# From research to insights The Research Hub is Smaply's environment for ingesting, synthesizing, and managing qualitative research. It lets you upload interview transcripts, extract quotes and insights with the help of AI, and push findings directly into your portfolio — with full traceability back to the original source. Access the Research Hub via the **Research** item in your workspace sidebar. *** ### Creating an Investigation An investigation is a research session that groups one or more source files and the insights derived from them.
1. In the Research section, click **+ Create investigation**. 2. Give your investigation a descriptive name and click **Continue**. 3. Upload one or more **.txt transcript files** by dragging and dropping them into the upload area, or by clicking **Upload files** to browse. You can add multiple files per investigation. 4. Once your files are listed, click **Upload and analyze**. Smaply will then process your files: uploading them, running a security check, extracting key data points, cross-referencing patterns, and generating insights. When the analysis is complete, you'll see a summary of sources analyzed, quotes extracted, insights found, and a sentiment breakdown (positive, neutral, negative). Click **Explore findings** to open the session view. *** ### The Investigation Session View The session view has three panels.
#### Left panel — Sources This panel lists all uploaded source files. At the top you'll see an aggregate sentiment summary for the entire investigation. Each source shows its filename, quote count, and sentiment breakdown. Expand a source to read the full transcript text. Quotes that the AI has extracted are highlighted — green for positive sentiment, pink/red for negative. Hovering over a highlighted quote shows an AI-generated summary tooltip. You can interact with quotes directly in the transcript: * **Change sentiment** by switching the highlight color * **Remove a quote** by deselecting its highlight * **Add a new quote** by manually highlighting any text in the transcript * **Link a quote to an insight** by dragging it into the center panel #### Center panel — Insights This panel lists all insights generated from your sources. Use the filter tabs at the top to browse by AI-assigned category (e.g. Pain, Gain, Emotion, Expectation, Workaround, Opportunity). Click any insight to expand its details: you'll see the linked quotes, an editable insight name, and an AI-generated summary. From here you can edit, delete, or add the insight to your portfolio. Use the checkboxes to select multiple insights and perform bulk actions — either **Add to portfolio** or **Delete**. You can also add insights manually at any time using the **+ Add insight** button. *** ### Adding Insights to Your Portfolio Insights can be added to the portfolio individually or in bulk.
When you click **Add to portfolio**, a guided flow opens showing all selected insights on the left. For each item, choose one of three options on the right: * **Create a new portfolio item** — select a portfolio item type (Pain point, Opportunity, Solution, or any custom types you've set up). Use **Apply to all** to set the same type for every item at once. A preview shows the name, description, and how many quotes will be added as evidence. * **Add to an existing portfolio item** — Smaply suggests the most relevant existing items based on the insight. You can also search your portfolio manually. The insight's name and summary will be appended to the portfolio item's description, and all linked quotes will appear in its Evidence tab. * **Don't add to portfolio** — skips this item. Click **Add \[N] items to portfolio** to confirm. A completion dialog gives you the option to manage the items in the portfolio or continue working in the research session. *** ### Traceability Every insight added from a research session stays connected to its source.
In the portfolio, open any item and go to the **Evidence tab** to see all quotes linked from research investigations. Clicking a quote shows a preview of the exact text and its surrounding context, including the source filename. From there you can navigate directly back to the original transcript and investigation. You can also filter the **Portfolio Matrix** by investigation to see which portfolio items originated from or were supported by a specific research session. #### Adding evidence manually You can also add evidence to portfolio items directly from the Evidence tab, without going through a research investigation. Manual evidence supports: type (e.g. quote), sentiment, date, and a link to the source. *** ### Tips * The Research Hub currently supports **.txt files**. Support for additional file types is planned. * All AI output — quotes, sentiment, and insights — is editable. You stay in control of what goes into your portfolio. * Insight categories (Pain, Gain, Workaround, etc.) are distinct from portfolio item types and serve as a synthesis layer between raw research and structured portfolio work. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://helpdesk.smaply.app/research/from-research-to-insights.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.