Data

In everyday life. A car's dashboard shows a few numbers you need right now, such as your speed. The numbers change as you drive. A business dashboard does the same. It shows a few important numbers, and they stay up to date.

What it is

Claude Data turns your questions about company data into dashboards and short reports. It used to be called Claude Dashboards. You need a paid plan, and your company's data must be connected to Claude first.¹

Build one

1. Connect your data. This is usually your company's data warehouse, such as Snowflake. Your company's IT team may need to help.
2. Ask a question in plain words. In the Claude desktop app, ask in any chat, or pick the Data tile in the Artifacts tab.¹

For example, if a company kept its paid bills in a warehouse:

Build a dashboard of payments to suppliers over the last six months: the total paid each week, the ten biggest suppliers, and how many bills were paid late.

How to trust a number

This is the most important part of this page.

Claude writes a query for each chart. Each chart shows its query, and when its data was last updated. If the query counts the wrong thing, ask Claude to change it.¹

You do not need to read the query yourself. Ask Claude: "Explain this query in plain words." Then check three things:

1. What is counted?
2. Which dates?
3. What is left out?

For example, "paid late" means nothing until you know what "late" means in the query.

A chart can look right and still be wrong. So before you use a number, reconcile it: check it against a number you already trust. For example, a chart says Brightline paid $12,906.40 in one week:

1. Find the source. Ask Claude which records the number came from.
2. Work it out another way. Add up those records yourself, or compare with the payment report your team already uses.
3. Explain any difference. If the two numbers differ, find out why before you use either one.

Your company's data team can also mark some queries as approved. These are called certified queries, and they are in beta. A chart that uses one shows a small badge. If anyone changes a certified query, it loses its certification and the badge.¹

Share it: whose data do people see?

Only you can see a new dashboard. Before you click Share, choose one of two ways.¹,² With normal sharing, each person sees only the data they are allowed to see. With live sharing, the people you share with see your results for this dashboard's charts, even data they could not see themselves:

Live sharing is in beta, and it is limited: people see only the answers to this dashboard's own queries. Only people who can edit the dashboard can change those queries. Even so, Anthropic says: check what the dashboard shows before you share it this way.¹

In ChatGPT: the Data plugin

ChatGPT has a similar tool, the Data plugin. A plugin is an add-on that lets ChatGPT do something new.³

1. Set it up. Open the plugin directory, find Data and install it. Then connect the data you need. At work, your company decides whether you can do this yourself, or whether IT does it for you.³
2. Ask. In the ChatGPT desktop app, open Work and type @Data and then your question. For example: "@Data Compare sales this quarter with last quarter and explain the biggest changes."
3. Make a dashboard. Ask it to turn the answer into a dashboard. You can change it, share it and update it.³

OpenAI's help page does not list which plans include the Data plugin. On a paid Plus account, it was in the plugin directory when this page was checked.³

In both apps the habit is the same: before you trust a number, ask what the query counts.

Combine it: a dashboard and a scheduled task

A dashboard keeps itself fresh. Claude updates its data when someone opens it and the data is due for an update. It does not update on a schedule.¹ So you do not need a scheduled task to keep a dashboard up to date.

A scheduled task is for work that must happen at a set time, even when nobody opens anything. You met them in Work that runs while you sleep. For example, a short note for the manager every Monday:

Every Monday at 8 a.m., update the doc at [the doc's link] with last week's total payments to suppliers, from our data warehouse. Do not make a new doc. Only update this one.

Two habits make this work:

• Give the task the link of an artifact you already made. Each run usually starts a new session, and a new session makes a new artifact unless you give it the link of an old one. Anthropic says: when a task's job is to keep a page current, give it one you already published.⁴,⁵ Anthropic's guide says this about artifacts made in the Code tab, so run the task once with Run now and check that it updated your doc.
• Use the three rules from Work that runs while you sleep. Write the task so a stranger could follow it. Keep the result somewhere lasting: here, the doc. And decide which actions need your yes.

To make one, ask in a chat to schedule it, or open Scheduled in the Code tab. Scheduled tasks need the Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise plan. Anthropic's page does not list Ultra.⁴

In ChatGPT: scheduled tasks run once or on a schedule, and they can use apps such as Gmail when your account has them.⁶

Try it (15 minutes)

Paid plan, with company data connected: Ask Claude Data a question you already know the answer to, such as last month's total sales. Does it match? Ask Claude to explain the query in plain words.

Any plan, without company data: Paste a small table into a chat, such as ten weeks of sales. Ask for a chart. Then ask Claude how it worked out each number. Check two of them yourself.