What is Polaris?
Polaris is a built-in Business Intelligence (BI) tool within Productive that enables you to create powerful reports and gain complete visibility into key business metrics.
Using SQL queries, you can analyze data across teams, departments, locations, and combine various data sources from Productive, allowing for deep insights tailored to your organization.
Who is Polaris for?
Polaris is designed for anyone who wants to build complex reports from their data. It is particularly useful for developers, analysts, and other users with SQL knowledge.
It allows you to create any report that is not possible through Productive’s standard reporting.
It enables group-level reporting, aggregating data across multiple organizations.
Key Features
Flexible Reporting: Build reports that reflect your unique business structure, no matter how complex and which data sources you need to use and combine (tasks, cost rates, bookings, time entries, budgets, deals, etc.).
Integrated Within Productive: No need to switch between tools—open Polaris directly in Productive and run SQL queries to get insights in seconds.
Prebuilt and Custom Reports: Start with ready-made reports or create custom ones from scratch.
Exporting Data: Download reports as CSV files to use in external visualization tools such as Looker or Power BI.
AI-Powered Query Assistance: Use AI Assistant to generate SQL queries directly within the query editor.
History Tracking: View previously run queries with timestamps and rerun them if needed.
Saved Queries: Save frequently used queries for quick access.
Access and Permissions
Who can access Polaris?
Only users with the necessary Polaris permissions can access it. By default, this includes only Admins.
If needed, a custom permission set can be made using the Permission Builder. The "Access to Productive Polaris" permission must be added to the permission set and assigned to the user for them to see and use the feature.
What data can users see?
All users with access to Polaris can view the entire organization's data—there are no additional restrictions within Polaris itself.
How to Access Polaris
To start using Polaris, navigate to the Reports tab and select Polaris. It will open in a new tab.
Once open:
Write an SQL query:
Click Run:
And analyze your data:
Exporting Data
Download query results by selecting the Download CSV button in the lower right corner. This will open the exporter in a new tab.
Using AI for Query Generation
Polaris includes an AI Assistant that can generate SQL queries based on your input. Simply describe the data you need, and the AI will provide a corresponding SQL query in the query editor. After confirming the query, click Run.
📌 Note: You can further adjust the SQL query before selecting Run.
This is especially important when you need to provide information unknown to Productive AI, such as IDs or project names.
Saving Queries
Once you've run a query, you can save it by clicking the Save button in the upper right corner.
Saved queries appear under the Saved tab, allowing you to prefill and rerun them easily.
📌 Tip: If you require advanced visualizations, export data and use external BI tools.
Schema
The Schema tab provides a detailed view of available tables and their columns. When hovering over a table or column, additional details are displayed:
PK (Primary Key): Identifies unique records in a table.
FK (Foreign Key): Indicates relationships between tables, necessary for performing joins. Hovering over an FK will show which table it can be joined with.
CF (Custom Field): Represents organization-specific custom fields. When hovering over a CF, you will see possible values if it is a select/multiselect field.
Query Templates
Explore prebuilt templates or use them as a starting point to create custom queries tailored to your needs.
Query History
The History tab displays all previously run queries, along with timestamps. If needed, select and rerun past queries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I upload a table with targets (e.g., gross margin per budget per month)?
No, Polaris does not currently support data uploads or target tracking. You will need to continue exporting actuals from Productive and comparing them to forecasts externally (e.g., in Excel).
Can I create visualizations directly in Polaris?
No, Polaris does not currently support built-in visualizations. However, you can export reports as CSV files and import them into visualization tools like Looker or Power BI.
Is Polaris operating on live data?
No, Polaris runs on a nightly data export, meaning data is refreshed once per day. When running a query, you will see a timestamp indicating the last data refresh.
Are there any security restrictions on data access?
Currently, if a user has access to Polaris in Productive, they have access to all data within the organization. There is no additional security trimming within Polaris itself.
Does Polaris support custom fields?
Yes, Polaris includes custom fields. Each custom field is represented as a separate column in the related database table, making it available for reporting.
Future Documentation
While Polaris does not currently have full documentation like the Productive API, we plan to create comprehensive documentation as it moves out of alpha and beta testing.