Astrato Blog | Insights on Modern BI, AI, and Data Innovation

Introducing the Astrato Excel Add-in

Connect Excel to your governed data. Your dashboards' numbers land in the grid as live formulas that refresh on demand without manual exports.

Introducing Astrato’s Nash AI

Your team’s agentic BI assistant – it builds the trusted data model first, then the dashboards on top, all in plain language. Nash AI is in public preview now.

Snowflake Cortex LLM Generated Insights + Tables into Slack & Teams

Did you know you can add Snowflake GenAI Insight Summaries powered by Snowflake (and table/view reporting) to Slack & Teams, directly using Snowflake?

11 Best Practices to Optimize Snowflake

Snowflake’s powerful platform is architecturally different from almost every traditional database system and cloud data warehouse. Snowflake has completely separate compute and storage, and both tiers of the platform are near-instantly elastic.

8 Best Omni Analytics Competitors and Alternatives for 2026

Looking for Omni Analytics competitors in 2026? Compare the 8 best Omni Analytics alternatives including Astrato, Looker, Sigma, and Hex for modern BI.

9 Best ThoughtSpot Competitors and Alternatives for 2026

Looking for ThoughtSpot competitors in 2026? Compare the 9 best ThoughtSpot alternatives including Astrato, Power BI, Tableau, Sigma, Hex, and more.

How to Share an Excel File With Live Data Securely

Sharing a connected Excel file can leak your database credentials or break for the recipient. How to share live-data Excel files securely — cached data travels, no login to read, per-user access.

Live Pipeline & Forecast Reports in Excel for RevOps

Keep your RevOps pipeline and forecast workbook up to date automatically. Bring live, governed CRM and warehouse data into Excel — refreshed, not rebuilt from a weekly export.

Embedded BI for Databricks: AI/BI vs. Third-Party in 2026

Databricks AI/BI now embeds dashboards externally. So when do you still need a third-party platform? A decision guide for data platform teams.

Embedded Analytics for BigQuery: Best BI Platforms 2026

Compare embedded analytics platforms for BigQuery — Astrato, Sigma, Looker, Looker Studio, Power BI, Metabase. Built for product teams in Slack.

Guided Self-Service Analytics: A Practical Guide

Self-service BI keeps breaking. Guided self-service fixes it: the data team designs the path, business users move freely within it. Here's how.

Self-Service BI on Snowflake: Guide for Non-Technical Teams

Every BI vendor claims self-service in 2026. A four-level spectrum, five evaluation questions, and an honest comparison of the platforms that compete on Snowflake.

How to Share an Excel File With Live Data Securely

Sharing a connected Excel file can leak your database credentials or break for the recipient. How to share live-data Excel files securely — cached data travels, no login to read, per-user access.

Live Pipeline & Forecast Reports in Excel for RevOps

Keep your RevOps pipeline and forecast workbook up to date automatically. Bring live, governed CRM and warehouse data into Excel — refreshed, not rebuilt from a weekly export.

What-if analysis in Excel, on live warehouse data

Run what-if and scenario analysis in Excel — Data Tables, Goal Seek, Scenario Manager — on live, governed warehouse data. Change an assumption and re-query, without exporting a fresh copy each time.

End Shadow Spreadsheets Without Banning Excel

Data teams can’t stop people using Excel — so bring governance to it. How to end shadow spreadsheets with row-level security, shared definitions and lineage in real Excel.

Live, Governed Data in Excel: The Complete Guide (No Exports)

How to bring live, governed data into Excel — as native formulas that refresh on demand, no exports. Methods, governance, per-warehouse setup, and role-by-role use cases.

Refreshable Finance Reports in Excel: End the Month-End Export

Build your month-end finance pack once and refresh it in a click. Keep your pivots, formulas and formatting — pull live, governed data into Excel instead of re-exporting every cycle.

How to connect Snowflake to Excel with live, governed data

Connect Snowflake to Excel and query live data as native formulas — no ODBC drivers, no DSN setup, no manual exports. A governed alternative to Power Query, with per-user permissions.