Question 1

What is Portals AI and what can I do with it?

Accepted Answer

Portals AI is a workspace for connecting your data sources, normalizing them into a shared vocabulary, and asking questions about them in chat-style sessions called portals. You can pull in data from CSVs, databases, and other tools, define how their fields relate, and then explore or analyze the combined data through portals.

Question 2

How do I connect my first data source?

Accepted Answer

Open the Connectors page, switch to the Catalog tab, and pick a connector definition (for example, CSV). Configure it with your file or credentials — that creates a connector instance you can use across stations.

Question 3

What is a Station and why do I need one?

Accepted Answer

A station is a workspace that bundles together the connector instances and tool packs you want to analyze together. You need at least one station before you can open a portal, because the portal uses the station's data and tools to answer your questions.

Question 4

How do I start asking questions about my data?

Accepted Answer

From a station, click "New Portal" to open a chat session. Type your question — the assistant will use the station's tool packs (data query, statistics, etc.) and the connected data to respond. You can pin useful results for quick access later.

Question 5

Is there a limit on how many messages I can send?

Accepted Answer

Each plan includes a send ceiling for portal sessions — a small per-minute burst limit and a daily limit that resets at midnight UTC. Sending a message never uses your tool-credit allocation; the ceiling is a separate fair-use bound, and hitting it just pauses new messages until the window resets (a notice in the session says exactly when). Higher plans raise the ceiling, and enterprise plans have none.

Question 6

How do I upgrade my plan?

Accepted Answer

Go to Settings → Subscription & Billing and pick a plan from the list — Subscribe takes you to Stripe's secure checkout. After you pay, your plan updates automatically within a few seconds (Stripe confirms the subscription to us directly). Your usage allocations reset on your new billing cycle from that point on. To change or cancel later, use Manage subscription on the same tab, which opens the Stripe billing portal.

Question 7

Who can manage billing?

Accepted Answer

Only the organization owner. Every member can see the available plans on Settings → Subscription & Billing, but Subscribe and Manage subscription are enabled only for the owner — the server enforces this too, so it isn't just hidden buttons.

Question 8

My plan says it's managed — what does that mean?

Accepted Answer

Your organization is on a custom plan arranged with us directly rather than one of the self-serve plans, so the plan list and checkout are hidden. Contact us to make changes to a managed plan.

Question 9

Why is a toolpack marked “Inactive on your plan”?

Accepted Answer

Your organization's plan determines which toolpacks are available. Custom toolpacks registered while they were included stay saved when a plan stops including them — nothing is deleted — but their tools aren't offered in portal sessions and new registrations are blocked until you're on a plan that includes them again. Built-in toolpacks can also vary by plan. Everything reactivates automatically on upgrade; station setups are preserved exactly as you left them.

Question 10

What's the difference between a connector and an entity?

Accepted Answer

A connector instance is the live link to a source (your CSV file, your database). A connector entity is one specific data object exposed through that connection — a single sheet, table, or collection. One connector instance often surfaces several connector entities.

Question 11

What are column definitions and why do they matter?

Accepted Answer

Column definitions are reusable field specifications — name, data type, validation rules, canonical format — shared across your whole organization. They let different connector entities map their raw fields to the same shared vocabulary, so analysis can compare like with like.

Question 12

What are field mappings?

Accepted Answer

A field mapping links a raw field on a connector entity to a column definition. Mapping the CRM's "Email Address" and the CSV's "email" to the same email column definition is what makes records from different sources comparable.

Question 13

Why don't records the assistant created show up when I query them?

Accepted Answer

A record is only queryable once a field mapping projects its fields into the entity's columns — records written with unmapped fields stay invisible to queries and tables. When you ask the assistant to create data on a new entity, it now reads your organization's column-definition catalog, maps the columns first (creating field mappings), and only then writes records. If a column it needs has no matching definition, it will tell you rather than write data that can't be read back. To fix older invisible records, add the field mappings for their columns, then re-create or re-sync.

Question 14

How do I validate my data?

Accepted Answer

Validation is driven by your column definitions: each one can declare a data type and a regex validation pattern. When records are synced or written, those rules run automatically — invalid records are flagged so you can fix them. Use "Re-validate" on an entity to re-run the rules across all records.

Question 15

What happens when I sync an entity?

Accepted Answer

Syncing pulls the latest records from the connector source into Portals AI. New records are added, changed records are updated, and the entity's record count and last-sync timestamp are refreshed. A sync runs as a background job you can monitor on the Jobs page.

Question 16

What are entity groups and when should I use them?

Accepted Answer

Entity groups bundle related connector entities from different sources together — for example, your CRM Contacts and your support tool's Users — so you can analyze them as one population. Use them when the same real-world thing (a person, a company, an account) appears in multiple sources.

Question 17

What is a "link field" in an entity group?

Accepted Answer

The link field is the shared identifier used to match records across the group's members. If you pick "email" as the link field, two records — one from each source — are treated as the same entity when they share an email address. The Overlap Preview shows how well your link field actually matches data across members.

Question 18

How do tags work?

Accepted Answer

Entity tags are color-coded labels you attach to your entities to group and filter them. Tags appear as colored badges throughout the app and let you narrow long lists down to the subset you care about — for example, tagging all customer-data entities so you can filter to them in one click.

Question 19

How do I delete my organization?

Accepted Answer

Open Settings → Organization and scroll to the Danger zone. Only the organization's owner can delete it, and the action is permanent: all organization data — stations, portals, connectors, records, and uploads — is destroyed, and every member loses access. You'll be asked to type the organization's name exactly to confirm, and you'll be signed out once the deletion completes. If a background job is still running, wait for it to finish (or cancel it) first.

Question 20

What are tool packs?

Accepted Answer

Tool packs are bundles of capabilities you enable on a station — data query, statistics, regression, financial analysis, web search, and entity management. The packs you turn on determine what kinds of work the assistant can do during portal sessions on that station.

Question 21

Why is a tool pack on my station greyed out, and why won't the assistant use it?

Accepted Answer

That pack isn't included in your current plan. Plans decide which tool packs are available, and a station can keep a pack that a later plan change excluded — so instead of removing it, we mark it inactive: the chip stays visible but dimmed, the pack is badged "Inactive on your plan" on the Toolpacks page, and it can't be added to another station until the plan includes it. Its tools are absent from portal sessions, which is why the assistant will tell you the capability isn't on your plan rather than pretending it doesn't exist. What's gated is the *assistant's* toolset, not the app: where a screen exists for the same work — creating an entity and its columns, for example — you can still do it yourself regardless of plan. Nothing was deleted, and nothing needs re-attaching: change the plan in Settings → Subscription & Billing and the pack is live again in your next portal session.

Question 22

How do I save results from a portal session?

Accepted Answer

When the assistant returns a chart, table, or text block you want to keep, click the pin action on that portal result. Pinned results show up on your dashboard and on the Pinned Results page so you can return to them without rerunning the conversation.

Question 23

What's the difference between a portal and a portal result?

Accepted Answer

A portal is the whole chat session — the conversation, the messages, the context. A portal result is a single piece of structured output (a chart, a table, a text block) produced by the assistant inside one of the messages. You pin portal results, not portals.

Question 24

Why do some results appear inline and others as a separate streamed table?

Accepted Answer

It depends on size, and the assistant doesn't choose — it's automatic. A small result comes back inline inside the message. A larger one returns a query handle: the full rows stream into a table or chart you can scroll, while the assistant keeps only a small preview so a big result never crowds out the conversation. You still see every row either way.

Question 25

How do I refresh a chart, map, or table with the latest data?

Accepted Answer

You usually don't have to. Every visualization — chart, map, or table, at any size — remembers the query behind it, so when you reopen a session it reloads current data on its own instead of showing a stale snapshot; no need to ask the assistant again. If you want to be sure it's current right now, each one has a refresh button, and an “Updated … ago” note tells you how fresh the data is. A refresh re-runs the whole query, so a “top 10” list picks up a new leader rather than just restating the old rows. If a refresh can't reach your data, the widget keeps showing the last good result and says so instead of going blank. Refreshing is always free — it never uses your usage allocation. (If a visualization predates this feature, it'll say so and you can re-run the prompt to regenerate it.)

Question 26

Can I show my data on a map?

Accepted Answer

Yes, if your data has location. When a source carries geographic shapes (for example an ArcGIS parcel layer) they're imported as a geometry column; latitude/longitude number columns work too. If your data has only text addresses, the assistant can geocode them into map points — one address on the fly, or a whole column as a background job (a repeated address is cached and free). Then just ask — “show all vacant parcels on a map, colored by zoning” — and the assistant renders an interactive map you can pan, zoom, and click to inspect. Spatial questions like distances and areas are answered directly from your data as well. Mapping is part of the GIS tool pack, available on the Pro and Enterprise plans; add it to a station like any other tool pack.

Question 27

Do failed tool calls use up my usage allocation?

Accepted Answer

No. Some tools consume usage units from your organization's monthly allocation when they run in a portal session — mainly web search and heavier analytics like clustering. You're charged only when a tool call succeeds: if a call fails (for example, a search provider is briefly unavailable), it costs nothing. Your allocation resets at the start of each billing period, and you can see what's left on the Settings → Organization page and in a portal session's details — the Itemized usage button there lists every charged call (which tool, how many units, when, and who ran it).

Question 28

Why are the assistant's answers vague or missing my data?

Accepted Answer

Almost always because the station has nothing to answer from. A portal answers from records that have actually been imported into the station's entities — not from general knowledge — so a station with no connected source, or one whose sync hasn't run yet, can only answer in generalities. Open the station and check that it has a connector instance and that its entities have records. If a source is connected but empty, run a sync and wait for the job to finish, then ask again.

Question 29

How should I word my questions to get better answers?

Accepted Answer

Two things help more than anything else. Ask about one thing at a time — a narrow question routes cleanly to the right tool, while a compound one gives the assistant several jobs at once and no clear place to start. And use the station's own vocabulary: name entities, columns, and values the way they appear in your data, because that's what the assistant matches against. If your column is called subscription level, ask about subscription level rather than plan tier.

Question 30

Why does the assistant say my data is incomplete while an import is running?

Accepted Answer

Because it is, for now. While a background job is importing or syncing a connector instance, that data is still arriving and the records it owns are read-only — syncing, editing fields, and deleting are paused until the job finishes, and the station's detail page says so while it runs. Ask again once the job reaches a terminal state and the answer will reflect the full data. Checking for a running job is worth doing before you trust a number that looks off.

Question 31

What do job statuses mean?

Accepted Answer

Pending — queued, not started yet. Active — currently running. Completed — finished successfully. Failed — stopped because of an error. Stalled — appears stuck and may need attention. Cancelled — stopped by you. Awaiting confirmation — waiting on input from you before continuing.

Question 32

Why did my job fail?

Accepted Answer

Open the job from the Jobs page to see the error details — the most common causes are invalid source credentials, malformed data that fails column-definition validation, network timeouts to the source, or insufficient permissions on the connector. Fix the underlying issue and re-run the job.

What Portals AI does

Connect anything you already have

Agree on what the fields mean

Ask, don't query

Extend what the agent can do