Who is Insight For?

[matchatea]

Hi everyone, partner engineer here working in aviation in Southeast Asia.

We recently saw a demo of Insight, and I’m trying to better understand its intended role in the Foundry analytics stack.

From what I’ve observed so far, Insight appears to provide a modeled‑data analysis experience that sits between Object Explorer (discovery and browsing) and Contour (dataset‑level analysis). However, in practice, the current path‑based object set workflows feel more limited than either tool, particularly when it comes to deeper analytical tasks.

I also noticed that opening an object type now routes into Insight instead of the traditional Object Explorer analysis view. As a partner, we’re trying to decide when and how to position Insight to customers, but today it’s not yet clear to us:

• What concrete advantages Insight offers over Object Explorer for analytical workflows

• And why users wouldn’t move directly to Contour once they need richer transformations, calculations, or derived columns

While I understand Insight operates at the Ontology layer rather than on datasets, the current feature set feels constrained for building meaningful analyses — especially for users who need non‑trivial calculations or richer data manipulation.

Two questions I’d really appreciate clarification on:

1. Is Insight intended to replace the analysis functionality of Object Explorer over time, while Object Explorer remains primarily a discovery and navigation surface?

2. What types of use cases genuinely benefit from Insight today, compared to staying in Object Explorer or going straight to Contour?

I’d love to hear from folks who’ve adopted Insight more deeply or have guidance on how it’s intended to evolve.

[VenkatPolimera]

I too have noticed in Object Explorer message poping up with " Try Insight, Foundry’s new anlaysis App" – Open in Insight". Could see pretty much Quiver options in Insight as well and Map tab ( disabled now). Lets explore more and share if i find any.

In addition to it. Could see other new ones to Open in - Workflow Lineage & AIP Analyst.

[green]

We’ve also had a lot of confused users who suddenly see Insight views, instead of the previous Object Explorer view. i.e. if you now open a saved Exploration either from your favourites on the left side bar, or from a Compass folder, it doesn’t open in the saves search view you want, it opens in Insight.

But if you open the saved Exploration from the ‘Explorations’ drop down in the top right, it opens in the previous Object Explorer view.

In the Ontology Manager the Object Explorer has vanished from the ‘Open in’ drop down, why?

If you click on a object name on the backing dataset it defaults again to Insight, but opening an object type from the Ontology front page brings up the Explorer view.

It would be best if there was a preference option (like with Code Repositories and Code Workspaces) what your preferred Object viewing tool is (could add Quiver to the list as well I guess).

[slaczay]

Thanks for posting this question! I’ve shared some thoughts from the product team below, which will hopefully help you better understand why Insight was launched and how it fits into the suite of analytics products, both today and in the future.

Insight lets you build step-by-step analysis paths to filter objects, follow object links, aggregate results, and create visualizations. It’s designed for users to be able to do ad hoc analysis, longer form investigation-style workflows, and drill-down analysis. As an out-of-the-box app, Insight is there to support a wide range of users and workflows, to explore, analyze and build object sets from the ontology.

Insight brings several meaningful improvements over Object Explorer:

• Insight has more features - Insight offers Ontology SQL, run-time Derived Properties and Geo-filtering in Maps, within a single analysis surface, giving you access to richer capabilities without leaving the app.

• Step-by-step analysis paths - Insight lets you build up an analysis incrementally in a logical flow. Click on any card and see the data represented at that point in the analysis. Disable cards to understand how they impact the data. Easily drag from any card in a path to a new path, to compare analysis.

• Object Sets as a first-class concept - Insight is the home for building and viewing Object Sets that are increasingly usable across the platform. This makes your analysis more portable and more valuable in other applications.

• A modern foundation - Insight was built closely with customers across sectors who need analytical tooling for the ontology. Built on the latest infrastructure, Insight will continue to receive new capabilities with faster development cycles and better support.

Long-term plan: Insight and Object Explorer

The long-term plan is to consolidate Insight and Object Explorer. Insight was built from the ground up as a modernized, more powerful application for ontology analysis, and it already has near feature parity with Object Explorer’s analytical tools. As you noted, opening an object type/set now routes into Insight. That’s intentional and reflects that we are fully investing into Insight as the long-term application for ontology analysis.

That said, we know Object Explorer has been around for a long time and supports a wide range of workflows. That’s important, and we don’t want to disrupt ongoing critical workflows. There are still some feature gaps, like nested filters, and we’re investing in the discovery and browsing workflows within Insight. This work is happening right now and you will see continuous improvements of Insight throughout the year. If you’re running into something that Insight doesn’t handle well today, we want to hear about it. Your feedback directly shapes our roadmap, so please comment here or reach out to your Palantir partner.

Insight and Contour

This comes down to the difference between working in the ontology versus working around it. Contour is the go-to app for point-and-click analysis on datasets, for example when working with data in a pipeline, debugging an issue, or working with uploaded data. Contour is excellent for these workflows and you should continue to use it in these cases.

However, the ontology is where compounding value can be realized and where workflows, dashboards, and agentic use cases are powered. Most of the tools we provide in Insight are designed for finding a set of objects within the construct of your ontology. If you have different workflows, that may be why you feel there are missing capabilities. Insight is not a replacement for Contour, but we do believe you should primarily work with the Ontology, and it’s important to us that we provide you with the best possible tools. If there are any specific capabilities from Contour that you would like to see in Insight please let us know!

[slaczay]

@green

We did share platform-wide communication about the launch of Insight, but I do understand that some users may have been confused by the change. Opening object types or object sets from OE keeps you within OE, so as not to be jarring and to keep you within the application.

Everywhere else in Foundry will route you to Insight as this is our primary tool for ontology analysis. Object Explorer will continue to exists for a while - with the banner letting people know about Insight. In the meantime our team is working hard to integrate feature requests and continuously update UX as we get feedback.

[green]

@slaczay thanks for the extensive reply.

I agree that for analysis Insight is clearly much better, and already has features that we missed from OE, such as:

• Derived columns, and joining data from other objects - the previous work around was a Workshop with a basic object table where these things were possible
• Multiple link-hop filtering - again often required the move to Workshop
• A much clearer-search around mechanism than the ‘pivot’ feature in OE
• More extensive charting features

and so it exists in the missing middle ground, like Contour does for data, between a basic search and having to create a Workshop application/pipeline.

The one thing that hopefully won’t be lost with the move away from OE is the discoverability. Once you know what objects you want, and what to analyse - Insight is the better choice - but you already have to know what object type you want.

We have a lot of users who are subject matter experts and technically skilled, but not data analysts or programmers. For them OE was a great starting point because of the simplicity of the ‘omni-search’ feature.

They often don’t know which object they’re after or which property might contain the correct data. They often start by just typing what they want into the omni-box and seeing what results they get to find the object or object type appears. e.g. if they start with searching “ZIP 30313” looking for census or related data for things like:

• Demographics
• Real estate prices
• Transit features
• Infrastructure
• Business addresses

and then seeing different objects, or properties, related to the above data¹. For them that was very ‘answer orientated’ and not ‘analysis orientated’, especially when using Foundry as the go-to place to discover their organisation’s data, this means a lot.

They often also don’t want to analyse aggregate data, they want information in a specific object. For that a search box that works somewhat like Google, and then a few basic filters is all they want. This is a great gateway and makes them autonomous. If it appears ‘too complex’, they’re likely to request support and put off doing something they could do on their own.

On that note I’m happy to see that the default in Insight is still ‘search for any value’ and doesn’t force you to pick a specific property first, thanks.

Regarding the roll out (I notice Quiver has appeared in that drop down since I posted above screenshot, thank you); I think what surprised people is that this became the default with little warning, which caught both us (devs and PMs) off guard, and so we couldn’t warn our users before it happened.

Looking forward to seeing what other features come soon.

1: I know this doesn’t search all objects of all types, only a limited subset, and you don’t see all possible answers, and you should quickly move to a specific object type, but discovery, and options, not definitive answers, are goal when you start looking for things.

[gdf]

I echo the previous comments. Object Explorer’s main strength is its intuitive, Google-like simplicity, which empowers users without data analysis backgrounds to conduct their own initial investigations.

The transition to Insight has created significant friction. We previously trained our users to use the lineage view as a launchpad, right-clicking objects to open them in OE. This workflow was so intuitive that we never received support requests. Now, however, we are facing a wave of complaints from users who find the new process over-complicated and confusing.

Furthermore, because we provide custom-built workshop applications, users perceive Object Explorer as one of our own tools. They assume we are responsible for these changes and are actively asking us to roll them back.

[slaczay]

Thanks @green . I totally agree with you. General search and discoverability is fundamentally different from analysis and the capabilities Insight targets. OE continues to be the search and discovery tool for the ontology, although we do have plans to improve that experience.

The workflow you are describing - searching across the ontology to get to specific Object View, is well catered for in OE and something we are looking into better serving in the future. But we are very aware that this is a common and important workflow on the platform.

Thanks, and appreciate the feedback!

[slaczay]

Hey @gdf Happy to get more feedback or handle your issues as a support query off line. You can also message me directly here and we can discuss any specific issues that we can fix for you quickly.

[gdf]

Thank you @slaczay, our mains request is to:

1- add an option Explore Objects (that open Object Type in Explorer) in the Lineage contextual menu

2- rename the option View Objects in Lineage contextual menu to Analyse with Insight

3- add option Open in Explorer in Object Manager

4-add option Open in Explorer in Insight-Workbook {… menu]

5- make the yellow banner deletable by user in workshop

Best regards.

[chlor8]

As someone who found Object explorer incredibly clunky at its base, I welcomed the change to Insights.

Maybe some of you have really great views, templates, etc. But for my area I found Object explorer lacking. Whenever I wanted to simply search and explore my objects (coming from the dataset world), it was horrible.

I prefer Insights and hope that some of the best parts of Ontology explorer can come over, but I won’t miss it if it ever got deprecated.

[gdf]

I just noticed this button, and it’s a fantastic improvement. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t there yesterday, so I assume it was added recently. If so, I’d like to thank the Palantir team for such a quick turnaround.

However, if it was already there and I simply missed it, please accept my apologies for my previous comments.