Rill Data

Rill | Why Pivot Tables Never Die This blog is about how the simplest tools often solve the hardest problems. Simon Spati explores why pivot tables have endured for over decades, how they evolved in the AI era, and why they might be t...

Want to dive deeper into pivot tables? Check out this blog which explores why pivot tables have endured for over three decades, how they may evolve in the AI era, and why they will continue to be the key to making business intelligence (BI) accessible to everyone.

www.rilldata.com/blog/why-piv...

💡Tip Thursday - sometimes all you want is your data in a table and everything else out of the way💡

Rill’s metrics first approach means all the KPIs & visualizations in the Explore dashboard are also available in a pivot table letting you quickly summarize the data.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx6o...

Podcast Movement 2025 | Rill Data Register now for Podcast Movement 2025.

We are proud to power self-serve analytics at leading audio companies. Reporting in podcasting is crucial, but at the same time inventory is split across platforms making it hard to get the full picture.

Let’s meet & talk fast dashboards at Podcast Movement:
www.rilldata.com/events/podca...

💡Tip Thursday - Did you know that the Rill leaderboard is a leaderboard for *every* dimension in the model?💡

The leaderboard is super powerful. It’s a combination of a bar chart + a table. Plus if you have the period comparison selected, you can easily see changes by value and percent.

Rill 0.68 – Edit exported data columns in Reports, Time pills in Pivot, Schedule Alerts and Custom Sort Order in Canvas! | Rill ⚡ Rill Developer is a tool that makes it effortless to transform your datasets with SQL and create fast, exploratory dashboards. Rill Cloud then enables shared collaboration at scale.

As always, you can find more details in our release notes. Please don't hesitate to reach out and let us know what you think!

docs.rilldata.com/notes/0.68

Rill 0.68 is out with new features that saves you time and increases productivity.
✅ Check out the single, unified time pill, letting you quickly switch between different time grains.
✅ Edit the underlying data columns included in your report exports.
✅ Schedule alerts to run at specific times.

💡Tip Thursday - use the KPI widget to quickly compare your key metrics💡

✅See all your metrics at once
✅Re-order on the fly
✅Intuitive spark lines show comparison over time

Check out all the tutorials on YouTube👇
youtu.be/Dqkfp6F_9y4?...

Rill | Data Engineering Postcard Series A comprehensive curated list of data engineering resources including podcasts, newsletters, blogs, YouTube channels, GitHub handbooks, whitepapers, courses, books, and open source projects. Features t...

What’s your favorite way to learn about rising tools and trends in the data space?

ICYMI - check out our summer vacation guide. From quick podcast episodes to deep-dive papers, it’s a great way for people curious about data, analytics, and AI to learn more.

www.rilldata.com/blog/data-en...

LLMs give their best results when they have good context. For example: knowing how to include Explore dashboard links in their responses.

@jonwalls.dev shows how to include ai_instructions to your model, which automatically adds the context for every conversation.

docs.rilldata.com/explore/mcp#...

The first video provides a high-level introduction to exploring data with Rill.

Key features include:
⭐KPIs
⭐Leaderboards
⭐Filtering, comparing, and excluding
⭐Pivot tables
⭐Time dimension detail
⭐Bookmarks
⭐Reports and alerts
⭐Secure sharing

Exploring Data with Rill - YouTube Series of short tutorials showing you how to slice'n'dice your data in Rill

Welcome to our 💡Tip Thursday💡 series where @jonwalls.dev highlights ways to slice & dice your data.

The goal of each Rill dashboard is to provide users with metrics & dimensions for various use cases and to create an interactive experience to cut data in any form.

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Check out what's new with Rill 0.67:
✅ Navigate directly from Canvas widgets to an Explore dashboard for deeper analysis.
✅ Modify the underlying filters for alerts and reports on the fly.
✅ Add model tests as a data quality check so dashboards reflect accurate info.

docs.rilldata.com/notes/0.67

YouTube video by Hoyt Emerson | The Full Data Stack Trying out the Rill Data MCP server and the seeing its power!

"I’m going to try not to pass out with excitement" 😍

MCP Servers are now letting us connect to data tools like Rill. In this video, Hoyt Emerson showcases how powerful it could be!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuy3...

Rill | Data Engineering Postcard Series A compiled list of podcasts, blogs, newsletters, open source projects, and more that provide insights into data engineering.

🏖️ Summer is around the corner, and I thought of making a summer special in the form of a Postcard Series.

This edition holds unique & insightful links to read, listen to, or enjoy while chilling at the pool or when lying on the beach, presented as 14 postcards with 3 links and a description each.

What are some things you can do in Rill Cloud?

Anything from source ingestion to modeling to creating dashboards.

✅Alerts
✅Bookmarks
✅Scheduled reports
✅Public URLs
✅Check project status

Give it a try for free and let us know what you think!

Rill Developer is designed around developers. Using a familiar IDE-like interface, developers are able to import data, create SQL models, and create metric-views.

Rill Developer gives a space to define and test any needed changes to the data or dashboards before pushing to Rill Cloud users.

Rill Cloud vs Rill Developer | Rill What is Rill Developer and Rill Cloud?

🤝Rill Developer & Rill Cloud should be used together🤝

Based on the name, it might be confusing and easy to assume that Rill Cloud is our "higher" offering but that is not the case!

Similarly, Rill Developer is not meant to be used as a standalone tool either.

docs.rilldata.com/concepts/dev...

Check out our conversational BI integration with MCP and OpenAI generation of dashboard and models, which makes the self-serve promise a reality. Everything is open-source and available on GitHub, and can be run locally with a single command.

curl rill.sh | sh

Docs👇
docs.rilldata.com/home/install

The value of conversational BI comes from what can be persistent and built on top of. We are talking 3 output types: numerical data, text insights, and visual charts.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could combine the different output types as an artifact in our BI tool?

www.rilldata.com/blog/has-sel...

ICYMI - listen to @medriscoll.com share his hot takes.

Philosophy Behind BI Tools (2:04)
Efficiency Gains with Code (19:00)
Analytics Landscape Overview (30:59)
Future of BI Architecture (33:04)
AI’s Role in Analytics (35:07)
The Crowded BI Market (42:03)

datastackshow.com/podcast/ai-a...

Tips for using Claude Desktop with Rill:

6⃣Opus and Extended Thinking for deeper investigations
7⃣Tell it what to do with the response to your question
8⃣Review and challenge the responses
9⃣Ask for advice and explanations
🔟If you want to build a data application, think about using a custom API

Tips for using Claude Desktop with Rill:

1⃣Configure Claude Desktop to use Rill
2⃣Add ai_instructions to your model
3⃣Create a custom style
4⃣It's like a training role play – give lots of context
5⃣Ask specific questions

Rill | Top 10 tips for using Claude Desktop with Rill Data To get the most out of your data conversations, we've compiled a list of our top 10 tips. Get connected, try them out, and let us know if you find any new techniques!

AI language models make it possible to talk directly to your data. This is particularly true when you have a metrics layer like Rill.

@jonwalls.dev compiled a blog and video of our top 10 tips! Try them out and let us know if you find any new techniques.

www.rilldata.com/blog/top-10-...

Rill | Has Self-Serve BI Finally Arrived Thanks to AI? This blog examines the different conversational styles emerging in BI, the three distinct output types that matter most, and why Model Context Protocol (MCP) represents such a fundamental shift.

After 22 years in data, has «self-serve BI» finally arrived in 2025?

Since 2003, I've worked in the industry to promote self-serve analytics while business users still waited weeks for simple insights. From pixel-perfect to Tableau dashboards to dbt transformations—getting closer, but never quite.

Here's an example of how Rill's MCP integration with Claude Desktop works.

The magic is that it's connected to the Rill API and its underlying database, which means it can autonomously figure out your request with actual queries against its database and existing metrics.

Rill | Has Self-Serve BI Finally Arrived Thanks to AI? This blog examines the different conversational styles emerging in BI, the three distinct output types that matter most, and why Model Context Protocol (MCP) represents such a fundamental shift.

In our GenBI Part 2 blog, @ssp.sh shares that the future of BI is declarative, contextual, and AI-powered. Conversational BI reduces manual work, enables faster iterations, and expands the number of people who can create meaningful BI insights.

Read the full blog👇
www.rilldata.com/blog/has-sel...

What Can You Ask
⭐️“Show me the monthly active users”
⭐️“Break down conversion rates by channel”
⭐️ "Do I have any outliers in website views? Provide insights"

Why You'll Love it
⭐️Fast, human-like answers from your metrics
⭐️Always synced with your latest Rill dashboards

docs.rilldata.com/explore/mcp

Have you tried it yet? Built based on customer requests, the Rill MCP is live!

By querying data that already has pre-defined measures and dimensions, the responses you get are guaranteed to be as accurate and consistent as the metrics displayed in your Rill dashboards.

Rill | Data Driven Leader Series - Episode 1 - Disco In our inaugural episode of our Data Driven Leaders Series, we interview Kat Tomlin, Director of Business Operations at Disco. Disco is an AI powered commerce media network that connects millions of s...

The first episode of our Data Driven Leaders Series centers on how Rill helps to identify and define key metrics at a growing e-commerce company.

Check out the link below to watch the full interview and hear more insights on how best to evaluate data tools.

www.rilldata.com/blog/data-dr...

"When you're evaluating tools as a data driven user put yourself in the shoes of the non-technical user. Will they be able to go in and not only understand the tool, but ideally use the tool? We want to create power users across the organization. Rill has absolutely been a game changer for us".