Starting a semantic layer from an empty list is the slow part. Suggestions reads your model and proposes measures and dimensions it thinks you'll want, with the formula already worked out.
Nothing is added until you say so.
Before you start: open a semantic layer and go to Business Context.
Suggested measures
On the Measures tab, click Suggestions. A panel opens on the right with what Astrato has found.
Each proposal gives you three things: a business name, a plain-English description of what it computes, and the formula it would use.
That's enough to judge it without adding it first. In this example Astrato proposed Gross Profit, Gross Margin %, Net Sales and Average Selling Price — the usual measures for a sales model, built from the columns actually present.
You have three ways to respond:
+ adds that one to your model
× dismisses it
Create all adds every remaining suggestion at once
Add them one at a time to begin with. A suggestion is a reasonable guess from your column names, not a decision about how your business defines things. Gross Margin % is a good example — the formula is arithmetic, but whether it should exclude refunds or freight is something only you know.
Suggested dimensions
The Dimensions tab works the same way, and it's especially useful on an empty model.
Dimension suggestions name their source — Dimension from [6 Productcategory].[Product Category] — so you can see exactly which column each one would come from before accepting it.
After you accept a suggestion
An added suggestion becomes an ordinary measure or dimension. Open it and you can rename it, add a description, adjust the formula, or delete it — see Define a measure in Business Context.
Adding suggestions changes your working copy only. Nothing reaches anyone else's workbooks until you publish, and everything you add is undoable through version history — see How versioning works in the semantic layer.
Tip: if you're accepting several, name a version first. That gives you one clean point to come back to if the batch isn't what you wanted.