Board vs Vena (2026)

Data reaches Board's models through Data Readers, JDBC and an SAP connector, native links to Amazon S3, Azure and Google storage, REST API call steps inside Procedures, and a Cloud Connector that also writes back to on premises sources through a secure tunnel. The agents sit on top of that data rather than calling those systems. They query Datasets through the Board engine, recommend matches, mappings and corrections, and can pass an answer table to a Smart Import object, where nothing loads until a planner reviews and saves it.

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Source data comes into Vena's central database through prebuilt native integrations, Microsoft Fabric connections and open import APIs, with export APIs for an extra fee, and Vena sits inside Microsoft Excel, Teams, Power BI, PowerPoint and Dynamics 365 Business Central. The agents work on that data in Vena and in the workbook.

The Planning Agent writes driver based budgets into Excel templates, the Reporting Agent builds reports and charts with drill down, and changes made through Vena MCP in Excel can be written back to forecasts and scenarios. None of them changes a record in an ERP, CRM or HR system.

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An Agent Orchestrator takes each request with the context of the Screen it came from, decides which agent fits and which steps the task needs, and can sequence work across agents so that one coherent answer comes back. The FP&A, Controller, Supply Chain and Merchandiser Agents sit behind it, and an Agent Manager supervises the network. No calculation runs inside an agent. Each data request goes through a Dataset to the Board engine, which applies the model's logic and security, and the agent then explains the result and proposes next steps.

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A visual workflow builder maps a whole process, from budget input through review, approval, upload and distribution, automates report sends and task reminders and notifies each person when their step comes up, and the same builder runs compensation planning and financial close management. Inside a single request the Analytics Agent breaks a variance, trend, comparison or ranking question into several steps, shows each one and asks when context is missing, and the Planning Agent turns one plain language request into a structured, driver based budget aligned to the CubeFLEX model.

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A planner starts every agent session from the AI icon on a Screen the agent is linked to, by typing a question or choosing one of the suggested prompts a developer prepares, up to six groups of six. The agent takes the Screen's selections and filters as its starting context and answers inside Board. Nothing starts an agent without a person. Scheduled Procedures and email broadcasts run on their own, but no Procedure step calls an agent, and the agents do not reach people in email or a team chat.

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People reach Vena AI in Excel, in the web app and in Microsoft Teams, where it can sit in a meeting as a private chat, and anyone in the business with a Vena AI license can ask the Reporting Agent for a report. Recurring work runs through skills and scheduled automations in the customer's own AI tools connected by Vena MCP, which can send proactive alerts and repeat an analysis on Vena data. Vena's own agents start when someone asks, and none of them wakes on a new close, a data load or a threshold.

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Agents answer from the customer's own Board Data Models through Datasets switched on for AI, which fix the Entities, Cubes and selections an agent may query, and the Board engine runs every aggregation on that persisted multidimensional model. Data Attribute descriptions tell an agent what an ambiguous Entity or Cube means, and each agent can carry up to five uploaded text files of definitions, business rules, mappings and process guidance. An agent works on Screens built on a single Data Model, and Flex Grid layouts cannot yet feed an AI Dataset.

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Vena AI reads the live CubeFLEX model the team already maintains, with no extra setup, and inherits its data, application and per user permissions.

Vena Omega, the context engine underneath, adds each company's operating model, fiscal calendar, chart of accounts, entity structure, cost centers, historical performance, KPIs and terminology, industry considerations and seasonality, and the stage and dependencies of the planning and close cycle.

Answers drill down to the data behind each number, and the calculations stay deterministic on the governed model while the language model reasons over them.

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Within one session an agent keeps the thread of earlier prompts and builds on them. That context resets when the page refreshes, when the user moves to a Screen with another agent or none, or at log out, so nothing carries into the next session. Inputs, outputs and conversation logs stay in the customer's Board environment and session histories are kept there, though an administrator cannot export the full set in bulk. A user can export single answers as text or Excel and charts as images.

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The Analytics Agent, in open beta, builds context about each user's role, preferences and business from what people share with it. Admins save organization wide context, each user can add personal instructions and preferences that carry into later conversations, and Vena Omega tunes the depth, framing and format of an answer to the user's role and permissions. How long that context lasts, and how a user reviews or clears it, is left open.

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Agents recommend and explain, and the decision stays with the user. Policy driven guardrails set which actions each agent may take, which workflows it may work in and when a person must approve, and an agent reaches only the data, models and actions its user may. An answer table sent to a Smart Import object loads into the plan only after a planner reviews and saves it, and the Controller Agent's proposed corrections and account mappings come to a person for review.

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Budgets move through Vena workflows with review and approval steps and a notice to each approver in turn. The Analytics Agent shows how it reached an answer, flags missing context or uncertainty and asks before it fills a gap, and the user can correct a GL account, period or assumption and rerun. Every output is the customer's to review under Vena's AI terms, and agent output itself has no approval step of its own before it lands in a workbook.

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Agents inherit Board's four layer security model, so roles, feature rights, folder security and data security on Entities and Cubes limit what an agent can reach exactly as they limit its user. Sign in runs on Board credentials with a custom password policy or through a SAML2 or OIDC identity provider, with SCIM provisioning and OAuth clients for API access.

Data is encrypted at rest with AES 256 and in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher, and customers can bring their own key. Board Cloud holds ISO/IEC 27001, 27017 and 27018 certificates, SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II reports on request and a public SOC 3 report, and Board sits on the CSA STAR registry at Level 1.

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Deloitte performs Vena's annual SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II audits, both available on request, and a SOC 3 report is public. Vena is a Cloud Security Alliance Trusted Cloud Provider and takes part in TRUSTe's privacy certification program.

Customers can turn on SAML 2.0 single sign on, multifactor authentication and IP restrictions, and role based access sets per user permissions on sensitive data, which the agents inherit.

Each customer gets its own database instance, data is encrypted at rest with AES 256 under keys held in AWS Key Management Service and in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher, and Vena staff reach production only through federated sign in with MFA and a VPN.

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Every agent answer carries an Answer tab and, where relevant, a Chart tab, a Steps tab showing the steps and actions the agent took to build it and a Data Source tab showing the data behind it. Conversation logs and session histories stay in the customer's environment. Administrators track API Credit use against the monthly entitlement in the Subscription Hub, and its audit logs of user, connection and system events can be filtered, exported or pulled through an Audit Log API into a SIEM.

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Audit trails record every document, spreadsheet, budget, report, template and cell level change with date, time and user, with version histories and rollback. Admins get a view of every question put to Vena AI and every response, and answers marked wrong can be audited. The Analytics Agent shows the steps and logic behind each answer so a user can inspect what it used, and visual workflow tracking shows where each step of a process stands.

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Board Cloud runs on Microsoft Azure in a dedicated tenant for each customer, segregated from other tenants, with one or more production instances and optional sandboxes.

The customer picks a supported Azure region, from Ireland, the Netherlands, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Zürich, Oslo and London to Virginia, Iowa, Illinois, Texas, California, Toronto, São Paulo, Pune, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Canberra, New South Wales, Victoria, Dubai and Johannesburg, and Board's Cloud Team can validate one outside that set. Daily backups serve disaster recovery and restore points replicate across regions.

Azure's abuse monitoring can keep samples of agent prompts and answers for review by Microsoft staff in the European Economic Area, and the agents need the Board 15 cloud, although Board itself also installs on premises.

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Vena Hubs run in AWS or Azure data centers in Canada, the United States or the EU, and each customer chooses its hub region to meet residency rules and keep transfers fast. Nightly backups go to Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage across several regions in the same geography, so data stays in that geography, and current data is always stored redundantly. Vena AI runs on Azure OpenAI Service, and Vena does not promise that its AI features are available in every region. There is no edition a customer can host itself.

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Four ready made agents ship for distinct jobs, and a developer picks one by name and version when configuring it in a Data Model. The FP&A Agent covers variance and root cause analysis, statement alignment, external drivers and narrative commentary.

The Controller Agent brings a validation rule assistant, intercompany reconciliation that matches balances with learned patterns, data collection insights, group account configuration, cash flow mapping and local account mapping. The Supply Chain and Merchandiser Agents, from release 15.1, analyze, explain and simulate options before a change or a buy. The Architect Agent is in preview.

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Three agents are ready for different jobs. The Planning Agent drafts driver based budgets and forecasts in Excel from plain language, aligned to the CubeFLEX model. The Reporting Agent lets anyone in the business request ad hoc reports and charts with drill down, which teams edit together in Excel Live inside Teams.

The Analytics Agent, in open beta with general availability expected later in October 2026, works through variance, trend, comparison and ranking questions in steps. A Scenario Agent for modeling cost, pricing, M&A and timing decisions across entities is announced and not yet available.

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Board Agents run on OpenAI language models served through Microsoft Azure, and a customer cannot move them to another provider or its own model. What a customer does control is the agent version, chosen from recommended, supported or deprecated releases and upgraded only when the customer decides. Bring your own model in Board means predictive forecasting models, brought in through Azure ML Studio, Databricks, R, Snowflake or REST APIs, not the model behind the agents.

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Vena AI runs on OpenAI models through Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, under Microsoft's code of conduct for that service, combined with the CubeFLEX model, and customer data is never used to train public models. A customer cannot move its agents to another provider or model. Claude Cowork, ChatGPT Work and other assistants can work with Vena data through Vena MCP, but those are the customer's own tools, not a choice of model for Vena's agents.

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Outside systems call Board through its Public APIs, REST endpoints that return API Query results as JSON, browse Capsules, Presentations, Slides and Screen objects, search the platform, list a Data Model's Entities, members and Cubes, and start a Data Model Procedure with a POST. Access runs through OAuth clients an administrator creates in the Subscription Hub, with scopes and rotating secrets, beside SCIM APIs for users and groups and an API for audit logs. The agents themselves have no API, and outside assistants cannot reach Board through an MCP server.

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Open platform APIs move data into Vena, with import APIs included in every plan and export APIs for an extra fee. Vena MCP gives supported AI tools such as Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work read access to ledger, transaction and operational data under Vena's permissions, and changes made through it in Excel can be written back to forecasts and scenarios. Vena's AI terms bar calling its AI features by any route other than the ones Vena provides, and the MCP endpoint and full tool list are not public.

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Each answer shows its steps and source data so a user can check it, and Board asks users to validate every answer. Agent versions stay pinned until a developer upgrades, so a new release changes nothing on its own. No test set or measured evaluation run checks how an agent answers before a team relies on it. The Architect Agent, in preview, assesses a planning model's dependencies before a change, which checks the model rather than the agents.

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The Complete plan adds a sandbox environment to test, refine and validate new features and data sets before end users see them. Users give feedback on responses as they arrive, wrong answers can be audited, and admins can write natural language rules for phrases the AI misreads, while the Analytics Agent lets a user fix an input and rerun an analysis. None of this scores agent answers against a test set, so a team judges agent quality by checking results itself.

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Board Agents query Datasets that the Board engine computes, and an answer table can go to a Smart Import object for a planner to review and save. No agent opens or drives another application's screen, a browser or a desktop session for a user.

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The agents work inside Vena's model and the Excel, Teams and Power BI surfaces Vena connects to, and data from other systems arrives through integrations and APIs. None of them takes over another application's screen for a user.

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