Analyze data with conversations

Preview

This feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms. Pre-GA features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

This document describes how to create, edit, and delete conversations in Cloud SQL for MySQL. Conversations are persisted chats with a data agent.

You can ask data agents multi-part questions that use common terms—for example, "sales" or "most popular"—without specifying table field names, or defining conditions to filter the data. The chat response provides the answer to your question as text and code, and it generates charts when appropriate. The response includes the reasoning behind the results.

You can create a conversation with a data agent. When you create a direct conversation, the Conversational Analytics API interprets your question without the context and processing instructions offered by a data agent.

Before you begin

1. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

2. Enable the Cloud SQL, Data Analytics API with Gemini, and Gemini for Google Cloud APIs.

   Roles required to enable APIs

   To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin), which contains the serviceusage.services.enable permission. Learn how to grant roles.

   Enable the APIs

Required roles

To work with data agents, you must have one of the following Conversational Analytics API Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles:

• Query data from supported database sources using the QueryData method: Gemini Data Analytics Data Query User (roles/geminidataanalytics.queryDataUser) at the project level.
• Create, edit, share, and delete all data agents in the project: Gemini Data Analytics Data Agent Owner (roles/geminidataanalytics.dataAgentOwner) at the project level.
• Create your own data agents in the project: Gemini Data Analytics Data Agent Creator (roles/geminidataanalytics.dataAgentCreator) at the project level. This role automatically grants you the Gemini Data Analytics Data Agent Owner role on the data agents that you create.
• View and edit all data agents in the project: Gemini Data Analytics Data Agent Editor (roles/geminidataanalytics.dataAgentEditor) at the project level.
• View all data agents in the project: Gemini Data Analytics Data Agent Viewer (roles/geminidataanalytics.dataAgentViewer) at the project level.

Additionally, you must have the following roles to create or edit a data agent:

• An IAM user or service account added at the instance level. For more information, see Add an IAM policy binding to a user, service account, or group.
• The cloudsql.studioUser and cloudsql.instanceUser roles granted to the IAM user at the project level. For more information, see Add IAM policy binding for a project.

• Database privileges granted to an IAM user or service account by signing in as the password-based user of the database.

  GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '[e-mail]';
  

  For more information, see Grant database privileges to an individual IAM user or service account.

When you manage access to Cloud SQL for MySQL database resources, consider the following layers of permissions:

• Google Cloud IAM: controls access to the database instance as a cloud resource. This includes permissions to connect, manage the instance, and execute SQL queries, for example, using the executeSql permission.
• Database permissions: control access to objects in the database—like tables, views, and schemas. These are managed using SQL commands like GRANT and database-specific user and role systems.

For Cloud SQL for MySQL, you need appropriate Cloud SQL IAM roles to connect to the instance and be authorized to send queries. To interact with objects like tables and views, the connecting database user must have the necessary privileges granted using the Cloud SQL for MySQL GRANT system. For more information, see About Cloud SQL for MySQL users. If the agent uses a service account, you can get a database role assigned. For example, see Manage users with IAM database authentication.

Create conversations

You can create persistent conversations with an agent or with a data source in the Google Cloud console for Cloud SQL for MySQL from the Agent Catalog tab on the Agents page.

Create a conversation with a data agent

To create a conversation with a data agent, you first create a data agent and publish it. You can also initiate a conversation with agents that others share with you.

To create a conversation with a data agent in the Google Cloud console, follow these steps:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud SQL for MySQL page.

   Go to Cloud SQL

2. Select an instance from the list.

3. In the navigation menu, click Agents.

4. From either the My agents or Shared by others in your organization section, click the agent card of the agent that you want to chat with.

5. Click Start a Conversation. A new chat panel opens.

6. In the Ask a question field, enter a question for the data agent. For example, "What were our total sales last quarter?" or "Show me the top 5 users by session time." You can also click one of the Gemini-suggested questions to get started.

   The data agent responds by stating the action that it's taking to address your question, and then the data agent returns the results.

   To see each step that the data agent takes to provide the answer to your question, click Show reasoning to view each message in the agent's reasoning process.

   To see information about how the results were calculated, click How was this calculated? The Summary section now includes a generated query followed by the query result. You can copy the code and then click Studio to paste the code in the query editor.

   When appropriate for the data, the data agent provides charts, tables, and other visualizations. To view your chat history, go to the Conversation Management list.

   To view agent information, go to the Details panel. This panel includes a description of the agent and its knowledge sources.

Manage conversations

You can open, rename, or delete a conversation on the Agents page.

Open an existing conversation

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud SQL for MySQL page.

   Go to Cloud SQL

2. Select an instance from the list.

3. In the navigation menu, click Agents.

4. On the Conversations tab, in the conversations list, click the conversation you want to open.

Rename a conversation

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud SQL for MySQL page.

   Go to Cloud SQL

2. Select an instance from the list.

3. In the navigation menu, click Agents.

4. On the Conversations tab, in the conversations list, click the conversation you want to rename.

5. Click View actions > Rename.

6. In the Rename conversation dialog, enter a new name for the conversation in the Conversation name field.

7. Click Rename.

Delete a conversation

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud SQL for MySQL page.

   Go to Cloud SQL

2. Select an instance from the list.

3. In the navigation menu, click Agents.

4. On the Conversations tab, in the conversations list, click the conversation you want to delete.

5. Click View actions > Delete.

6. In the Delete conversation? dialog, click Delete.

Locations

Conversational analytics operates globally; you can't choose which region to use.

What's next

• Learn more about conversational analytics in Cloud SQL for MySQL.
• Learn more about the Conversational Analytics API.
• Create a data agent in Cloud SQL for MySQL.