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Preview Step Data

Description

Section titled “Description”

The Data Preview drawer shows a step’s output data right inside the Visual Workflow Designer — a read-only grid of the first 100 rows with typed, sortable columns, docked at the bottom of the canvas. It’s built for the quick glance between edits: check that a join produced the columns you expect, confirm a filter actually filtered, then keep building — without opening a full Table Explorer window for every look.

Open the Preview

Section titled “Open the Preview”

There are three ways in, all landing in the same drawer:

  • Hover the step tile — a small browse (table) glyph fades in at the tile’s bottom-right corner. Click it.
  • Right-click the step and choose Preview Output Data.
  • In the Inspector, click the eye icon on any output card under the step’s Outputs section.

The drawer docks below the canvas and loads the step’s first table output.

Browse From Step to Step

Section titled “Browse From Step to Step”

While the drawer is open, clicking any other step retargets the preview to that step’s output — one click per step. Walk down a chain of steps clicking each in turn and watch the data change shape at each stage.

To close the drawer, click ✕ in its header or press Esc. (If a step is selected, the first Esc closes the drawer and the next clears the selection.)

The Drawer Header

Section titled “The Drawer Header”

The header keeps the preview honest about what you’re seeing:

  • Table name and Showing first N of ~M rows — the tilde appears when the engine reports the total as an approximation.
  • Column count.
  • Output selector — when a step writes more than one table, pick which output to preview. The first output is preselected.
  • Refresh — refetch the preview on demand.
  • Open in Table Explorer — one-click escalation to the full explorer (see below).
  • ✕ — close the drawer.

Fresh After Every Run

Section titled “Fresh After Every Run”

If the step you’re previewing runs while the drawer is open, the preview refreshes automatically once when the run completes — so after a Run This Step, the drawer already shows the new data. Returning to a step whose output hasn’t changed reopens its preview without refetching.

When You Need More: Table Explorer

Section titled “When You Need More: Table Explorer”

The preview is deliberately a glance, not a workbench — no editing, filtering, or downloading. When you need those, click Open in Table Explorer in the drawer header to open the same table in the full Table Explorer, with everything it offers.

Two cases where you’ll want that button:

  • Wide tables — the drawer renders the first 150 columns and notes that the rest are available in Table Explorer.
  • Deep dives — anything beyond the first 100 rows, or any slicing and filtering.

What the Drawer Shows When There’s Nothing to Show

Section titled “What the Drawer Shows When There’s Nothing to Show”
  • This step has no table outputs — the step writes files or dimensions instead of tables (the preview covers table outputs only).
  • No data yet — run the step to generate this table — the output table hasn’t been created yet. Run the step.
  • Table is empty — the table exists but has zero rows.

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”