Using Gridline
Quality reports
What the Report and Preview tabs show: the score, every column, the plain-language summary.
Every file you upload is inspected. The result is a quality report: a plain account of what is in the file and how healthy it is. You never ask for it; it starts the moment the upload is saved.
Find the report
Open a file and choose the Report tab (it is the one that opens first). The same stamp also appears on the file's row in Files:
| Stamp | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Queued | Saved and waiting its turn. |
| Checking | Being read right now. |
| A number (for example 92) | Done. This is the quality score out of 100. |
| Checked | Done, with no rules to score it against. |
| Failed | The file could not be read, for example because it is damaged. The report says why. Reading the same file again would not help, so Gridline does not retry. |
| Not checked | An old .xls file. It is stored and downloadable, but not read. |
While a report is being built, the page says so and fills itself in when it finishes. You do not need to reload.
The quality score
The score is a number from 0 to 100 that says how the file did against your rules. It is the share of the rules that applied to this file and passed. A failed error rule counts twice as much as a failed warning. If no rule applied (you have none, or none matched this file) there is no score, because there is nothing to score against.
| Score | How it reads |
|---|---|
| 80 to 100 | Green: the file looks healthy. |
| 50 to 79 | Amber: the file needs a look. |
| 0 to 49 | Red: the file has problems. |
Under the score, Quality rules lists one result per rule: Passed, Failed, Warning or Skipped, with a sentence saying what was found and what was required. See Quality rules.
What is in the file
A ready report counts these for the whole file:
| Figure | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Rows | Data rows, not counting the header. |
| Columns | Columns in the header. |
| Empty rows | Rows with nothing in any column. |
| Repeated rows | Rows identical to an earlier row. |
| Uneven rows | Rows with more or fewer cells than the header. |
If the header row has blank or repeated names, the report lists those problems too. A very large file is read in part: the numbers then cover its first 100,000 rows and 200 columns, and the page says so.
Below that, a table describes each column:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Holds | What most of its values are: whole numbers, numbers, yes / no, dates, text, or empty. |
| Empty | The share of cells with nothing in them. A cell with only spaces counts as empty. |
| Mixed | The share of cells that do not match what the rest of the column holds, such as text among numbers. |
| Lowest, Highest, Average | For a column of numbers: the smallest, the largest and the mean. |
In plain words
When it is available, the report opens with a short summary and a few recommendations, written by an AI model, and says which model wrote it. It is optional: if no model is available, or it produces nothing usable, that part is simply missing and everything else in the report is unaffected.
Personal and secret data
Gridline looks at each column and says when it looks like personal or secret data: email addresses, phone numbers, payment card numbers, bank account numbers (IBAN), IP addresses, keys and tokens, and columns of birth dates. It does this with patterns and checksums, not with an AI model, so it is predictable, and a real card number has to pass the card checksum to count.
- A flagged column carries a Personal data stamp in the table below, and the file gets one in Files. Use Has personal data in the filters to list them.
- If the file is open to the whole company, the uploader and every admin are told, because that is the moment to decide whether to restrict it. Restricting it is Share, above the tabs. If you open a file that holds personal data to everyone later, the same notice follows.
- Only the kind of data and how much of the column it covers are stored. The values themselves are never kept in the report and never sent to the AI.
Workbooks with several sheets
A report covers one sheet of a workbook: the first one that has data. The report says which sheet it covers and lists the others. The uploader or an admin can choose Check instead to check another sheet; the choice is kept the next time the file is checked. Other sheets stay in the stored file and in downloads.
Preview the first rows
Choose the Preview tab to glance at the file without downloading it. It shows the first 50 rows and 50 columns, with each column's type under its name. Long cells are cut at 200 characters and dates are shown in a standard form. The preview is saved when the report is built, so opening it never reads the file again.
Until the report is ready, or if it failed, there is no preview to show.
Check a file against today's rules
A report remembers the rules as they were when it was built, so changing a rule never rewrites an old report. After you change your rules, open the file and choose Check again on its report to test it against the new ones. Only the uploader and admins see the button.
The report goes back to Queued and then finishes again. If one is already being built, wait for it to finish first.
Be told instead of watching
You do not have to keep the page open. Gridline puts report ready and report failed in your inbox (see Notifications and alerts), and developers can have the same news sent to their own system: see Webhooks.
From code
The report, the preview and rebuilding are all available over HTTP: see Files, versions and reports.