What is Asa Pro?
Asa Pro is Canvs’ intelligent conversational AI teammate, designed to help you explore your datasets through natural language dialogue. It enhances your research by allowing you to summarize key takeaways, compare data segments, quantify metrics, generate visualizations, and surface example verbatim responses, all based on your dataset and applied filters.
Built for research-grade performance, Asa Pro provides a fast and reliable way to uncover actionable insights from your data.
Note: Asa Pro is the next evolution of the experience previously known as Asa 2.0. With the launch of Asa Pro, Asa 2.0 will no longer be available. Asa 1.0, now simply called Asa, is still available.
Key Differences Between Asa and Asa Pro (Beta)
Asa
Generates a narrative overview of all responses with quantified key takeaways. Also enables you to create narrative summaries for subsets of data and ask custom questions about verbatim responses.
Asa Pro (Beta)
Delivers a fully interactive, conversational experience that draws on your full dataset, including all uploaded verbatims and filters. Supports narrative overviews, follow-up questions, segment comparisons, quantification, verbatim quote retrieval, and on-demand visualizations.
For users previously familiar with Asa 2.0:
Asa Pro retains all the capabilities of Asa 2.0, with significant upgrades under the hood. Its new agentic architecture enables faster performance, improved stability, and support for much larger datasets. It delivers more accurate responses, reduced hallucinations, and stronger grounding in your data, all within a cleaner and more modern user interface.
With Asa Pro's upgraded underlying architecture, you can also expect new capabilities, skills, and refinements to be delivered more frequently and with greater flexibility.
Accessing Asa Pro (Beta)
Open any dataset in Canvs
Click the Asa Pro (Beta) chat bubble in the bottom-right corner.
If Asa is currently active, click the arrow in the AI Story Assist tab and select Asa Pro (Beta) from the dropdown.
Asa Pro (Beta) will display a welcome message with suggested prompts:
Overview & takeaways
Summarize emotional reactions
Visualize & compare my quant and qual
Explain the top themes to me
You can start by selecting one of these prompts, clicking Start Conversation, or Load the Previous Session to continue where you left off (if applicable).
Note: You can switch between Asa and Asa Pro (Beta) at any time using the dropdown in the top-left corner of the Asa panel or by updating your dataset's Viewing Preferences.
Asking Asa Pro a Question
If you select Start Conversation, Asa Pro will display additional prompt suggestions once it has loaded. You can choose one, type your own question, or select a saved prompt from the Prompt Library. Asa Pro supports natural language queries for summaries, segment comparisons, metric breakdowns, visualizations, and verbatim quote retrieval.
You are also able to save your favorite prompts as a default conversation starter, to learn more click here.
Recommended Topics of Conversation:
Summarize & Synthesize
Transform thousands of customer responses into compelling narratives. Asa Pro distills complex datasets into clear, actionable insights with the nuance and depth your stakeholders need.
Compare Quant & Qual
Compare segments based on the three layers of Canvs analysis (Summary, Topics, Emotions) plus your available filters. Asa Pro delivers quantified comparisons revealing meaningful differences across demographics, time periods, and customer groups all within your existing analysis structure.
Note: This is not ad-hoc segmentation; it's intelligent analysis of the segments and filters already present in your dataset.
Visualize
Generate publication-ready charts through natural conversation. Ask for a visualization and receive stakeholder-ready graphics without leaving the chat.
Quantify
Calculate precise metrics for themes, emotions, topics, and segments. Asa Pro understands all three layers of Canvs analysis (Summary, Topics, Emotions) and can quantify any aspect with accuracy.
Surface Hero Quotes
Advanced semantic search finds the perfect verbatim to illustrate any insight. Asa Pro retrieves quotes and ensures they reflect your filtered dataset.
Tip: Include filter or segment names in your question. Using quotes or capital letters helps Asa Pro match them correctly.
Continue the Conversation
Asa Pro keeps track of context within each session so you can build on prior responses. Use follow-up questions to explore more deeply or revise outputs.
Recommended follow-ups:
Ask for clarification: "Can you explain that theme?"
Refine visualizations: "Reorder the metrics," "Use different colors," or "Make it easier to read"
Address confusion: "I'm not sure that's correct. Can you try again?"
Explore further: "Break down responses by 'Income Level'"
Structure tasks: "First, identify the main themes for each sample. Then generate a visual for each."
Smart Conversation Warnings
To help prevent confusion or accidental data loss, Asa Pro provides alerts during key actions that affect your session.
Changing questions, waves, or date range
What happens: A warning pop-up appears before your session resets.
Why: Asa Pro sessions are tied to your current question and wave / date range selections. Changing any of these starts a new session.
What to do: Export your conversation before switching to preserve your work.
Live dataset edits
What happens: A yellow alert appears in the Asa Pro panel.
Why: Asa Pro responds based on the dataset state at session start. Any edits may invalidate previous insights.
What to do: Export your session and restart to reflect the latest changes.
Applying filters in Canvs
What happens: A blue clarification message appears when filters are applied through the UI.
Why: Asa Pro does not automatically apply interface filters (including Treemap, Ranker, and Smart Search selections) unless they are explicitly mentioned in your prompt.
What to do: Include filter and segment names directly in your question to ensure they are applied.
Saving and Exporting Your Session
Automatic Saving
When you return to a dataset where Asa Pro was previously used, you will be prompted to load your previous session. This applies only to your most recent session. This prompt will remain available until you either start a new session using Start Conversation or clear the existing one with Start Over.
Each session is private and accessible only to you. Other team members will have their own separate sessions, even when working in the same dataset. Asa Pro does not currently support saving multiple sessions, but you can export session content to preserve previous conversations.
Export Options
Copy any piece of the conversation using the copy icon
Download full transcript as a .docx from the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner.
Best Practices and Troubleshooting
Best Practices
Treat Asa Pro like a smart research assistant:
Ask questions in plain English: Phrase questions naturally, as you would to a colleague.
Be specific: Include filter names, segment names, or specific goals to improve accuracy. Positive, direct prompts work best.
Follow up and iterate: Asa Pro builds context within each session.
Validate outputs: Always review insights before including them in reports.
For more prompt suggestions visit our prompt guide, here.
Troubleshooting Tips
Unrecognized filters or segments: Rephrase or confirm exact filter name in your dataset.
Inaccurate or unclear responses: Ask for clarification, rephrase the question, or start over.
Canvs interface selections: Treemap, Ranker, and Smart Search selections do not impact Asa Pro responses. However, question, wave, and date range selections do affect the session and its outputs.
Session memory: Asa Pro does not retain information between sessions. Export conversations and save key prompts if needed.
Multi-user support: Each user's session with Asa Pro is private and independent. Multiple team members can work in the same dataset without overlap or conflict.
Key Reminders
This feature is in beta: Certain capabilities are still evolving. Performance may vary, and user feedback is encouraged.
Responses are AI-generated: Users are responsible for interpreting and validating Asa Pro’s outputs. Generative AI may occasionally hallucinate and produce incorrect or assumed responses. Insights should be reviewed carefully.
Data quality matters: Clean, well-structured data improves performance. Spam or low-quality responses may reduce accuracy.
What Asa Pro can access: Asa Pro has access to the full dataset imported to Canvs, including open-ended responses, filters, and any uploaded quantitative data, along with Canvs' analysis. It uses the selected questions, waves, and date ranges at the start of your session.