Palantir Dashboards: Contour vs Quiver vs Workshop vs Notepad, and When Power BI Still Fits

Last updated: October 14, 2026

By Omar J, Director, PAL4C Labs

TL;DR Palantir Foundry has several ways to build a dashboard, and each fits a different job. Contour for large tables, Quiver for Ontology objects and time series, Workshop when users need to act on what they see, and Notepad for exportable reports. Power BI and Tableau connect to Foundry datasets through certified connectors. Avoid sunset tools like Reports and Code Workbook for new work. Our analytics and decision intelligence team helps choose and build.

Ask five Foundry users where to build a dashboard and you’ll get four answers. All of them partly right.

That’s because Foundry doesn’t have one dashboard tool. It has several, built for different data and different users, and Palantir’s own dashboards guide says as much. Pick the wrong one and you’ll find out three months later, when the dashboard is slow, nobody can change it, or it can’t do the one thing the operations lead actually asked for.

This matters more than it sounds. A BARC and Eckerson Group study of 214 data leaders found active BI use averaged just 25% of employees. That was 2022, but the pattern hasn’t changed much. Dashboards built in the wrong place for the wrong user are a big part of why.

This guide maps every Foundry option to the job it does well, covers the limits and deprecations nobody mentions, explains when Power BI or Tableau still make sense, and shows where AIP Analyst fits.

Which Palantir Tool Should You Use for a Dashboard?

Contour for exploring and presenting large tables. Quiver for object and time series data from the Ontology. Workshop when users must filter, decide, and write back. Notepad for static reports you export or print. Power BI or Tableau when the audience already lives there.

Here’s the decision table we use with clients. It follows Palantir’s own guidance and adds what we’ve seen in practice.

Our shortcut. If someone will act on the number, it belongs in Workshop. If someone will only look at it, Quiver or Contour. If it gets emailed to a board, Notepad.

When Should You Use Contour?

When the data lives in datasets rather than the Ontology, it’s large, and analysts need to explore it step by step before presenting findings. Contour dashboards add chart-to-chart filtering, parameters, fullscreen presentation, and PDF export.

Contour is Palantir’s point-and-click tool for analyzing tables at scale. Analysts build analytical paths, chain transforms and charts, save results as new datasets, and publish dashboards to share what they found. Palantir’s types of analysis guide says Contour was designed for very large datasets and is the fit when data isn’t mapped into the Ontology.

That’s its sweet spot. A finance analyst slicing 40 million invoice lines. A supply chain lead comparing carrier performance across three years.

One caution. On the Palantir Community in May 2026, a reply to a request for deeper AIP integration in Contour said that new feature development in Contour isn’t an active area of investment right now. Contour still works fine and isn’t deprecated. But if you’re starting a long-lived dashboard today, it’s fair to ask whether the data should be in the Ontology and the dashboard in Quiver instead.

When Should You Use Quiver?

When the data is Ontology objects or time series and users need interactive, read-only views. Quiver handles object metrics, sensor and time series charts, and dashboards that can be embedded inside Workshop, Object Views, Notepad, and Carbon.

Quiver visualizes, filters, and transforms object and time series data without code, and Palantir says it’s been optimized for time series. That makes it the default for anything sensor-driven, like equipment health, energy use, or line throughput.

Its biggest trick is reuse. A Quiver dashboard built once can sit inside a Workshop app through the Quiver dashboard widget, with dashboard parameters mapped to Workshop variables. The analyst owns the charts. The app builder owns the workflow. Neither steps on the other.

There’s one quirk in that handoff. Workshop has no range variable type, so time ranges pass as separate start and end strings. Small thing. Costs an afternoon if nobody tells you.

Limits matter too. Quiver’s best practices page says transform tables max out at 50,000 rows and run in the browser, time series render 1,000 buckets by default, and splitting dashboards into tabs improves load time. A dashboard with 14 charts on one tab will feel slow. Six tabs of two or three charts won’t.

Palantir also added a dedicated time series analysis workspace in Quiver in March 2026, along with a matching Workshop widget. For forecasting work like our time-series forecasting builds, that’s where we’d start now.

When Is a Dashboard the Wrong Answer?

When users need to take action on what they see, like approving, reassigning, or escalating. A read-only dashboard creates a second step in another system. Workshop puts the chart and the decision on the same screen and writes it back through Actions.

Palantir’s dashboards guide points to Workshop when you need full layout flexibility, multi-step workflows, or writeback. That’s the line we draw too.

Think about what happens with a read-only dashboard. A planner sees a late order in Contour. Opens SAP. Finds the order. Changes the carrier. Emails the warehouse. Five minutes, three systems, no record in Foundry of why.

In Workshop, the same planner selects the order and clicks Reassign. The change writes back through an Action, logged against the object. That’s the difference between reporting on operations and running them.

Our guide to Palantir Workshop covers how to build those apps. The short version is to keep Quiver for the charts and embed them, so the analytics team keeps ownership and the app stays simple.

What About Notepad, Fusion, Insight, and the Older Tools?

Notepad is Palantir’s recommended reporting tool for most reports. Fusion is a spreadsheet that can write back to datasets. Insight and Object Explorer explore Ontology data. Reports is in sunset and Code Workbook is legacy, so avoid both for new work.

A quick tour, since these come up in every inherited Foundry estate.

• Notepad embeds charts from Contour, Quiver, Code Workbook, and Object Explorer into documents with templates, export, and print. Palantir’s analysis guide calls it the next-gen reporting tool and recommends it for most reporting
• Fusion is a spreadsheet that can write results back to datasets. Palantir’s own docs nudge you toward Actions if the data belongs in the Ontology
• Insight is a point-and-click tool for exploring Ontology data, positioned as a modernized take on Object Explorer’s analysis features
• Reports is in the sunset phase, with Palantir pointing users to Contour dashboards, Quiver dashboards, or Notepad instead
• Code Workbook is in the legacy phase, with no additional development expected

If you’re auditing an older Foundry setup, start with the last two. Reports and Code Workbook dashboards still run. They just won’t get better, and every month you wait the migration list gets longer.

Can You Use Power BI or Tableau With Palantir Foundry?

Yes. Palantir offers a Microsoft-certified Power BI connector that supports Import and DirectQuery, and a Tableau connector that supports extracts and live connections. Both read Foundry datasets and respect Foundry permissions. Report Server and Tableau Online via Bridge aren’t supported.

Per Palantir’s Power BI documentation, the connector works with Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service through a gateway. The Power BI FAQ recommends Import mode for fast dashboards, DirectQuery only for simple, low-interactivity ones, and notes Import may be limited to 1 GB depending on your Power BI subscription. Refreshes run with the gateway’s credentials, not the viewer’s, which matters for row-level security.

The Tableau connector supports extracts and live connections with granular Foundry permissions, on Desktop and Server 2019.4 or later. Tableau Online through Tableau Bridge isn’t supported.

When does this make sense? When 300 finance users already live in Power BI and the only thing that changed is where the clean data comes from. Foundry does the integration and modeling. Power BI does the familiar charts. Our comparison of Foundry, Databricks, and Snowflake covers how Foundry fits alongside other data platforms.

When doesn’t it? When users need to act, not just view. The BI tools read datasets. They don’t run Ontology Actions. A Power BI dashboard can show a late shipment. It can’t reassign it.

Where Does AIP Analyst Fit?

AIP Analyst lets users ask questions in plain language and get summaries and charts built from Ontology data, without a pre-built dashboard. It’s good for ad hoc questions. Recurring metrics still belong on a dashboard everyone sees the same way.

Palantir describes AIP Analyst as an interface for agentic workflows that uses natural language for ad hoc analysis across the Ontology. Palantir announced it would be generally available the week of April 13, 2026 for users with AIP enabled, and in October 2026 added Fast, Balanced, and Smart model options.

Quiver has its own AIP features too. Palantir lists AIP Assist, AIP Generate, and AIP Configure in Quiver, with availability that can differ between enrollments.

So does AI replace dashboards? No. It replaces the long tail of one-off questions that used to become one-off dashboards nobody opened twice. That’s a good thing. The weekly operations review still needs the same five numbers, calculated the same way, every week.

Each AIP Analyst question can also trigger several model calls and queries. Use it where the answer is worth it. Our guide to AIP agents covers how to test AI outputs before people rely on them.

What Goes Wrong With Foundry Dashboards?

Wrong tool for the data, too many charts on one tab, dashboards built on raw datasets instead of the Ontology, dashboards where users needed to act, and old Reports nobody migrated. All fixable. Most avoidable.

Here’s what we see most when we’re asked to fix slow or unused dashboards.

• Contour dashboards on data that should have been in the Ontology, rebuilt three times as the logic changed
• A single Quiver tab with 15 charts and a 20-second load
• Metric definitions that differ between Contour, Quiver, and Power BI, so three meetings argue about three numbers
• Dashboards nobody owns, still running on pipelines that changed six months ago
• Sunset Reports still emailed every Monday

The third one hurts the most. Define key metrics once, in the Ontology or a shared pipeline, then display them anywhere. Our Pipeline Builder guide covers where that logic should live, and our Ontology explainer covers how objects carry it.

Pick the Tool by What Happens Next

Three takeaways. Choose the tool by the data and by what users do next, so Contour for large tables, Quiver for objects and time series, Workshop for action, and Notepad for reports. Stop building on Reports and Code Workbook. And use Power BI or Tableau where audiences already work, while keeping metric logic in Foundry so every tool shows the same number.

PAL4C Labs is an independent, Palantir-exclusive consultancy. We build Ontologies, Quiver and Contour analytics, Workshop apps, and AIP workflows for operations, supply chain, healthcare, and regulatory teams, and we’re not affiliated with Palantir.

Have dashboards nobody uses, or a pile of old Reports to retire? Send us the list and who’s supposed to use each one. We’ll map each dashboard to the right Foundry tool with you, flag the ones that should become Workshop apps, and plan the migration off anything in sunset.

Dashboard Questions Foundry Teams Ask

Contour vs Quiver, Which One for My Dashboard?

Can a Quiver Dashboard Go Inside a Workshop App?

What’s Quiver’s Row Limit?

Is Contour Being Deprecated?

Can Power BI Connect Directly to Palantir Foundry?

What Should Replace Foundry Reports?

Do We Still Need Dashboards If We Have AIP Analyst?