Getting Started

To begin exploring Colrows, users can access the Colrows cloud instance and quickly register using their email address. Upon sign-up, Colrows automatically provisions a new Organization—a private, logically isolated workspace that holds all datasets, configurations, and activities associated with the user. Unless explicitly invited, no other users can access this organization.

Each new organization is pre-loaded with sample data sources, datasets, access policies, users, user groups, and other essential configurations, providing a fully functional sandbox environment to help you get started without any setup.

To sign up and access the Colrows cloud instance:

1. Visit https://colrows.com.
2. Click “Get Started”.
3. Complete the registration form with a valid email address.
4. Check your email inbox and click the “Activate Account” link sent to you.
5. Log in using your credentials at https://cloud.colrows.com.

When a new user signs up, Colrows automatically creates an Organization for them, assigning that user as its administrator. To help users get started quickly, Colrows also provisions a sample database that can be used to explore the platform’s capabilities. From there, users can invite teammates, create groups, define access policies, and experience Colrows AI in action — retrieving data, generating SQL queries, and building charts and dashboards effortlessly.

Platform Overview

Once logged in, users land on the Home Page, which provides quick navigation to onboard a datasource and to chat with a connected database. If the user has a role of a ‘Curator’ (Semantic Expert), he will also see SemantIQ setup questions on the Home Page for easy access.

The vertical navigation bar on the left provides access to workspace tools such as the SQL Editor, Colrows AI, Charts, Dashboards, and Signals. For administrative users, it also includes management controls for datasources, users, user groups, access policies, and SemantIQ management. By default, all team members have read-only access to these entities, while users with administrative privileges can create or modify them.

Colrows AI

The Colrows AI Data Analyst is your intelligent partner for exploring and understanding data. It combines natural language interaction with deep semantic awareness to help users uncover insights effortlessly. Instead of writing complex SQL or Python code, you can simply ask questions in plain English — and the AI Data Analyst translates them into optimized, secure queries grounded in your organization’s semantics. It doesn’t just retrieve data — it interprets patterns, highlights anomalies, suggests visualizations, and explains results in context. Backed by the SemantIQ layer, the Colrows AI Data Analyst understands business logic, adapts to each user’s role and data access policies, and continuously learns from interactions — making analytics faster, smarter, and more intuitive for everyone.

SQL Editor

Alternatively, the workspace can be launched with the SQL Editor as the default view, enabling direct interaction with SQL notebooks for those who prefer writing queries manually. Users can bookmark queries, convert them into signals right from the editor.

AI-Generated Insights

Colrows makes visualization effortless with AI-generated charts that transform raw data into clear, interactive insights. Simply describe what you want to see, and Colrows automatically selects the right chart type, builds the query, and renders the visualization instantly. Every chart can be saved, shared with your team, or published via a secure public link for broader access. Whether it’s exploring trends, comparing metrics, or storytelling with data, Colrows charts make insight creation fast, collaborative, and beautifully simple.

AI-Powered Dashboards

Colrows lets you bring insights together through AI-powered dashboards that update dynamically as your data evolves. You can create dashboards simply by describing what you want to track — Colrows AI assembles the right charts, metrics, and filters automatically. Dashboards can be saved, shared across teams, or published via secure public links for wider visibility. Designed for collaboration and clarity, Colrows dashboards help teams monitor performance, align on metrics, and make faster, data-driven decisions — all without manual setup or complex configuration.

Signals

Signals are Colrows' built-in scheduling mechanism, used to automate the execution of SQL or Python notebooks at defined intervals. Results generated by signals can be delivered directly to user inboxes or integrated into downstream workflows.

SemantIQ Management

Colrows brings transparency and control to your semantic layer through SemantIQ Management — a visual workspace for exploring and evolving your organization’s data intelligence. Users can visualize business terms, metrics, tables, columns, events, and concepts, along with their relationships and dependencies. It’s easy to add new business terms or metrics, refine definitions, and maintain alignment across teams. Colrows AI actively assists in resolving conflicts between overlapping or inconsistent terms and metrics, ensuring a single, trusted source of truth. With SemantIQ Management, your data semantics stay consistent, explainable, and always ready for intelligent analysis.

Datasources

Before any data analysis can take place, users must onboard their data systems into Colrows as Datasources. The platform supports a variety of data engines and allows configuration using host, port, credentials, and additional connection details. Once configured, these datasources become available within the workspace for querying and exploration.

Data Access Policies

Colrows enforces strict data access policies that define which users or groups can access specific data elements. These policies are written in a datastore-agnostic language and are applied uniformly across all access methods—SQL, AI, notebooks, or dashboards.

When a user attempts to access restricted data, Colrows evaluates the policy in real time by analyzing the query. If the access is unauthorized, the platform blocks execution before it reaches the underlying datastore, ensuring confidentiality and control.

Redaction Policies

Redaction policies provide an additional layer of data security. Rather than blocking access, redaction masks or hides sensitive data elements according to pre-defined rules. Like access policies, redaction policies are evaluated on every data access request and applied consistently across the platform.

Usergroup

User Groups help simplify the management of access and redaction policies by allowing bulk policy assignment. Colrows supports integration with LDAP, Active Directory, and other directory services to synchronize group memberships automatically.

User

Colrows supports multiple user authentication realms, including Active Directory, SAML, OAuth, and Native login systems. This flexibility allows teams to integrate seamlessly with existing identity and access management systems.

Settings

The Settings module provides controls for updating personal information, managing administrators within the organization, and configuring other account-level preferences.