How to create an investigation

Upload your research transcripts and let AI extract quotes, sentiment, and insights you can act on.

An investigation is a research session that groups your source files and the insights Smaply draws from them, keeping the evidence behind each finding linked to the journeys it affects.

Plan availability

Creating an investigation runs AI analysis, which is available on the Repository plan and above. Your account also needs Research Hub AI switched on. See How to configure AI features.

Prerequisites

Editor or Admin role at the workspace level. Viewers can't create investigations.

In this guide

Create the investigation

Start from the Research item in the workspace sidebar. The investigation list opens with + Create investigation in the top-right corner.

The Research landing in an empty state. A flask icon sits above the heading 'Turn research into actionable insights' with the line 'Upload files to extract insights and link evidence to your journeys'. A blue Create investigation button is in the top-right corner.

Open the create flow

Click + Create investigation. The upload screen opens. There's no name field yet; you'll name the session after the files are scanned.

Add your transcript files

Click Upload files or drag your files onto the drop zone. Each file appears under Uploaded files with a remove control, and you can add more than one. Use the X next to a file to drop it before analyzing.

The upload screen with six transcripts queued under the heading 'Uploaded files (6)', each row showing a document icon, the .txt filename, and an X remove control. The Upload and analyze button is active at the bottom right next to Cancel.

Important: Only .txt files are supported today

The drop zone accepts plain-text transcripts (.txt) only. Convert interviews from other formats to .txt before uploading. Support for more file types is planned.

Click Upload and analyze

Once at least one file is queued, Upload and analyze turns active. Click it to start. Smaply runs a security check on your files first, shown as Scanning your files, before analysis begins.

Name the research session

When the scan finishes, the Name your research session dialog appears. Type a descriptive name and click Continue.

The 'Name your research session' dialog with the subtitle 'Add a descriptive name for this research session'. A text field reads 'Online account opening - customer interviews' with an active Continue button beside it.

Wait for analysis to finish

The Analyzing your files checklist tracks progress through Extracting key data points, Cross-referencing patterns, and Generating insights. Keep the tab open until it completes.

The 'Analyzing your files' screen with a progress bar and a three-item checklist: Extracting key data points (Complete), Cross-referencing patterns (Complete), and Generating insights (in progress).

Tip: Get your sources right before you analyze

You can't add files to an investigation after it's created, and the AI analysis can't be re-run on it. To analyze a different set of sources, create a new investigation. To work with more transcripts, gather them all before you click Upload and analyze.

What the AI does automatically

Once you start the analysis, Smaply works through your transcripts without any further input. It extracts direct quotes, detects the sentiment behind each one (positive, neutral, or negative), cross-references recurring patterns across files, and groups them into insights.

When it finishes, the Research summary shows what came out of your sources: how many were analyzed, how many quotes were extracted, how many insights were found, and the sentiment breakdown across all quotes.

The Research summary dialog. A Summary row shows 6 Sources analyzed, 155 Quotes extracted, and 47 Insights found. A Sentiment row shows 50 Positive, 16 Neutral, and 89 Negative. An Explore findings button sits below.

Every quote, sentiment value, and insight is a starting point you can edit, so the summary is where AI hands the work back to you.

Explore your findings

Click Explore findings on the summary to open the session view. This is where you read, refine, and curate everything the analysis produced: a Sources panel with your transcripts and their quotes on the left, and an Insights list in the center.

The investigation session view. The left Sources panel lists the six transcripts; the center Insights panel lists generated insights with category labels and sentiment counts; a detail panel on the right shows a selected insight's quotes and summary.

From here, your next steps are reviewing the findings and promoting the strongest ones into your portfolio.

Review insights and quotes

Edit insights, refine sentiment, add or remove quotes, and work with your sources.

Add findings to portfolio

Promote selected insights and their quotes into portfolio items as evidence.

Manage investigations from the list

Every investigation you create appears in the Research list, with columns for Name, Created By, Created, Updated, Sources (file count), and Insights (insight and quote counts). Click any column header to sort.

The Research list with one investigation row showing it was created by the workspace team, with 6 files under Sources and '47 insights, 155 quotes' under Insights. Search, filter, and Create investigation controls sit in the top-right.

To reopen the session view for an existing investigation, click the three-dot menu on its row and select View Analysis. The same menu has Delete, which removes the whole investigation.

A row's three-dot menu open on the Research list, showing two items: View Analysis and Delete.

Use the search and filter icons next to + Create investigation to narrow a long list. The filter groups results by File Type, File Count, Created By, Status, and Created, with Clear all to reset.

Review insights and quotes

Work through the session view: edit insights, refine sentiment, and manage your sources.

Add findings to portfolio

Turn research insights into portfolio items, with quotes carried over as evidence.

Configure AI features

Switch Research Hub AI and other AI features on or off at the account level.

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Last updated 24 days ago