AI Agent in Analytics: What It Is and How to Use It

Source: Dev.to

TL;DR: Bold BI’s AI Agent in Analytics is a built‑in dashboard feature that lets business owners and decision‑makers get instant answers from their dashboards by asking questions in plain English. No longer need dashboard designers or teams for every insight—just immediate charts, summaries, and deeper insights that help you act faster and run your business with clarity.

Introduction

Dashboards contain powerful data, but CFOs, CMOs, and business owners often need more than what’s already displayed to dig deeper into trends, uncover hidden patterns, and get answers to follow‑up questions. Bold BI’s AI Agent makes this possible by enabling deeper insights.

Imagine a sales dashboard showing the top five countries by revenue. Traditionally, expanding this view requires creating a ticket and waiting for the dashboard team to add a new visual. With AI Agent, you simply ask:

“Show the next five countries by sales.”

Within seconds, the answer appears as a new chart or text, and if you want to keep this insight, you can append the generated widget to your dashboard.

This demonstrates how AI Agent transforms interactive dashboards into conversational analytics—bridging the gap between data and decision‑making while making insights faster, smarter, and accessible to everyone.

Before we look at its benefits, let’s first understand what an AI Agent actually is and how it fits into your analytics workflow.

What Is an AI Agent in Analytics?

The AI Agent is an intelligent conversational assistant integrated into the View Mode of Bold BI dashboards, accessible from the bottom‑right corner of the dashboard interface. It helps you analyze data using everyday language without leaving the dashboard context. Powered by advanced large language models (LLMs), it enables you to:

• Analyze data directly inside dashboards by asking questions in natural language.
• Receive conversational replies that highlight patterns, trends, and comparisons for deeper insights.
• View AI‑generated responses and visualizations instantly, making dashboard interpretation faster and more intuitive.

Now that you know what AI Agent does, the next question is—why does it matter for you?

Why AI Agent in Analytics Is Important

• Instant answers for faster decisions: Ask a question in plain English and get accurate charts or summaries immediately, helping you make confident decisions without delays or manual analysis.
• Accessible for all leaders: CFOs, CMOs, and business owners can access insights without hiring additional dashboard designers or analytics teams—saving time and money.
• Conversational analysis: Interact with your dashboard like a chat—ask anything, refine your question, and get deeper insights instantly.
• Accuracy and reliability: Responses are generated from real‑time dashboard data based on your input, eliminating manual design and reducing human error. This ensures consistent, trustworthy insights for critical business operations.

3 Major Types of AI Agents in Bold BI

Bold BI provides three AI‑powered analytics options for conversational analytics, each tailored for specific roles and scenarios. These agents help you design dashboards, analyze data, and perform server‑side queries efficiently.

AI Copilot – Designer Agent

Focused on dashboard creation and customization, AI Copilot assists designers in building visually appealing dashboards quickly. It appears as a panel on the right side of the dashboard designer interface, letting you create visuals, customize layouts, and ask data‑related questions using natural language.

Typical scenarios

• Teams need dashboards quickly to support business decisions, but manual design takes time and requires specialized skills. Tight deadlines can slow reporting and decision‑making.

How AI Copilot solves this

• Type natural language commands such as “Create a visual of units in stock by product category in a bar chart” or “Change the background color to blue and adjust chart titles.”
• The agent automatically generates visuals or entire dashboards and applies styling changes using the configured data source, saving hours of manual work.

Learn more in the “AI Copilot for Analytics: Build Better Dashboards Quickly” blog.

AI Agent – Viewer

Designed for enterprise decision‑makers who need to interpret and interact with dashboards, AI Agent provides insights and summaries for better decision‑making. It appears as a panel on the right side of the dashboard view mode.

Typical scenarios

• A retail manager needs to understand a sudden drop in revenue but lacks time to analyze multiple charts or write queries, creating dependency on technical teams.

How AI Agent solves this

• Ask questions like “Which products are the top sellers across all stores?” or “Summarize overall sales figures for October?” directly in the dashboard view.
• The agent responds with clear visuals or concise summaries, making it easy to spot patterns and take action instantly.

AI Assistant – Server‑Side Agent

A powerful backend agent that analyzes data sources directly and answers queries with visuals or text, offering flexibility across all dashboards and data sources. It is accessed from the left navigation panel under Data Sources, providing a centralized interface for querying across dashboards.

Typical scenarios

• Decision‑makers need an organization‑wide performance summary without opening multiple dashboards; gathering data from various sources is inefficient and time‑consuming.

How AI Assistant solves this

• Type queries such as “Show me the number of customer orders from the sales analysis data” in the centralized interface.
• The assistant uses the selected dashboard or data source to return visual charts or summaries, providing a single point of interaction without switching tabs or building multiple dashboards.

Learn more in the documentation.

How to Use AI Agent in Real‑Time

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