Analysis Paths
An analysis path is a friendly name for a table you analyze often — like “Operations Results” or “the P&L”. Register it once, and from then on you (and your connected AI assistant) can ask questions about it by that name, without repeating which project and which table you mean every single time.
Pick one as the workspace default, and plain questions like “why did this go up last quarter?” just work — the assistant already knows what “this” refers to.
Why Use Them
Section titled “Why Use Them”Without an analysis path, every question has to spell out exactly where the data lives — the project and the table — which gets tedious fast and is easy to get wrong. With one, you talk about your data the way you actually think about it:
- Ask by name. “Summarize the Operations Results.” instead of “summarize table
ops_summary_v3in projectEnterprise Profitability.” - Set a default. Mark your most-used table as the default and drop the name entirely — “what changed since last month?” lands on the right data automatically.
- Keep everyone consistent. When the whole team refers to “the P&L,” they all reach the same table — no guessing, no stale copies.
Register an Analysis Path
Section titled “Register an Analysis Path”If you’re a workspace administrator, you don’t need a form or a settings screen — just ask your connected AI assistant, in plain language, to register the path for you:
“Register an analysis path named Operations Results that points at the
ops_summarytable in the Enterprise Profitability project.”
The assistant confirms the path and it’s ready to use immediately. You can register as many as you like — one per table you analyze regularly.
Set a Default Path
Section titled “Set a Default Path”As an administrator, mark one path as the default so questions that don’t name a table land on it automatically:
“Make Operations Results the default analysis path.”
From then on, “what were the top movers this quarter?” or “why did the total drop?” run against that table with nothing else to specify. There’s a single default for the whole workspace, so everyone’s untargeted questions resolve to the same table. Setting a new default simply moves the crown — there’s only ever one, and the assistant tells you which it is.
Using Them
Section titled “Using Them”Once your paths are registered, just ask:
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By name — “Show me the first rows of the Operations Results.”
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By the default — “What changed versus last quarter?” (no table named — it uses the workspace default path).
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Switch freely — “Now do the same for the Forecast.” The assistant follows along, path to path.
This pairs naturally with allocation questions — see Tracing Allocations — so you can go from “why did the Operations Results move?” straight into the accounts and drivers behind it.
Who Can Set Them Up
Section titled “Who Can Set Them Up”Setting up analysis paths — registering them and choosing the default — is an administrator action, so the shared names stay clean and trustworthy for everyone. Once they exist, every member of the workspace can use them in their questions, each still seeing only the data their own permissions allow.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Answers You Can Trust — how PlaidCloud grades and caveats every AI answer
- Tracing Allocations — explain why a named result changed
- Getting Started with AI Coding Agents — connect an assistant over MCP
- Microsoft 365 Copilot — use analysis paths from Teams and Outlook