Get a demo

Custom Email Reporting

Summarize any dataset and send one styled HTML email to the right people on a schedule. Parabola handles the grouping, sort, and email formatting for you.

Get a demo

The prompt

Build a flow that summarizes data and sends one styled email containing the full summary. Step 1: Inspect the data. Step 2: Ask clarifying questions about what to group by, what to aggregate, sort, summary fields, brand colors, recipients, subject line, and sender name. Step 3: Build a grouping step, sort step, and Send Email step that sends one styled HTML email with bordered table, header, summary, and footer to the specified recipients.

Just copy and paste the prompt into a new Parabola flow to get started.

What Parabola builds

A workflow with six steps you can edit:

1. Inspect the data. Parabola reads the schema and sample rows to understand the shape before asking a single question.

2. Ask eight clarifying questions, one at a time. Which dataset to summarize. What dimension to group by. What metric to aggregate. Which field to sort on and in which direction. Which summary fields to include in the email body. Brand colors for the table header. Recipients. Subject line and sender name.

3. Build the grouping step. Aggregate by the chosen dimension, calculate the chosen metric, and produce the summary table.

4. Build the sort step. Order the rows so the email reads in the right direction. Worst first for exception reports. Highest first for performance summaries.

5. Build the Send Email step. One HTML email with a bordered table, a header row in your brand color, a summary line at the top, and a footer. Sent to the specified recipients from the specified sender name.

6. Schedule it. Daily at 7am, weekly Monday morning, or triggered by the upstream flow completing. The email goes out on time without anyone touching a button. A Parabola-Suggested variant of this prompt skips the question sequence and infers recipients, subject line, and styling from context, useful when you want a first draft immediately.

Why teams stop doing this manually

Most teams already have the data. The close report is in a spreadsheet. The carrier scorecard runs in a tool. The inventory position updates every morning. The hard part is getting that data into someone's inbox, formatted well enough that they actually read it.

The manual version is a weekly chore. Someone exports the table, pastes it into an email, adjusts the column widths, adds a subject line, and sends it to the list. It takes twenty minutes and nobody has ever made it a priority. So it slips. The weekly becomes biweekly. The Monday report arrives Thursday. The stakeholder stops checking it because it is never there when they look.

The other version is a shared Sheets link in a Slack message. Somebody has to click the link, load the sheet, wait for it to refresh, and find the tab they need. Half the recipients never do it.

A formatted email that arrives on a schedule, contains the full summary in the body, and takes ten seconds to scan is a different artifact entirely. It shows up without effort. It is readable on a phone. It lands at the right time, every time. That is the version that actually changes what a team does Monday morning.

How it works

Step 1. Paste the prompt.

Open Parabola, paste the prompt in section 2, and point it at any dataset you are already tracking. Or connect a new data source directly.

Step 2. Answer the questions.

Parabola asks one question at a time. Dataset, grouping, metric, sort field, summary fields, brand colors, recipients, subject line, sender name. Eight questions total. You type the answers and Parabola builds the corresponding steps.

Step 3. Run it on a schedule.

Set the frequency and the email goes out automatically. Daily, weekly, or triggered by the upstream flow completing. No export, no paste, no manual send.

Related prompts

FAQ

Can the email include a formatted table, or is it plain text?

Formatted table. The Send Email step produces a full HTML email with a bordered table, a header row in your brand color, a summary line, and a footer. Recipients do not need to click any link or open any file.

Can I send different emails to different recipients based on the data?

Yes. If the dataset has a recipient column or can be grouped by region or account owner, the flow can send one email per group with only the rows relevant to that recipient.

What if the data changes after the email goes out?

The email is a snapshot of the data at send time. For live-updating views, the data visualization flow keeps a persistent chart in sync with the latest data. For scheduled reports, set the frequency to match how often the data meaningfully changes.

How is this different from a Looker or Tableau scheduled report?

Looker and Tableau scheduled exports require a BI tool, a data warehouse connection, and an analyst to maintain the dashboard. This flow runs directly on the data Parabola already has, requires no SQL and no separate BI tool, and is built and modified by the ops or finance team in minutes.

How is this different from doing it in Excel and emailing manually?

Excel works fine for a one-time send. It breaks as a recurring system because someone has to remember to do it, execute the export, format the table, and send the email every single time. The Parabola flow does all of that automatically, on a schedule, without a person in the loop.

What if I want Parabola to infer recipients and subject from context?

Use the Parabola-Suggested variant. Parabola reads the column names and dataset shape and makes reasonable defaults for recipient groups, subject line, and styling. Useful for a quick draft. The interactive version gives you explicit control.
The report that actually lands.
Paste the prompt, connect your data, and set the schedule. The summary email goes out on time every time, formatted clean enough to read in ten seconds.
Start for free