Sometimes you want to look at the data yourself: buyers by channel and month, laid out as a grid you can regroup in a click. A sheet is that grid. You open one of your datasets as a sheet and pivot it, so you can group rows, split columns, filter, sort and chart. You can do it by hand, or ask the sheet’s co-pilot in words — “group by month and split by channel” — and watch the grid follow. Then you keep the views you’ll want again as tables of their own. Every figure is counted on the full dataset, not a sample, so a grid over millions of orders shows the same numbers a query would.
What you’ll need
- A plan that includes sheets — see pricing. Without it, Sheet under an answer is dimmed: clicking it says “Sheets are not included in your plan. Ask your administrator about a plan that includes it.”
- A dataset: an upload, a connected source, a table a conversation made, or a table in your own data lake that you’ve linked (see Read your own data lake). See Data home.
Open a sheet
From a conversation: click Sheet on a chart, or Share this as → Sheet under the latest answer. The chart’s data opens as a sheet beside the conversation. Sheet shows only when the chart has a dataset behind it. Or type it: “open this as a sheet”.
From your data: in Data, open a dataset and click Open as a sheet. If you already have a sheet on it, that sheet opens; otherwise a new one does. New sheet next to it starts a separate one.
From Sheets: click Sheets in the left sidebar. Your sheets lists the sheets you have. Click Upload a file and the file opens as a sheet as soon as it lands, or From a dataset to open one you already have. A new sheet opens with its co-pilot beside it.
Empty: click New sheet, doc or dashboard in the sidebar, then Empty sheet. The sheet says “This sheet is empty: add a table to start.” Click + Add table and choose:
- Table from data — one of your datasets, as a table of the sheet;
- Paste rows — rows copied from a spreadsheet, the first line their column names (up to 1,000 rows; for more, upload a file);
- Copy another sheet’s table — a table from another of your sheets.
See Start a doc, sheet or dashboard.
Find your way around
The sheet’s tables are tabs along the bottom, like a workbook’s, each marked with its kind: D for the source data, S for a table you saved, T for one you typed in. Your workbooks follow, marked W (see Work it out by hand in a workbook). Above the grid, the open table’s kind and row count, and a line saying how that table changes. The top right says whether you’re the owner or an editor, or shows View only when you’re a reader.
Pivot it
- Click Pivot to show or hide the pivot panel. Drag columns into the row groups, the column split, the
filters and the sort. For example: group by month, split by channel, and show
customer_idcounted uniquely. You’ll see unique buyers for each month and channel. - Read the totals. Each total in the grid is counted again from the rows, not added up from the cells above it. A customer who bought by email and again through an ad is one buyer in the total, even though they’re in both channels’ cells.
Heads up: a unique count, a rate or a share is never added up, so the grid won’t offer to sum one. It offers a minimum, maximum or average instead, and says why if you ask for a sum.
Chart it
Click Chart and the view you set up is drawn as bars: group by day and show daily_events, and you
see a bar a day. Pick another kind at the top of the pivot panel: lines, areas, scatter, a heatmap, a
treemap or a sunburst. Click Grid to go back to the rows. A chart is a way of looking: it isn’t kept
when you save a table, which keeps the rows. To keep a chart, pin the table to a dashboard, or draw one in
a workbook.
Ask the co-pilot
Click Co-pilot and a conversation opens beside the sheet. It knows the table you’re looking at and the view you have, so you can just say what you want:
- Ask about it: “which channel grew most since March?”
- Change the view: “group by month, split by channel, and show unique buyers”, “only paid search”, “sort by revenue”, “show it as a line chart”.
- Add a column: “add revenue per order”.
- Keep it: “save this as a table called Buyers by month” (owners and editors).
The grid follows each change. Anyone who can open the sheet can change their own view and add a column this way; saving a table takes an owner or editor. While a workbook is open, the co-pilot answers questions but doesn’t change anything. New starts another conversation with it; your earlier ones are kept with the sheet.
Each change shows in the conversation as a line: “Applying…”, then Applied. with Undo, or Not applied. with the reason. Changes are made one at a time, in order. To take one back, click Undo, or ask: “undo the grouping”. The line then reads Undone.
Add a column
You can add a column in three ways:
- Ask the co-pilot, as above.
- Ask for it in words. Click Add a column, describe it (“revenue per order”, “orders over $100 as yes/no”) and click Write it. BumbleB Crunch™ shows you the formula and a plain sentence saying what it computes. Nothing is added until you click Add column. A column that divides is marked “Never summed: it divides.” A total (“total revenue per channel”) isn’t a column, and BumbleB Crunch says so instead of guessing.
- Write a formula in the pivot panel (New column). Formulas use the table’s own columns, numbers
and text,
+ - * /, comparisons,and/or/not, and a short list of functions:round,abs,coalesce,nullif,lower,upper,length,if,year,month,day, anddate_truncfor a day, week or month. For example,date_trunc('month', ordered_at)gives each order’s month as its first day.
Keep a view as a table
- Set up the view you want, then click Save this view as a table, name it (“Buyers by channel and month”), and click Save.
- It appears as a tab next to your dataset, marked S. Its counts are named for what they hold
(
unique_customer_id,sum_revenue), and its rows are in order of its groups. - A saved table remembers how it was made. Click More → Refresh saved tables (the owner) and every saved table is made again from the data as it is now. If you uploaded a new version of the file, the saved tables follow it.
Type in a small table
Targets, a mapping of campaign codes to names, a few notes: some numbers aren’t in any dataset. Click More → New typed table, name it, give each column a name and a type (text, number, whole number, date or yes/no), and type the rows. Click Save table and it appears as a tab marked T. A cell that doesn’t fit its column’s type (“seventy” in a number column) is refused, naming the row and the column. Click Edit rows to change it later; each save is a new version.
Correct a value
Sometimes a row in your data is simply wrong: an order recorded at $9,999 instead of $99.99, a customer tagged with the wrong channel. The owner can correct the value in the sheet without touching the data itself.
- Open the dataset’s tab and use a plain view: no row groups and no column split, with a column that names
each row once (like
order_id) showing. - Click the cell you want to correct. A line appears above the grid: “Correct revenue for order_id o000123: 9999 →”. Type the right value and click Correct. A value that doesn’t fit the column’s type (“seventy” in a number column) is refused.
The correction is kept beside your data, never written into it. From then on, the grid counts the corrected value, and so does every table you save afterwards, every refresh of them, the co-pilot, and BumbleB Crunch when you ask about the sheet in a conversation. Readers see it once you update the published version. Above the grid you’ll see “Includes 1 corrected value”. Click Corrections to see each one, who made it and when, and Undo it.
When your data changes, each correction is checked again. If its row is gone, or the value in your data is no longer the one you corrected, it isn’t applied, and the sheet tells you how many corrections no longer match the data — never dropping one without telling you.
Open a table from your data lake
If you’ve linked a table from your own data lake, it’s listed in Data home with your other datasets, and Open as a sheet works the same way. Its rows stay in your lake: the grid reads them there, nothing is copied in first.
- One version while you work. Your lake’s table can change while you have the sheet open. The grid keeps reading the version it opened with, so scrolling and pivoting never mix old rows with new ones. More → Refresh saved tables moves the sheet to the latest version.
- Saved tables are made from the version the grid was reading when you saved them.
- Publishing copies the table at that version for your readers, so they never reach your lake or its credentials. A very large table (see Current limits) isn’t published; the sheet says “Not published:” with the table and its row count.
- No corrections here. A linked table’s values are corrected in your lake, so the sheet doesn’t offer to correct them.
- Pin a saved table, not the linked one. A linked table can’t be pinned to a dashboard as it is: BumbleB Crunch says “A linked warehouse table is read in place; pin a table saved from it instead, which refreshes from the warehouse.” Save a table from it and pin that.
Work it out by hand in a workbook
Sometimes you want a spreadsheet: a quick =SUM over a few rows, a ratio you’re testing before you ask
for it properly. A workbook takes a copy of the view you’re looking at into a spreadsheet with cell
formulas, in the grid’s place.
- Set up the view, then click Open a copy in a workbook. Its rows open as a spreadsheet: one header row, then a row per grid row. A view with more rows than a workbook takes is turned down; filter it first (see Current limits).
- Type formulas in any cell, like
=SUM(B3:B6), with a label in the cell to its left. - Click Save. The workbook is kept on the sheet as a tab marked W, after the tables; click it to open it again. The ← link with the table’s name, at its top, takes you back to the grid.
Charts and tables in a workbook. Select some cells and click Insert chart or Insert table.
Choose how to draw it (Bar, Line, Area, Pie or Table), check the range (like G1:H8)
and give it a title, then click Insert. It’s drawn beside the cells from their current values, so it
follows every edit, and it’s saved with the workbook. Change or Remove it any time. Add to a
dashboard saves the workbook, then puts the chart on a dashboard as a tile, frozen at those numbers and
marked worked by hand.
The workbook says “Workbook · worked by hand” at its top, and that’s how BumbleB Crunch treats it. When you ask about the sheet in a conversation, BumbleB Crunch counts its answer from the sheet’s tables, never from your workbook. If one of your hand figures says something different, BumbleB Crunch says so and gives both, naming yours as worked by hand.
A workbook is only for you and your editors. It’s never published and never saved as a dataset, and readers of the sheet don’t see it. Deleting one leaves any tiles already on a dashboard with their numbers.
Share it with readers
- Click Share (the owner) and choose who can read it: people by email, or everyone in your organization. The dialog lists every table and its columns, because readers see whole tables.
- Click Review & publish (or Review & update published, once it’s published). It lists what changed since readers last saw it, with who changed it. Click Publish (or Update published): each table of the sheet, as it stands now, with its corrections, is copied for your readers.
Each person you add gets an email and a notice in BumbleB Crunch with the sheet’s link. Someone without a
BumbleB Crunch account isn’t emailed; the dialog says so, and you can send them the link once they join.
The dialog also shows the sheet’s link (…/data/p/…), the same kind of link a story or dashboard has:
copy it and send it yourself. Whoever you shared with opens it signed in; anyone else is told it isn’t
available.
Your readers open the sheet and see View only · published …. They can pivot, filter, sort and chart every table, and add a column for their own view, but they can’t save, type or correct tables, or refresh. They see the sheet as you published it: what you change afterwards stays yours until you update the published version. The top of the sheet tells you how many changes readers don’t see yet. Readers need a plan that includes sheets; their pivots are counted on their own plan.
Share it with anyone by link
For someone outside BumbleB Crunch, make a link anyone can open without signing in. In Share, under Anyone with the link, pick when it expires and click Make a link. Copy it then: it’s shown only once.
The link shows a copy of the published sheet, frozen when you made it: the first rows of each table, up to a set number of tables (see Current limits). It opens as the same grid, with the pivot panel and charts, so readers can pivot, filter, sort and chart it in their browser; nothing they do is kept. It doesn’t refresh on its own. To show a newer version, publish again and make a new link; Turn off ends it. If your organization has an owner or admin, they must first allow sharing the sheet outside the organization.
Take the rows away
Where your organization allows exports, the grid has its own export and copy buttons, up to your
organization’s row limit — see Data exports. Without that setting, they don’t
show. Text that a spreadsheet would run as a formula (a cell starting with =, say) is exported with a
leading ', so it opens as plain text rather than running.
Use it elsewhere
- On a dashboard: open a table’s tab and click More → Pin this table to a dashboard. Pick a dashboard or click New dashboard. The table becomes a tile, and the dashboard’s Refresh makes it again from the latest data. See Publish a dashboard.
- In a conversation: type
@and the sheet’s name, then ask about one of its tables by name. For example: “@Orders, using the Buyers by channel and month table in it, which channel grew the most from January to August?” BumbleB Crunch answers from that table’s own rows and names it. Ask about a table the sheet doesn’t have, and BumbleB Crunch says it isn’t there rather than give you a number for it.
How to tell it worked
Your sheet keeps its tabs: the dataset, each saved table, each typed table and each workbook. Reload the page and they’re all still there. You’ll also find the sheet under Published in Data home. After a refresh, a saved table’s counts match the grid’s on the same view.
Good to know
- Who can do what. Anyone who can open a sheet can browse it, change their own view and ask for a column. Saving a table, typing one, editing rows, workbooks and pinning a table to a dashboard take an editor. Only the owner can refresh, correct values and share.
- Limits. How many corrections a table takes, how big one view, a formula, a typed table and a workbook can be are in Current limits. For a bigger typed table, upload a file.
- Correcting a cell again keeps the value it first had, so Undo always takes it back to your data.
- Refresh counts toward the daily refresh limit, the same as a story or dashboard.
- One sheet per dataset, unless you ask. Open as a sheet reopens the sheet you already have on that dataset. To start a separate one, click New sheet next to it.
- Not yet: a reader can’t ask about a shared sheet in a conversation, and can’t save their own pivots.
Related
- Publish a dashboard — tiles, filters and sharing.
- Data home — your datasets and where they came from.
- Upload an Excel, CSV or Parquet file — bring in the data to pivot.
- Start a doc, sheet or dashboard — begin with an empty sheet.