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Enrichments

Published February 27, 2026 · Last updated March 5, 2026 · 4 min read

Enrichments add new columns to your sheet that Obvious fills automatically — using AI, web research, or translation. Think of it like auto-fill, but smarter: you describe what you want in plain language, and Obvious figures out each value row by row.

Got a sheet of companies? Add a column that summarizes what each one does. A list of contacts? Pull in their job titles from the web. Product descriptions in English? Translate them to Spanish. Enrichments handle the tedious part so you can focus on what the data actually means.

Add an enrichment

The quickest way: ask the agent.

Add a column that summarizes each company from their website.

The agent creates a new column, picks the right enrichment type, writes the prompt, and runs it across your sheet. You can review and edit the column from there.

To add one manually:

  1. Click + Add Field in the column header bar (or right-click any column header and select Add field).
  2. Under the AI category, choose Smart Fill, Web Search, or Translate.
  3. Name the column something descriptive — "Company Summary," "Translated Description," whatever fits.
  4. Write a prompt that tells Obvious what to generate. You can reference other columns using double curly braces: {{Company Name}} or {{Website URL}}.
  5. Click Save. Obvious starts filling values immediately.

A progress tracker appears in the sheet tab bar while the enrichment runs. You can keep working — it processes in the background.

Smart Fill

Smart Fill uses AI to generate or transform values based on your existing data. It reads the other columns in each row and produces a result based on your prompt.

Good for:

  • Categorizing records ("Classify each company as B2B or B2C based on their description")
  • Generating summaries ("Write a one-sentence summary of this product")
  • Extracting patterns ("Pull the city name from the address field")
  • Standardizing data ("Rewrite each job title in a consistent format")

The prompt is the instruction. Be specific about what you want and which columns to reference. Obvious uses the values in each row as context, so Summarize what {{Company Name}} does based on {{Description}} gives better results than a vague "summarize this."

Web Search goes beyond what's already in your sheet. It looks up information on the web for each row and writes the result into the column.

Good for:

  • Company research ("What does {{Company Name}} do? One paragraph from their website")
  • Finding missing data ("What is the headquarters location of {{Company Name}}?")
  • Competitive context ("How many employees does {{Company Name}} have?")

Web Search takes longer per row than Smart Fill because it's fetching live information. For large sheets, expect it to run for a few minutes.

Translate

Translate converts text from one language to another. Point it at a source column, tell it the target language, and Obvious translates every row.

Translate the Product Description column to French.

You don't need to specify the source language — Obvious detects it automatically. The translated text appears in the new column alongside the original, so nothing gets overwritten.

Run enrichments on demand

Enrichments run automatically when you first create them. After that, you might want to re-run them — when you've added new rows, updated source data, or changed the prompt.

The quickest way: ask the agent.

Re-run the Company Summary enrichment on the new rows.

To trigger a run manually, select the rows you want to enrich, then right-click and choose the enrichment to run. Obvious processes only the selected rows, leaving existing values untouched.

Run enrichments in the background

For sheets where new data arrives regularly, you can set an enrichment to run automatically whenever records change. Right-click the enriched column header, open the field settings, and toggle Run in background on.

With background processing enabled, every new or updated row gets enriched without you lifting a finger. Turn it off the same way when you don't need it.

Tip: Background enrichments skip changes made by the agent itself, so you won't get stuck in a loop where an enrichment triggers another enrichment.

Next steps

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