Support

Sortia for Google Sheets

Get in touch, and how fast we answer

Questions, bug reports, or feedback? Email support@sortia.io. Say what you were doing and which tool you were using. If you send a screenshot, crop out cell values, sheet names and file names first: the report below carries the build, engine and receipt on its own, and does not read your numbers. It helps us help you faster.

• Pro, Academic and site-license customers: we respond by the next business day. That is a commitment, not an aspiration; it is what the "priority support" line on Pricing means.
• Free users: best effort, usually within a few days. Bug reports that include steps to reproduce jump the queue regardless of plan, because they make the product better for everyone.

Built-in help

Every tool in Sortia has help right where you need it:

• Start here: if you have barely used Google Sheets, the walkthrough at /start goes from an empty browser tab to your first answer, and assumes nothing.
• Guide: each tool has a short explainer with a worked example to read. For a model you can run straight away, start from a template.
• Start from a template: the in-app library of every worked template, searchable by topic, level and tool, each loading a filled-in model.
• Find the right tool: the in-app advisor takes the question you have in plain words and names the tool to use.

If an answer is declined

A decline is an answer. Sortia could not turn that question into a model of your numbers, so it does not offer one from another field, and nothing needs reinstalling. Try these, in order.

1. Ask again in plain words, and name the number. "Will profit clear $120,000 this year?" carries a decision, a figure and a time frame. "Run a simulation" carries none of them. Say what you are deciding and what would count as a yes.
2. Open a model and use its worked example. Most decisions have a ready-made model with example numbers already in it. Open one, replace its estimates with yours, then press Run. Start at Start here for the walkthrough, or Templates for the library. A saved .sortia file comes back through Open a model.
3. Paste your own numbers, or select them in the sheet. On the web, the t-test and the A/B test run in the page: paste two columns and ask which group is higher. In Google Sheets, select the cells and open the tool. The answer is computed only from the numbers you supply.

Some questions have no answer from any model: tomorrow's weather in a named city, a share price next week, a court verdict, a lottery number. Declining those is the honest answer, and no template from another field would make it better. If the question is about Sortia itself, ask it in plain words: where the product's own guide has an entry, that entry is the answer, and a miss is worth reporting below. Typing "it won't run" or "something is broken" gets the usual causes and the Report a problem button.

Check a receipt, or press Verify

A run that records a receipt shows it under the answer: the number of runs or evaluations, the seed when there is one, the sampler, the engine build, an estimates hash and a result hash. On the web, an answer opened from a model file has Verify in this browser. In Google Sheets, press Verify beside the receipt. Either way Sortia runs the same model again and compares the two receipts.

• It reproduced exactly. Same model file, same result: the numbers came from the stated assumptions on this engine build.
• The model or its settings changed. This is a new model file, not a check of the old one.
• Same model file, a different result. The engine build changed between the runs, or an input the model file does not carry did.

A receipt proves where the numbers came from and that they can be reproduced. It does not say the assumptions were good. The exact guarantee, and the one thing it does not cover, is on Developers.

Report a problem

If a run fails, or an answer is wrong rather than declined, report it from where it happened. You do not have to assemble the details.

1. From a refusal or a help answer, press Report a problem. From any error card, press This didn't work. In Ask you can also type "I found a bug".
2. Add two lines: what you saw, and what you expected. That is all the report asks you for.
3. Press Send the report to open a draft in your email app, or Copy it instead to copy the whole email. Press send in your email app and it reaches support@sortia.io.

The report fills in where you were, the build, the engine and the model kind, with the receipt and thread ids when it has them. It does not read your sheet: no cell values, file names or sheet contents are sent. The only words about the problem are the two lines you type.

If you would rather write an email, copy the Thread line from the report preview exactly as it appears. Add the Receipt line if there is one and the Error code from the card, then say what you saw and what you expected. The thread line is what lets us find the same thread.

Please do not send sheet contents, cell values, file names, or a screenshot that shows them. If a number matters, describe its shape, for example "revenue is between 3 and 5 million", and the report can be matched to the thread without it.

Common questions

• Has this already been fixed? Possibly. Every release is dated and described in the changelog, and what a paid plan keeps through a price change is in the terms.
• Does my data leave the spreadsheet? Your spreadsheet data stays in your sheet unless you send it. The simulation engine runs in your browser and the statistics tools run in Google's Apps Script environment, attached to the file you opened. If you hold Pro and ask for a written reading, only the shape of the result is sent, never cell values. See our Privacy Policy, or what an add-on can see, which prints that payload byte for byte.
• What does Pro include? Five engines: risk analysis (estimates in, odds out), decision trees, Schedule Risk, Critical Chain and optimization under uncertainty, plus report output with no attribution footer. The free plan includes every other tool: the 38 data tools, optimization up to 10,000 decision cells on Simplex LP, and all of what-if. Where an engine has a ceiling it is the same on Pro. You also get five full-quality runs of any Pro engine. See Pricing.
• How do I activate a Pro key? Open the Sortia panel: click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge of the sheet, or use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia. On the Home screen of the panel, press the gear at the top, click Activate Pro key, paste your key, and click Activate.
• It says I do not have access to this add-on, and tells me to contact my administrator. What now? That message is Google's, not ours, and it means your organization has not allowed Sortia yet. Nothing on your side can get past it and reinstalling will not help. Send the request your admin console offers, or ask whoever runs Google Workspace where you work to allow Sortia for your domain, which they do from the Google Workspace Marketplace apps section of the admin console: they can allow it so people may install it themselves, or install it for everyone. Three links are worth forwarding with the request: Install free opens the Marketplace listing, sortia.io/privacy is the privacy policy, and what an add-on can see prints exactly what leaves the sheet. Email support@sortia.io if your admin wants a question answered first.
• The Sortia menu is missing from Extensions. How do I get it back? Reload the spreadsheet tab in your browser and the menu comes back. Google builds the menu each time a spreadsheet opens, and now and then that step does not finish. You do not have to wait for it: click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge of the sheet and press Open Sortia on the card. That button always works, with or without the menu.
• Can I use Sortia with SIPmath? Yes. SIPmath 3.0 is the open standard from probabilitymanagement.org for passing uncertain quantities between tools as a small file, a .SIPmath library. Risk Analysis, Schedule Risk and Distribution Fitting save their results as a SIPmath 3.0 library, checked against the Standard's published schema: every output of a Risk run, a model's full set of inputs with their correlation matrix, a schedule's finish runs, and the winning fit. Risk Analysis also reads a .SIPmath library as inputs. Metalog 1.0 entries on an HDR generator are used; GeneralizedMetalog and Metalog 2.0 entries, stored arrays and lookup tables are listed but skipped, with the reason shown. Tick the coherent option before a run and Sortia draws each SIPmath input from the file's own seeds, so its runs are the ones any other SIPmath tool reads from the same file (an input the file correlates through a copula, or one you truncate or correlate in Sortia, shares the shape rather than the run order).