2 - ASK your freight data anything — connect to your AI assistant

What this is

Connect the AI assistant your team already uses — Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Grok, or any tool that supports custom connectors — to your Fr8Labs data, and just ask. In plain English:

"How many shipments did we handle last month?" "Who are my top 10 consignees this quarter?" "What's my gross margin by trade lane this year?"

You get an answer — with a chart — in seconds. Like it? Say "save that as a dashboard" or "email me this every Monday." No spreadsheets, no report requests, no waiting.

It works because it speaks MCP — the open standard for AI connectors — so one connector works across every assistant that supports it, today and in future.

See it in action

analyticsmcpdemo.mp4

A 15-second look — ask a question, get a chart, then schedule it to your inbox.

Transcript

  • 0:00 — In your AI assistant, the Fr8Labs Analytics connector is on.

  • 0:01 — You ask: "Who are my top consignees this quarter?" → it replies with a ranked chart — Meridian Electronics (184), Pacific Retail Group (156), Nordwind Logistik (131), Sankyo Trading (118) — scoped to your company, as of today 06:00.

  • 0:04 — You ask: "What's my margin by trade lane this year?" → the chat scrolls on with margin by lane: SIN→LAX 22.4%, SHA→RTM 18.1%, PKG→JEA 16.7%, SGN→NYC 14.2%.

  • 0:08 — You ask: "Email this to me every Monday morning." → Scheduled ✓ — weekly, to your own email.

  • 0:11 — Analytics, just by asking — in Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Grok, or any AI you already use.

Security — your data, kept yours

The question we hear most, answered plainly:

  • Walled to your company. When you sign in, the connection locks to your company — enforced at the database level, not just in software. You can't see, query, or email another company's data, even by accident.

  • Read-only. The analytics connector reads an analytics copy of your data — it doesn't change, delete, or post anything in your live system. (Any future write features are separate, opt-in connectors.)

  • You sign in; we never see your AI account. You authorize with your own Fr8Labs login (standard OAuth) — we never receive your Claude / ChatGPT / Grok / Copilot password, and access is revocable any time.

  • Reports stay in your house. A scheduled or emailed report can only reach colleagues on your own company's email domain.

  • Encrypted in transit (TLS / HTTPS), end to end.

  • Your AI, your terms. Your questions and the data that comes back are processed by the assistant you chose, under your own agreement with them — Fr8Labs doesn't sit in the middle, and never trains AI models on your data.

Have an IT or security team? Point them at "For your IT or security team" at the end.

Connecting your AI

To use this, connect your AI assistant to your Fr8Labs data — it takes a couple of minutes. The full step-by-step (the connector address, who can connect, granting a teammate access, and the personal-vs-corporate account note) now lives in one place:

→ Connect your AI to Fr8Labs

Once you're connected, come back here and start asking.

Ask your first questions

Start a new chat and try these — each is tuned to your freight data:

Ask this

You'll get

"How many shipments did we handle this year, by month?"

A monthly volume trend

"Who are my top 10 consignees by shipment count this quarter?"

A ranked list / bar chart

"What's my gross profit margin by trade lane this year?"

Margin broken down by lane

"What's my on-time delivery percentage, and which jobs are running late?"

On-time % + the late jobs

"Show my AR ageing — what's overdue and by how much?"

Ageing buckets, by customer

Then keep going in plain English — "break that down by salesperson," "just the FCL shipments," "compare to last year." It writes the query for you, every time scoped to your company.

Turn an answer into something you'll reuse

Once you've got an answer you like, just ask:

  • "Save that as a dashboard." → a reusable chart you can open any time.

  • "Email this to me every Monday morning." → a recurring report in your inbox.

  • "Send it to me now." → a one-off emailed copy, right away.

Reports email only to colleagues at your own company — a built-in guardrail so data never leaves your team by accident.

What it can see — and what it can't

It answers on: shipments & jobs, volumes & tonnage, revenue / cost / margin, transit time & on-time performance, top customers & consignees, and AR / AP invoices and ageing.

It can't: change anything (read-only — it never touches your live system), see another company's data, or answer non-freight questions (it'll politely say so rather than guess).

Freshness: answers come from your analytics warehouse, refreshed a few times a day, and each one shows an "as of" time. Need this second's live figure for one number? Ask for the live version.

Have multiple offices or entities? (group analytics)

If your group runs several Fr8Labs entities, Fr8Labs can switch on group analytics so you can ask "combined across my whole group" or drill into one entity at a time. Group access is set up by Fr8Labs — just ask your Fr8Labs contact and tell them which entities belong together.

Troubleshooting

If…

Do this

"It says it can't answer my question"

It only knows your freight analytics. Rephrase toward shipments / margin / tonnage / on-time / AR-AP.

"I don't see my company's data"

Make sure you signed in with the right company login. Disconnect + reconnect to switch logins.

"The connection expired / stopped working"

Reconnect from your assistant's Connectors settings and sign in again.

"It's not in my assistant's menu"

Custom connectors are a paid feature on every platform — check your plan tier.

"I want a teammate to have it"

They connect the same way with their own Fr8Labs login.

Still stuck

Contact your Fr8Labs support channel.

For your IT or security team

A short technical brief for due diligence.

Tenant isolation (defense in depth). Every analytics query executes under a dedicated, read-only database role with PostgreSQL row-level security restricting rows to your company id — so even a malformed query physically returns only your rows. An app-layer guard validates the generated SQL before it runs. Your company is derived from your authenticated session; it is never something the AI model or the request can set.

Authentication & authorization. OAuth 2.0 authorization-code flow with PKCE; exact redirect-URI matching; short-lived, single-use authorization codes; bearer tokens that are revocable instantly (server-side denylist). The analytics connector is isolated from every other Fr8Labs tool.

Least privilege. The query role is strictly read-only: no writes / DDL / DML, no access to auth or credential tables, no system-catalog reads.

Data in scope. Freight operational + financial analytics only. Served from an analytics warehouse refreshed several times daily; every answer is "as of"-stamped. The connector never reaches your live transactional system to write.

Access governance. Single-company access is self-served via OAuth, scoped to your own tenant. Multi-company / group access is explicitly provisioned by Fr8Labs (never self-granted) and is auditable.

AI provider. Your questions + the returned rows are processed by your chosen assistant's provider (Anthropic / OpenAI / xAI / Microsoft) under your plan and terms. Fr8Labs does not train models on your data.

Email. Outbound reports are domain-restricted to your own organization.