What is shared with Actian¶
Actian develops AI Analyst in every delivery mode, including when your organization runs it on its own infrastructure. To fix problems, AI Analyst can pass two kinds of report to Actian:
- Bug reports: problems people describe with Report a problem or Report a Bug.
- Engineering flags: product defects or tooling gaps that the AI Analyst and Steward agents notice and record on their own.
This page explains what each contains and where it goes. For how AI Analyst handles your data with AI providers, diagnostic traces and storage, see How AI Analyst handles your data.
At a glance¶
| Deployment | Bug reports | Engineering flags |
|---|---|---|
| Actian SaaS | Stored, and sent to Actian with your email address | Stored, and sent to Actian without any person's name or email |
| Connected self-managed deployment | Sent to Actian only if your deployment is set up to send them; otherwise stored on your installation, or reporting is unavailable | Sent to Actian only if your deployment is set up to send them; otherwise stored on your installation |
| Air-gapped deployment | Stored on your installation only | Stored on your installation only |
On an air-gapped deployment, an administrator can hand stored reports to Actian in a diagnostic export.
Bug reports¶
Report a problem¶
You can report a problem from three places:
| Where | Control |
|---|---|
| Under a completed answer in Explorer | Report a problem |
| Studio navigation, under Resources | Report a Bug |
| The Steward header in Studio | Report a problem (bug icon) |
To report a problem with an answer in Explorer:
- Under the answer, select Report a problem.
- In What went wrong?, describe what happened.
- Select Send report.
To report a bug from Studio:
- In the Studio navigation, under Resources, select Report a Bug.
- Describe what you did, what you expected and what happened.
- Select Submit report.
The Report a bug dialog in Studio tells you where your report goes:
- "Tell us what went wrong. We'll get a Slack ping and open a ticket." The report is sent to Actian.
- "Tell us what went wrong. Your report stays on this installation; an administrator includes it in the diagnostic export for Actian." The report is saved on your installation and nothing is sent.
The Report a problem dialogs under an answer and in Steward only say that the report is logged with the conversation's or session's context. They do not say where it goes. For those, the table above tells you where reports go for your deployment.
If Report a Bug is not in the navigation, your deployment does not take bug reports. Tell your administrator instead.
What a bug report contains¶
When a report is sent to Actian, it is sent to Actian's engineering and support teams and contains:
- Your description.
- Your email address, where AI Analyst can resolve one.
- The time of the report.
- The page address where you reported it.
- Internal identifiers for your organization and for the environment behind your Workspace.
- Identifiers of the conversation and response, or of the Steward session and turn, when you reported from one.
A support ticket may also be opened with your email address and the same details.
Each report is also recorded in your organization's audit log, including the description you wrote.
To prevent floods, you can only send a few reports in a short time. If you send the same report twice in quick succession, it is treated as one report. If you see "You've sent several reports just now. Please wait a moment before sending another.", wait and try again.
Engineering flags¶
An Engineering flag is a short report that the AI Analyst or Steward agent files for Actian engineering when it runs into something only Actian can fix: a product defect, a missing capability, or a tooling gap. It is not used for gaps in your semantic layer or problems with your data; those go to your data team as semantic-layer feedback.
What you see¶
When an agent files a flag, the steps list of the answer shows a Note an issue step with no further details. When the AI Analyst answers in Slack or Microsoft Teams, the progress shows "Noting an issue". The agents are instructed not to mention the flag in their answer.
Flags can be filed from any AI Analyst or Steward conversation, including test runs in the Studio Test panel.
What a flag contains¶
| Field | Content |
|---|---|
| Summary | Written by the agent, up to 500 characters |
| Context | Optional, written by the agent, up to 2,000 characters |
| Agent | AI Analyst or Steward |
| Identifiers | Internal identifiers for your organization and Workspace, the conversation and the response |
The message sent to Actian contains no person's name or email address. The stored record also notes which member's conversation produced the flag; on Actian SaaS, that record is kept in Actian's hosted database.
Warning
The agents are instructed not to include warehouse rows, customer names or query output in a flag. This is an instruction to the AI model, not a filter: the summary and context are not checked for content, so they can describe or paraphrase what the agent saw.
Flags are rate-limited per organization, and identical flags filed in quick succession are recorded once.
Air-gapped deployments and the diagnostic export¶
On an air-gapped deployment, nothing is sent to Actian. Bug reports and Engineering flags are stored only in your installation's database. The Docs link and the Support chat are also hidden from the Studio navigation.
To share stored reports with Actian, an administrator downloads a diagnostic export and hands it over.
Availability
- Who can do this: members with the Manage organization capability for the organization.
- Deployment: Air-gapped self-managed deployments only.
There is no button for the diagnostic export in the app. Your operator downloads it from the AI Analyst API while signed in as a member with the Manage organization capability. The export still works when the licence has expired or the organization is pending deletion.
The download is a zip file named ai-analyst-diagnostic-export-<timestamp>.zip. It covers your organization only, across all of its Workspaces, and contains:
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
manifest.json |
When it was generated, the network posture, the environment, product and database versions, database health, uptime, and how many reports and flags are included |
bug-reports.json |
Stored bug reports: identifiers, timestamps, the page address and the description |
engineering-flags.json |
Stored Engineering flags: identifiers, timestamps, the agent, summary and context |
The export leaves out organization and member names, email addresses and reporter identifiers, and it reads nothing from your data sources or query results. However, the descriptions, summaries and context are free text written by people and by the agents, and page addresses can contain identifiers. Review the file before you hand it to Actian.
Connected self-managed deployments¶
On a connected self-managed deployment, bug reports and Engineering flags reach Actian only when your deployment is configured with Actian's reporting connection. Your operator can instead keep reports on the installation; then nothing is sent, but there is no diagnostic export on a connected deployment.
Note
Hiding the in-app reporting option does not, on its own, stop Engineering flags from being sent. Ask your operator how your deployment is configured.