multi-modal LLMs—Parabola does all the hard work transcribing and importing your data for you, so there’s no setup required on your end. 

Want to learn more about this new capability? Learn more

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March 6, 2024

We’ve made two big upgrades to our Google Sheets steps

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1. The next time that you authenticate a Google Sheets step, you will see an updated experience. Instead of selecting files from a dropdown, you can use the native Google Drive file selector to find your file by searching or navigating through your Drive.

(Note: you will need to reauthorize existing Google Sheets steps in order to select a new file.)

2. When sending data to Google Sheets, you can now select a folder in which to create the new sheet(s), as opposed to always creating the file in the root of the drive.

We hope these upgrades make connecting to and using Google Sheets within Parabola easier and more delightful!

To take advantage of these changes, be sure to refresh your Flow.

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February 16, 2024

Email CSV Attachment step now supports dynamic content

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By popular demand, our Email a CSV Attachment step now supports dynamic values. Values can be used in any field: the email subject, body, recipients, and even the file name of the attachment. Simply reference the desired column using merge tags {}, and the email will automatically insert the first row from that column. All the details here!

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February 1, 2024

Sequence Flows and share data between them

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You can now connect the Send to Parabola Table step to any other step, and in particular, the Run another Flow step.

By connecting these two steps, a Flow can first send data to a Table and then run other Flows that pull data from that Table. This ensures that connected Flows run in the correct sequence and that data is passed directly between them.

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January 16, 2024

Pull multiple email attachments, and visibility into pending Flow runs

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We’re delighted to announce that you can now process multiple attachments from a single email, using the “Pull from email attachment” step.

Previously, email-triggered Flows would always run with the first valid attachment received. Now, you can configure your Flow to run with each valid attachment received on a single email. So if you expect to receive one email with multiple CSVs, XLS, or PDF files, a single Flow can process them all, sequentially!

Check out all the details here.

We’ve also given you more visibility and control over your “queue” of pending Flow runs. For triggered Flows, you’ll see how many runs are pending, and you can manage how runs are added and executed.

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January 15, 2024

Define custom formats for dates in Tables

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Specify the format of any date column within a Table to improve the accuracy when changing its format.

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January 11, 2024

Access and re-use previous quick filters

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Use the new “Recents” drawer in quick filters to access sets of filters that you have previously applied to tables and charts.

If you find yourself repeatedly filtering the same Flow, you’ll now be able to reapply those filters with one click.

We’ve also made filters easier to manage by adding a “clear” button, allowing you to instantly remove all applied filters.

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December 12, 2023

Calculate NETWORKDAYS with Compare Dates step

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The Compare Dates step can now calculate the difference between dates in terms of weekdays only, akin to the NETWORKDAYS function in spreadsheets. To use, select “weekdays” as your unit of measurement, and compare two dates (either two columns, or one column to current time). Here’s the handy documentation.

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December 11, 2023

Process entire folders of files using FTP

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We’ve released a small but mighty feature to the Pull from FTP step!

The new “Archive file once processed” setting allows this step to cycle through a list of files in a folder, moving them after each one has been processed into a different folder.

Using this setting, you can build Flows that check folders for new files and process them one by one until the folder is empty.

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December 4, 2023

Send data to Snowflake

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We now support sending data to Snowflake!

Snowflake is an essential repository for storing and accessing business data. Paired with our Pull from Snowflake step, Flows can be used to automate and collaborate on critical processes.

Read more in our documentation.

Send to Snowflake is available to customers on our Advanced Plan. Please contact us or schedule a call if you’re interested in them for your team!

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November 16, 2023

Parabola Tables: now with Append, hiding, freezing, and links

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Hot on the tails of our exciting release of visualizations, we’ve added three new features to Parabola Tables to make them more powerful for reporting.

Append and upsert

From the Send to Parabola step, you can now decide whether your data should:

  1. Overwrite on each run (existing functionality)
  2. Append new data to the bottom or top of your Table (new!)
  3. Update existing rows (new!)

This is great for anyone who is continuously adding new or updated data to their Tables, like week-over-week reporting.

Hiding and freezing

When looking at a Table on your published Flow page, you can now hide specific columns. These hidden columns can still be used within filters, sorts, or groupings for even more control over your final Table.

The first column and/or first row can also be frozen in place, so they “stick” while scrolling vertically or horizontally.

Use these to tailor Table views to exactly what you and your teammates want to see.

Automatic links

Any URLs in your Flow descriptions, Table descriptions, or even the cells within Tables will now be clickable.

Internally, we’ve found it incredibly helpful to add documentation links in our descriptions, and to easily access data that lives in another tool.

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October 25, 2023

Introducing visualizations: Transform your workflow data into shareable reports

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It’s a big day in the evolution of Parabola: we’ve added the ability to report on your data, empowering you to show your work more easily with data visualizations.

With visualizations in Parabola, you can:

  • Keep everything in one secure platform – from the logic of your workflows to your reporting, to feel confident in the quality of your data and minimize manual work gathering information across systems and spreadsheets.
  • Share important data with stakeholders through easy to read metrics that contextualize the output of your workflows and elevate your team’s work.
  • Power agile reporting processes to transform ad-hoc analyses – like comparing data week over week – into automated, durable reports.

Take your data processes to the next level by building beautiful, shareable reports to share your work and make better decisions.

Learn more here!

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July 28, 2023

Request edit permissions to a Flow

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Flow collaborators with view permissions can now request edit permissions at any time. Your request will be sent to Flow editors (or team admins, if necessary) for approval, and you’ll be notified via email as soon as your request is granted. The next time you open the Flow, you’ll have edit permissions!

You can initiate an edit request from two places within a Flow:

  1. The “Share” modal
  2. The viewer tool tip (hover over the “eye” icon)
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July 24, 2023

Add descriptions to Tables to give your team more context

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Custom Tables descriptions are now available on every Table, making it easier for Flow editors to provide context and instructions. Add descriptions to let your team know what data they can expect to find in each Table, how to best utilize it, and more.

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July 7, 2023

"Star" Flows for quick access

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Introducing Starred Flows! 🌟 Star any Flow that you want to favorite or bookmark, and access them from the designated "Starred" sidebar (right beneath "Home"). Star Flows for quick access, like Flows that you're actively working on, or ones that you check regularly.

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June 20, 2023

Trigger Flows and pull in data from emails without attachments

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We’re excited to release a small but powerful change to how Parabola interacts with emails. Flows can now be configured to accept emails without attachments. Great for using a Flow to parse the body of an email, or for email triggered runs that are more flexible.

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June 8, 2023

Introducing: Standardize with AI

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We’ve added a new member to the Parabola AI family!

Introducing: Standardize with AI.

Use the Standardize step to clean up messy, error-prone data. This step uses examples that you provide to either rename columns, or standardize a column of values.

For example:

  • Clean a table where the names of columns are not always consistent, such as packing lists from multiple vendors. Convert columns with names like “Product ID,” “sku,” and “Style” into “SKU”
  • Take a list of clothing items with inconsistent size names and standardize those names. Convert sizes with names like “Med,” “M,” and “mdium” into “Medium”
  • Correct words that are misspelled, contain errant spaces, or have undesirable casing.

We hope you leverage this step and our other AI steps (categorize, extract, and experiment) to automate even more and build better Flows.

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June 2, 2023

New "Pull from PDF file" step!

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We’re excited to announce additional support for working with PDF files in Parabola: a dedicated upload step! Use our new “Pull from PDF file” step to manually select a PDF file to work with.

As with our PDF file support from our Email Attachment step, you can choose from four data types for utilizing the PDF data in your flow. Read more about those settings here. Try combining the Pull from PDF step with our AI steps, like Extract or Categorize, to automatically isolate the relevant information from your file.

This step is available for everyone, starting today!

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June 1, 2023

New and improved published Flow page

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We’ve reworked the Flow page to make Flows more accessible and understandable to those with view-only access.

  • Flow descriptions: Custom Flow descriptions are now front-and-center, making it easier for Flow editors to provide guidance and instruction.
  • Destinations: The new “Destinations” view allows everyone to see where each Flow sends its data. Now viewers who are new to a Flow can understand where the data is sent when a Flow is run.
  • Private drafts: Now, viewers have a safe environment to customize their own private Table tabs. Viewers can highlight, sort, and interact with a Table without altering the Flow or its shared Views.

Whether they’re building Flows or not, your whole team benefits from accessing data that you transform in Parabola.

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May 10, 2023

Pull in data from NetSuite

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We now support a new data source in Parabola: NetSuite!

NetSuite is a critical tool for retail and ecommerce companies, serving as a key source of truth for product and resource data. With the Pull from NetSuite step, you can access any saved search from NetSuite and pull that data into your Parabola Flows.

This integration is available to customers on our Advanced Plan. Please contact us or schedule a call if you’re interested in NetSuite for your team!

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May 1, 2023

Introducing PDF file support

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Parabola can now intake, parse, and automate data from PDFs!

We’ve added support for PDF files to our Pull from Email Attachment step, which enables you to work with PDF files just like tabular data. The Email Attachment step will automatically parse PDF files sent to it, and you can build your Flow utilizing four different data formats, depending on how the PDF is structured (isolate key-value pairs, table data, etc.). You can even trigger a Flow from this step, so that the Flow will automatically run when a new PDF is sent to it.

Our PDF parsing includes OCR, so files with handwriting should be supported, and covers English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish languages.

PDF file support is currently offered to users on our Advanced Plan. Check out the Pricing Page for additional information, and contact us if you’d like a demo!

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April 13, 2023

AI-powered steps now in Parabola!

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We are incredibly excited to announce the launch of three new AI-powered steps, available today to all users!

Parabola has always been powerful for working with structured data. But we know that doesn’t represent all of your tasks – many data workflows are still quite manual and burdensome because they deal with messy, unstructured, or variable data (like PDFs, email bodies, etc.).

That’s where AI comes in. With the combined power of AI and Parabola, you can create structure and automate processes. Use our new GPT-powered steps to transform your data:

  1. Categorize: this step evaluates data and categorizes rows into the groups you define.
  2. Extract: this step extracts specific information from the data you input. By naming the new columns that you want to populate, you tell the step which pieces of info to extract.
  3. Experiment: this step lets you experiment with prompting the AI to revise your input data in any way. It’s the most flexible AI step.

Check out our linked guides for more details. We’re actively improving these steps every day, so please send us your feedback and needs! 🧠

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April 11, 2023

Redesigned Team page

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Pop quiz: which Parabola page was rockin’ our oldest design system?

Answer: the Team page!

Well, no more. The Team page has been given a much-needed overhaul to make it easier to add and manage your teammates.

You’ll now see all members of your account in a list, with their team permissions visible at a glance (e.g. Admin, Editor). Admins can change member permissions by clicking on the permission dropdown, or through the gear icon at the right. You can sort this list by name or by permissions.

To add a new team member, click “Add teammate” at the top of the page.

We’ll be adding more team-level metrics and admin capabilities to this page, so let us know what would be most impactful for you!

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April 7, 2023

A Spring Fling

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Happy April, everyone – may it bring both spring showers and flowers! 🌸 Last week our engineering team did something a bit special. We decided to see how many features and improvements we could build in just one week. A little spring fling, if you will. So, by popular demand, we bring you:

Flows page:

  1. Filters! You can filter by owner and by Flow schedules/triggers on the Home and My Flows pages (Team Flows page to come!)
  2. The folder tree displayed in your left-hand sidebar is now sorted alphabetically, A-Z
  3. When you view Team Flows, sorts will apply to both folders and Flows, with folders grouped at top

Tables:

When referencing a Table using the Pull from Table step, you’ll now see both the table and the Flow name, so you can be sure you’ve identified the right one.

Query input:

For steps with query input, like our database integrations, we added a larger query flyout field and auto-complete for query syntax, making it much easier to use.