Bring Ask Sigma To Your End Users—Right Inside Your App

There’s a lot of AI out there that feels like magic—until you peek behind the scenes and realize it’s all for show. A slick demo. A flashy UI. But in practice? It’s rigid, shallow, and breaks the second a user asks the wrong question.

Ask Sigma was built to do more than some sleight of hand. 

It’s not a magic trick, but a new way to interact with data. Directly inside the product, in context, at the exact moment a user needs answers. They can ask a question in plain language, and not only do they get a response—they see how it was built. 

That’s the real magic—discoverability, trust, and exploration. Users find what matters, see exactly how it was built, can tweak anything, and keep moving forward. That’s Ask Sigma.

And now, it’s available to embed directly into your product. You can turn it on today and give your customers the same experience—plain-language questions, governed answers, and full transparency—right inside your app. No extra tools, no context switching. Just the fastest path from question to clarity, now fully in your hands.

Embedded AI where the work really happens

When teams embed analytics into their products, they’re embedding context. It’s what makes data relevant. AI on its own is abstract. But if you ground AI in a product—or in the outcome a user is trying to drive—it becomes a lot more real.

If you look at Sigma’s history, we’ve always been about making data accessible to business users—especially people who don’t write SQL. Ask Sigma takes that mission further. Anyone—store managers, field teams, end users—can get answers without waiting on the data team or worrying about structure. The interface meets them where they are: inside the product, inside the dashboard, in the middle of the work they’re doing. No jumping out of the flow, searching for help, or opening another tool. The user can just ask a question right there. 

And that’s the breakthrough: lowering the barrier to entry while giving users clarity, control, and a path forward. Ask Sigma isn’t just simplifying the interface—it’s making AI truly useful inside the product.

If you can’t see how it works, don’t trust it

A lot of AI features really remind me of The Wizard of Oz. At first, there’s a booming voice, dazzling spectacles, some small fireworks. Then you pull back the curtain and realize it’s just somebody pushing buttons.

That’s what most AI in analytics feels like. There’s no transparency. Go beyond the five pre-curated, vaporware questions, and the AI breaks. Many products claim their AI is “accurate,” but they’re black boxes. If the system gives you an answer and you can’t see how it got there, you’re stuck blindly trusting it.

Ask Sigma takes the opposite approach. It’s intentionally transparent. It was built to show its work. You can see every step: what data was pulled, what filters applied, what formulas used. And if something looks off, you can change it—adjust the data, modify the logic, and get the answer you actually need.

Sure, the magic trick might look cool. But they’re just fun and games until it’s time to make a real decision and see the wizard behind the curtain. That’s where Ask Sigma stands out.

Dashboards that don’t need babysitting

Transparency doesn’t just build trust—it unlocks self-service. Users can ask their own questions and explore freely. And because they can see how it all works, creators don’t have to lock everything down to keep it safe.

That balance matters. You have users with different skill levels, different permissions—so having a governed experience, but still allowing exploration within it, is crucial. Users want an experience that lets them freely explore and ask questions within the data available to them. If AI’s too open ended, it’s risky. If it’s too locked down, it just gets in the way. 

Ask Sigma brings those two worlds together. It respects all the security policies already in place. Users only get answers based on what they’re permissioned to see—but within that boundary, they can explore, build, and keep going.

This also makes onboarding easier. When someone lands in a product and the AI is already generating useful answers, they don’t need to know where to start. Even if they’ve never used a pivot table, they can get value right away. And for product and platform teams, that means less time figuring out how to build analytics into the flow and more time focused on their core product.

The one thing to know before embedding AI

What started as a spreadsheet interface for embedded analytics has evolved into something much bigger. Today, Sigma powers entire workflows inside our customers’ products. With AI built in—from viewing and exploring to triggering actions—it’s becoming the ultimate UI layer for analytics.

If you’re thinking about adding AI into embedded analytics, here’s my advice: don’t be fooled by magic tricks. Demos are fun. But once it’s in the hands of real users, no one’s wowed by AI that simply summarizes a dashboard or gives you an answer with no breakdown into how it got that answer.  That’s what we’re seeing right now—a lot of AI that doesn’t make sense in practice. NLQ interfaces that look great on stage—but never work in practice.

So think about AI from your users’ point of view. If someone says they have AI, ask them to show their work. Make them prove it works—beyond the five pre-defined questions.

Because once it’s in production, that’s what actually matters.

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