The Causal interface

The Toolbar

Spreadsheet vs. Dashboard workspace

The Workspace buttons allow you to toggle between the spreadsheet, and the dashboard workspace, where you can create, edit and view charts.

Time Settings

The Time Settings let you define when your model starts and ends, and the granularity of your model. The granularity can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Monthly is almost always what you want.

Scenarios

The Scenarios button allows you to create new scenarios, toggle between existing scenarios, rename and delete scenarios.

Share

You can keep your model completely private, or can invite others to view/edit the model, or just a part of your model (a View).

Version history

Version history shows you a list of previous snapshots of your model, and allows you to roll-back, preview, delete, create, and rename versions.

Charts

The Charts button opens a side panel to look at the visuals in your dashboard (table, chart etc), and lets you create new ones too.

Comments

The Comments button shows you all existing unresolved comments on cells in the current model.

Views

Views let you create saved filters on your model, to show only specific variables, dimension items, scenarios, time periods, and charts

Settings

Settings houses more advanced settings and options (e.g. audit logs, exports).

Linking

The link button allows you to link models together, as well as import variables and visuals from other models.

The Spreadsheet

Rows

Each row represents a variable, or a dimension item of a variable.

Columns

Name

The first column identifies the row. It includes some easily accessible variable settings — dimensions, data and more. Right-click on the variable name to access all remaining variable settings.

There are then three customisable columns: Trend, Data, and Formula. You can easily show/hide these.

Trend

The second column summarises the variable's Trend. If a variable doesn't change over time, the column shows its value. If a variable changes over time, the column shows a sparkline.

Data

The Data column allows you to see at a glance which data source (and data items) a variable is connected to, as well as add/remove those connections. Read more on data here.

Formula

The third column contains the variable's Formula. You can preview the formula in the top bar, and if you hit enter/F2, you can edit/set the whole formula.

The formula column sets the formula for all timesteps by default. If you want to set a different formula/value for a particular timestep, just go to that timestep's column and edit/set the formula there.

If you have an existing variable whose formula/value varies over time, you can use the Formula column to override the formula/value for all timesteps in one go.

Rollup columns

Easily add rollup columns to your spreadsheet (e.g. to see how your monthly model rolls up into quarters/years), by heading to the Σ icon at the top-left of your spreadsheet, toggling them on, and selecting the rollup granularity (e.g. Quarter).

Note: Rollup columns are not editable. Causal uses the Time Aggregation setting of each variable to determine how it is rolled up (e.g. from months into years). The default is Sum, but you can click on a rollup cell to easily edit the time aggregation setting for each variable.

The in-model left panel

The in-model panel reflects models, dimensions, and data sources linked to the current model, and allows you to easily switch between linked models, open/create data sources, and add/edit dimensions.

You can think of a model in Causal kind of like a tab in a spreadsheet, and the group of linked models as an entire spreadsheet/workbook. The key difference is that you can set different permissions on each model, despite them being linked.

Dimensions & Data

The collapsible section down the bottom of the spreadsheet is where any Dimensions and Data Sources will show when opened from the left panel. You can also dynamically filter & sort the tables.

Precedents / dependents

You can see a variable's precedents or dependents by selecting the variable and looking at the arrows. Green arrows point to the precedents, and yellow arrows point to dependents. You can toggle between the two by pressing option (or alt on windows) on your keyboard. You can also open the variable inspector by pressing i, or select "Inspect" from the right-click menu.

Find variables

To quickly search for variables within a model, simply hit Cmd/Ctrl+F (or navigate to "Search variables" at the top of the spreadsheet when no variables are selected). If there is more than one variable that meets your search term you can toggle between them by hitting enter or clicking the arrows. Clear the filter by hitting the 'x'.

Summary of selected cells

If you select multiple cells in the spreadsheet, Causal will provide you with the Sum, Average, Min, Max, and Count of those selected cells.