Starting a semantic layer from an empty list is the slow part. Suggestions reads your model and proposes measures, dimensions and business questions it thinks you'll want, with the formula already worked out.
Nothing is added until you say so.
Suggestions use your current working copy, including unpublished changes. If generation fails, the panel reports the failure; it does not use an older published model instead.
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.
Suggested business questions
Business question suggestions are available for a semantic layer with a data connection. On the Questions tab, click Suggestions to open them in a panel on the right. When the layer has tables but no business questions, the panel opens on its own once suggestions are ready, as it does on the Measures and Dimensions tabs. They include period-over-period comparisons, such as the current year to date against the previous one, where the layer has a date to compare by.
Check the questions you want and click Create selected, or click Create all with nothing checked. + on a row creates that one question, and × dismisses it.
Creating a question also creates any measure or dimension it needs that the layer doesn't have, and reuses one that an earlier question in the same batch created.
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.
Suggestions on the model map
In Semantic Model → Map, Suggestions brings measures, dimensions and joins into one panel. Suggestions already represented in your semantic layer are excluded.
When no new suggestions remain, the panel stays open and shows No new suggestions found. You can close it with × or by clicking Suggestions again. Reopening it shows the empty state again if no new suggestions are available; you do not need to refresh the page.