Questions
What people ask us most about ZeaData. If yours is not here, ask us directly.
The product
What is ZeaData?
An AI-powered data intelligence platform. Teams discover approved data, ask questions in plain English and build dashboards, while ZeaData keeps one set of business definitions, applies each person's access to every query and records every answer.
People use it to ask questions in plain English, build dashboards, write SQL, and pull governed data into Excel, Power BI and AI assistants.
Does ZeaData replace Power BI or Excel?
It does not have to. ZeaData feeds Excel and Power BI with governed data, with each person's access on every refresh, and keeps the definitions and rules in one place. You can use ZeaData's own dashboards, your existing tools, or both.
How are numbers kept consistent?
Certified metrics hold the definition of a number: the calculation, its dimensions, time grains and filters. Verified questions hold reviewed answers to common questions. Chat, dashboards, Excel and AI assistants all use them, so the same question gets the same answer.
What happens when the data changes upstream?
Automatic monitors watch every table of a certified data product for late data, unusual row counts and changed columns, with no rules to write. An incident names the metrics, dashboard tiles, verified questions and quality rules it affects and notifies the product's owner and steward.
Can we keep our dbt tests and other quality checks?
Yes. dbt tests, Great Expectations suites and Soda checks import as ZeaData quality rules with their warning levels, and your pipelines can send the results of any other check to ZeaData's results API.
Data and AI
Does ZeaData copy our data?
ZeaData connects to your existing data environment, with connector-specific caching and configurable result retention. Databases and Microsoft Fabric are queried where they are, with each person's access. Tables in a data lake are read into a cache on storage inside your deployment so they can be analyzed.
Saved answers keep their result rows unless your administrators turn that off, and they decide how long chat history is kept.
Which AI model does it use?
Azure OpenAI in your own subscription, or an OpenAI-compatible endpoint you approve. ZeaData only calls the hosts on your allow-list and refuses any other.
Certified metrics, verified questions and dashboards built from them work without any model.
What does the AI model see?
To write SQL and summaries, the model receives the question, descriptions of the tables involved and small samples of results. Values from sensitive columns are masked in what it sees, even when the person asking may see them, and connection settings are never sent.
SQL Explain sends only the SQL, with literal values removed. Explanations of changes and forecasts are computed without a model.
Do we need an AI model at all?
Not for certified metrics, verified questions, dashboards built from them, explanations of changes or forecasts. Free-form questions, AI accuracy tests, SQL Explain and the AI path of the dashboard planner need one.
Can Claude, Copilot or other assistants use ZeaData?
Yes, over MCP. An assistant signs in with its owner's data key or Microsoft Entra token and gets exactly what its owner may see. Questions it asks are recorded in the ledger, and administrators can switch outside assistants off.
Can people use the data in Excel and Power BI?
Yes. Each data product offers snapshot downloads, a refreshable Excel workbook and an OData feed for Power BI, all with the person's own access. Every refresh is recorded in the ledger.
Administrators can switch downloads and feeds off for the whole organization.
Security and deployment
How does access control work?
People request access to a data product's tables, for a set period or until revoked, with or without sensitive fields, and the product's approvers decide. Row rules use attributes such as office or region, which can be synced from Microsoft Entra ID.
ZeaData rewrites every query with those rules before it runs, on every channel, and refuses the query if it cannot apply them.
What can we show an auditor?
The query ledger records every answer, chained by SHA-256 fingerprints. The audit log records sign-ins, access changes and exports, and the database refuses to change or delete its events. Evidence packs bundle both with grants, row rules and classifications, plus a script your auditors can run to check every fingerprint.
Is ZeaData certified for SOC 2 or ISO 27001?
Ask us for our current certification status.
The product includes a trust center that checks its security controls live and maps each one to the SOC 2 criteria and ISO 27001 controls it supports. It is a self-assessment that helps your auditors, not an audit opinion.
Where does it run?
In your own Azure subscription, deployed with our templates on a private network, or as containers on your own servers. We have no access to a private deployment unless you grant it.
How do people sign in?
With Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on, or with ZeaData accounts. Groups and person attributes from Entra ID can drive row rules.