Orientation and navigation

You can think of the Palantir platform as an operating system for the data in your organization. This page provides information about how to navigate and find the tools and resources required to work effectively in this operating system.

This page provides information about the sidebar that serves as a home base for moving around the platform and the search feature for locating resources or data of interest. You will also learn about the help & support options available to you while working in the platform. Finally, your Palantir account will allow you to sort out your public user and platform settings.

The Sidebar

The sidebar is your constant companion in the platform and the starting point for navigation. Open and collapse the sidebar with the icon in the upper right or with the keyboard shortcut Cmd+O (macOS) or Ctrl+O (Windows).

The sidebar has five primary sections that allow you to navigate to different features and tools within the platform:

AIP Assist

We recommend AIP Assist, Palantir's LLM-powered assistant, as your first stop in getting help regarding the Palantir platform. AIP Assist can answer questions about the platform in multiple languages and can provide guidance about how to use the platform, including tutorials.

You can access AIP Assist from the lower-right corner of the sidebar or by using the keyboard shortcut Cmd+U (macOS) or Ctrl+U (Windows).

AIP Assist is "context-aware" in that it can detect which application you are currently working in, but AIP Assist does not have access to any of the data you are working with.

Home

New Palantir enrollments come with an default home page that helps users orient themselves and learn about the platform. Administrators or builders can also create custom landing pages for various user groups on the platform. Some enrollments may use a completely customized home page, while others may use standard components to provide access to frequently-used parts of the platform.

While most home pages focus on navigation, you may also find announcements about the platform, starting points for common workflows within your organization, or links to custom documentation on the landing page.

Search

Search, also known as Quicksearch, is a tool for navigation and discovery of elements in the platform. Search is made of two parts:

1. Jump-to mode: Provides a short list of personalized results to directly navigate users to the main types of available content: platform applications, custom applications, objects, datasets, and other resources.
2. Full results mode: Designed to help users find content and discover what exists in the platform. Users can perform searches of platform apps, objects, datasets, and other files with advanced filters, rich metadata, and a ranking algorithm to highlight the most relevant results.

Notifications

The Notifications panel collects notices from across the platform, ordered from newest to oldest. Most notifications include links to navigate directly to the relevant resources. Some, such as access requests, can be responded to inline without needing to navigate to another page.

By default, notifications are delivered both within the platform in the Notifications panel and by email. Under the See all link, notifications are grouped by type for easier navigation. The notification Settings give you granular control over global and per-notification-type delivery preferences. If notifications are unread, the bell icon will have a small, yellow badge. If a notification occurs while you’re using the platform, a small pop-up in the lower left corner will briefly show the message.

Recent

The Recent panel simply lists the last 20 resources you’ve opened or interacted with. Between Favorites and Recent, it’s possible to quickly navigate between primary resources in use for any project without needing to return to Search or browse through the Project folder structure.

Projects & files

Projects & files links to the landing page for the Project folder structure, where you can access top-level Projects and the Data Catalog, Your files, and Shared with you shortcuts. You will learn more about Projects in the next step of this guide.

Applications Portal

Applications Portal is a tool for finding and accessing all apps in the platform, including both platform apps and custom promoted applications.

Favorites

The Favorites section of the sidebar keeps links to specific apps, resources, and individual objects for quick navigation. Use Ctrl+Click on Windows or Cmd+Click on macOS to open a favorited resource in a new browser tab.

Favorited Apps

When you first use the platform, your Favorites section is empty and only Apps will show in the sidebar. Choose View All to see all the different applications in the platform, or click the favorited apps text to pop up the Manage your favorites view.

In this view, you will see suggested applications and resources based on your recent usage. We will cover which applications we recommend based on your role later in this guide. To learn more, consider looking at the application reference.

Promoted Apps

You can add useful promoted apps from Applications Portal to the sidebar by selecting the star icon on the Portal (see left). Once on the sidebar, promoted apps will appear under a dedicated section for quick access (see right).

Favorite Resources

You can add and remove favorites with the star icon while navigating the folder structure or from within an open resource.

Think of favorites as shortcuts that you can add and remove to keep frequently used resources close at hand.

Favorite Objects

Object Explorer is an application you can use to explore objects and links in the platform. When you navigate to an individual object view, you can select the star next to its title to save it as a favorite. This will add the object to your sidebar.

Help & support

Palantir has a wide range of capabilities, features, and components available for your use cases and workflows. To help you understand how the platform can best serve your needs, the Help & support panel is a starting point for learning more and getting answers to your questions.

Learning Platform

The Palantir Learning portal ↗ provides videos and guided tutorials for learning about the major tools in the platform. These resources serve as an ideal first step in your Palantir journey. Note this content is also available in the documentation.

Documentation

You can always return to the platform documentation home page from this sidebar link.

Support

The Palantir Customer Success Services team ↗ offers support, training, and consultation services to help you and your organization get the most out of the platform. If included in your agreement, you can contact the team with questions using the Report issue option to create a support ticket in the Issues application.

Account

Click your name in the Account panel to bring up your account overview. Here, you can view recent contributions as well as ones you’ve created that are popular with other users. Click on the Edit Profile button to view your User Settings.

Settings

You can customize your profile with a profile image and additional information to be stored in the platform for viewing by users in your organization. This information will appear when other users hover over your name in Projects and resources. Adding distinguishing information is helpful for operational workflows that rely on assigning work or sharing resources, especially in cases where you share the same name with another coworker.

Within User Settings in the Account tab, you can find your User ID and permission Groups. You may be asked for this information if you have a question about permissions or data visibility.

The Notifications tab is a control center for changing notification delivery settings.

Other workspaces

The main platform workspace is defined by the Workspace sidebar that we have been exploring. You can access other workspaces by selecting Open other workspaces.

Control Panel

Administrators can access the Control Panel workspace for managing an enrollment. See the Administration documentation for further resources.

Carbon Workspaces

Application builders can use Carbon to create curated, custom workspaces for their end users. A wide range of applications can be combined together to provide a tailored experience.

Next steps

Now that you have learned how to navigate through the platform, continue by learning about Projects and resources.