Analyst workflow overview

An analyst's flow in portal looks much the same every time. You find data, you see patterns through visualization, and you share the result. This Path unpacks that flow lesson by lesson. This first lesson maps out where each piece lives before you touch anything.

Four surfaces an analyst lives in

1. Home — Recent activity, recommended resources, and the AI Assistant entry point all meet here. It's the launch pad for deciding where to go next.
2. Collection Explorer — Your organization's datasets, dashboards, and code, sorted into a tree. You can browse freely within the bounds of your permissions.
3. Dashboard — Where you combine widgets — KPIs, charts, tables, maps — onto a single canvas. It is the most common way to present analytical results to others.
4. AI Assistant — Ask in natural language where data lives, what chart to build, or for a summary, and receive suggested actions back.

Global search is not a separate surface — it is an entry point available from each of the four above. When you don't remember the exact resource name, it is the fastest route.

How the User Docs and Learn divide the work

The user docs (docs) describe what each feature does screen by screen. Learn walks you through the order to take them in from a user's point of view. The two sites are designed to hand off to each other — drop into the matching docs page whenever you want to go deeper. Switching back and forth is the intended flow.

What to take away from this lesson

• The names of the four core surfaces in portal and the question each one answers
• The difference between collections, datasets, dashboards, and widgets

Next lesson

In the next lesson you'll learn the two patterns for finding data — browsing the Collection Explorer and narrowing with global search.