Publish and share a data story

Turn a report into a story your team can read, keep it up to date, and build on it from another conversation.

A good conversation ends with something worth showing: why repeat purchase rose, which channel really pays back. When you ask for a report, BumbleB Crunch™ lays it out as a data story — a document that opens with the finding in its title, then a short summary, the key figures, numbered sections and figures, what it means, and a “How this was counted” appendix. You can publish that story so the right people can read it, keep it current as new data arrives, and add to it later from another conversation.

What you’ll need

A plan that includes publishing — see pricing. On a plan without it, a report still opens as a laid-out story; you just can’t publish or share it.
A conversation with a report in it. See the Report agent.

Share this as appears under the latest answer once it has finished, when that answer drew a chart. It offers Story, Dashboard and Sheet (Sheet only when a chart has a dataset behind it). A choice your plan doesn’t include stays on the row, greyed, and clicking it says so — for example “Dashboards are not included in your plan. Ask your administrator about a plan that includes it.”

Publish a story

Under an answer with a chart, click Share this as → Story, or just ask — “make this a story I can share with my team”. BumbleB Crunch writes the conversation up as a story; click its card to open it in the side panel. (Choosing Report in the agent pill does the same.)
Read it through. To reword a passage, hover over it, click the pencil, change the text and click Save edit. Each change is kept as a new version, with your name on it.
Click Share and choose who can read it:
- tick Everyone in my organization can read it, or
- add people by email, as Can read or Can edit, or
- make a link anyone can open, without an account — see Share it by link.
Check What readers will see: it lists the data behind each chart. Columns that look personal (an email address, a name) are highlighted, because readers will see their values. Then click Publish and share (or Save sharing, once it’s published). It publishes the story and shares it in one step.

Each person you add gets an email and a notice in BumbleB Crunch with the story’s link. Someone without a BumbleB Crunch BumbleB Crunch account isn’t emailed; the dialog says so, so you can send them the link once they join. The dialog also shows the story’s link (…/data/p/…) to copy and send yourself. To publish without sharing, click Publish.

Only the story’s owner can share it, refresh it or switch it between frozen and live; people who Can edit can change its text and publish updates.

How to tell it worked

Your story now has a Reader page button, which opens the address you send people. Anyone you shared it with sees the story when they’re signed in to BumbleB Crunch. Anyone else sees “This page isn’t available” — the same answer as for a page that doesn’t exist, so the page never reveals that it’s there. Stories you made, and stories others shared with you, are listed under Published in Data home — click the Published button beside Data in the left navigation to go straight there.

Sometimes the person who needs the story isn’t on BumbleB Crunch: an investor, a client, a board member. A link lets anyone who has it read the story without signing in.

Click Share. Under Anyone with the link, pick how long it lasts (Never expires, the default, Expires in 7 days, Expires in 30 days or Expires in 90 days) and click Make a link.
Click Copy and send it. The link is shown only this once; BumbleB Crunch keeps no copy it can show you again, so if you lose it, make a new one.

A link always shows the version you published when you made it, frozen: its words, its figures and the rows behind its charts, with the date the data is as of. Nothing is counted when someone opens it, so a link can never spend your credits or reach the rest of your data. When you publish a new version, the link keeps showing the old one until you click Show version N instead.

Turn off ends the link at once. Make a new link ends the old one.
A link that has ended, expired, or was never real all answer the same way: “This link doesn’t work.”
Someone with only the link can’t ask about the story or download its PDF. Send them the PDF if they need one.
If the story belongs to your organization, an owner or admin of the organization must tick Allow sharing this outside the organization first, because a link reaches people outside it.

List it publicly

Some findings are worth showing the world: a benchmark your customers will search for, a quarterly report you’d like anyone to find. Listing puts a story on your organization’s public page, open to search engines, with nobody needing to sign in.

Listing is turned on one organization at a time. Until it’s on for yours, Share → Public and searchable says “Public listing isn’t turned on for your organization yet.” Write to support@bumbleb.co to turn it on.

Once per organization: an owner or admin opens Share, and under Public and searchable types your organization’s handle (3 to 40 lowercase letters, digits and single dashes, like acme) and the name to show, then clicks Set your organization’s public page. The handle is the address of every listed piece, so it’s set once. A few words are reserved, like help or pricing.
The owner asks: publish the story, then in Share → Public and searchable click Ask to list version N. The dialog says “Version N is waiting for approval.”
An owner or admin of your organization approves. They’ll find it in Data home under Published (the Published button beside Data in the left navigation), in “Waiting for your approval to be listed publicly”, with who asked. Preview version N shows the page exactly as the public will read it; Approve listing lists it. If your organization’s data is an enterprise’s, only an owner can approve.

The story is then at https://crunch.bumbleb.co/p/<your handle>/…, and your organization’s page, https://crunch.bumbleb.co/p/<your handle>/, lists it. The dialog shows the address, the version and who approved it.

What the public sees is the version that was approved, frozen: its text, its figures and each chart’s saved rows, shown as a table of its first 50 rows (“First 50 of N rows.” when there are more). Nothing is counted when someone opens it, and nothing else of yours is reachable from it.
A new version isn’t listed until it’s approved again. Until then the page keeps showing the approved one.
Unlist (the owner, or an owner or admin) stops it at once: the page says “This page is no longer listed.” and leaves the list search engines read. Search engines drop it from their results when they next visit — that part is up to them, not us.
Stories and dashboards can be listed; a sheet can’t.

Keep it up to date

Refresh counts every figure again the way it was counted the first time, on the data as it is now. It never swaps in a different dataset: if a figure can no longer be counted — say a column it used was renamed — that figure keeps its last numbers and says why, in plain words.
A figure that joins several datasets — orders matched to each customer’s segment, say — reads each of them again as it is now, and says which it read: “Read from customers, orders, each as it stood on October 18, 2026.” If one of them is gone, only that figure stops: “This figure could not be refreshed: its source customers is no longer available”, or “the column revenue is no longer in orders”. It keeps showing its last numbers, and the rest of the story refreshes as usual. A table linked from your own data lake counts too: when it gets new data, a scheduled refresh sees it.
Frozen (the default) or Live (refresh updates readers). A frozen story keeps its date ranges, and if newer data exists it says so under the figure: “Newer data, through , lies outside this figure’s window.” You, the owner, also see “Newer data lies outside some figures’ windows.” at the top, with Refresh to the latest data, which moves those figures’ windows forward. A live story moves a range that ended where your data ended (“2026 so far”) forward to where the data ends now, and readers see the refreshed version right away. A range you chose yourself, like “Q3”, never moves.
A live story’s words follow its figures. When a refresh changes a figure, BumbleB Crunch rewrites the passages nobody edited so they state the new numbers — and if a finding no longer holds, the words change with it (“Paid social customers now repeat more than email”). The new words are checked the same way a report is: every number must come from the refreshed figures, and no old value may be left behind. If the rewrite can’t pass those checks, the old words stay and the story says at the top that its text was written for the earlier figures. A frozen story is never rewritten: its words belong to its date.
A refresh runs in the background. While it runs the story says “Refreshing ·” and the step it’s on ("(2 of 5)" when there are several), and you can reload or leave the page: it keeps going and picks up where it is when you come back. A story refreshes one run at a time; click Refresh again meanwhile and it says “Already refreshing — following that run.” If a refresh can’t finish, it says “The refresh stopped:” and why.
Refresh on a schedule. The schedule menu, next to the frozen or live choice, starts at No schedule. It’s greyed until the story is Live (“Set it to Live first: a schedule updates readers.”). Choose Refresh every day or Refresh every week — for weekly, pick the day, Monday to Sunday — and the hour it runs at, shown like “06:00 UTC” (06:00 unless you change it). Hours are in UTC, the time zone BumbleB Crunch reports in. The refresh runs as you while you’re away, on your plan, and the menu shows how the last one went (“Last: ok”, or “Last: failed”). If none of the data behind the story has changed since the last refresh, it records “no new data” and spends nothing. If a refresh fails — and a run where some parts couldn’t be made again counts as failed — you’re told in BumbleB Crunch and by email; after repeated failures in a row the schedule turns itself off and says so, so it doesn’t keep failing quietly (see Current limits). Schedules are off until you turn one on.
A passage someone edited is never rewritten. If its figures have changed since, the editor sees it marked — “Edited by … The figures it states have changed since (Repeat rate: was 31.4%, now 29.8%) — check this passage.” Click Keep as is if it still holds, or Edit to reword it.

Change it without surprising your readers

Edits, refreshes and later reports in the same conversation all change the draft. Readers keep seeing the published version until you click Update published; until then the panel lists what is not yet published. Versions shows every version with what changed and who changed it, and Roll back makes an earlier version the new draft — nothing is ever overwritten. If someone else saved a newer draft while you were editing, BumbleB Crunch tells you and reloads it rather than replacing their work.

Build on it from another conversation

In any conversation, type @ followed by the story’s exact title — for example “@Repeat purchase in Q3, add a section on paid search”. BumbleB Crunch reads the story as it is stored and counts the new part the same way the story did — the same definitions, decisions and date ranges — unless you say otherwise. The panel then shows the answer as a section with Add to “…”: click it to add the section, with its charts, to the story’s draft. Nothing changes until you click it. Only stories you can edit can be named this way, and BumbleB Crunch reads only a few named pieces in one message.

Print it

Click PDF for an A4 copy with page numbers, each figure kept whole on a page, and the title in the footer.

Good to know

Readers see only what’s in the story: its text, figures and the rows behind each chart — never your workspace or the rest of your data.
Sharing outside your organization needs an owner or admin of your organization to tick Allow sharing this outside the organization.
Limits. How many times a day a story can be refreshed (scheduled refreshes included), how often a link can be opened and how many rows a chart keeps are in Current limits. A link opened too often says “Too many views of this link just now. Try again in a minute.”, and a chart’s source line says when rows were left out.
Unpublish stops sharing at once: readers lose access, the reader page stops working, and a listed story stops being listed.

Report agent — write up what a conversation found.
Publish a dashboard — the same figures as tiles you can filter.
Data home and lineage — where your published stories are listed.
Team management — who is in your organization.