Alba MCP (chat with your data)

Chat with your venue data using Claude (AI assistant)

Alba can now connect to Claude (and other AI assistants that support MCP's), an AI assistant, so you can ask questions about your venue in plain language. Instead of opening reports and filtering by hand, you ask "What's my revenue this month, broken down by category?" and get an answer back in seconds.

This connection is read-only. Claude can answer questions and build reports from your data, but it can't create, change, or cancel anything in Alba.

This is an experimental feature. Claude can make mistakes, so it's worth double-checking anything important before you act on it.

What you can use it for

Once connected, you can ask things like:

Today at a glance

• How many bookings do I have today?
• Walk me through today's calendar.
• How much did I take in today?

Revenue and money

• What's my revenue this month, broken down by category?
• Compare this week's revenue to last week.
• What's the difference between my booking value and my revenue this month?

Customers

• Who were my best customers in March?
• How many customers this month are returning versus new?

How busy you are

• What's my occupancy this week?
• Which weekday is busiest this month?
• How does this month compare to last month?

You can find a longer list of example questions inside Alba, on the same page where you set up the connection.

What is an MCP?

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It's a standard way to give an AI assistant safe, controlled access to a specific source of data, in this case, your venue's data in Alba.

You can think of it as a secure bridge between Alba and Claude. The assistant doesn't get a copy of your database or free rein over your account. It can only see what the connection allows, and only does what you give it permission to do. For the Alba connection, that means reading your bookings, revenue, and customer data so it can answer questions and put together reports.

The same idea works with all sorts of tools, calendars, documents, project trackers, so you can ask questions across your data without learning each tool's reports and filters.

How to set it up

You'll need a Claude account. Setup takes a couple of minutes and only has to be done once.

First, get your connector link from Alba:

1. In Alba, open your venue's admin and go to Connect to AI (under your stats/insights menu).
2. Copy the connector link shown on that page. The link belongs to that specific venue.

Then add it in Claude:

1. Open Claude and go to the Customize tab.
2. Select Connectors, then click the + icon to add a new connector.
3. Give the connector a name and paste your Alba link. Leave the other fields blank.
4. Click Connect and follow the setup steps in Claude.
5. Log in to Alba and approve the requested access. For smoother use, open the connector's tool permissions and turn on Always allow.

That's it. You can now start asking questions.

What Claude can access

Claude connects as you, and can only read data for the venue you connected, limited to what your Alba account already has access to. If you don't have access to revenue figures in Alba, Claude won't see them either.

You can disconnect at any time from Claude's Connectors settings.