The assistant

A panel in the Planner and the Estimator that answers questions about what is open, from the figures the software computes, and drafts narratives ready to paste into a report.

Opening it

In the Planner, Assistant is the first button in the rail's Panels group. With a project open it talks about that project; on the portfolio screen it talks about every project. In the Estimator, the ✦ Assistant button is in the header.

Quick questions sit above the input. Type your own question and press Enter; Shift + Enter makes a new line. Stop ends an answer early; Clear starts a fresh conversation. The conversation is kept while the app is open.

What it sees

Each question sends the conversation and a summary of what is open to the model. The summary is built fresh each time from the project as the software computes it, never from a cached copy:

• A project: dates and baseline variance, earned value with the period indices, manpower peak, resources and expenses, the critical, started, late and milestone activities with float and cost (and every activity on smaller projects), schedule quality issues, the last risk run, the open register risks and their actions, change requests, scenarios and the recent change log.
• The portfolio: the KPIs and one line per project with its organization, status, dates, variances and earned value.
• An estimate: the class and accuracy range, the build-up to total, every WBS node's total, the largest lines with their labour, crafts, crews, materials with suppliers and lead times, the live risk log, the basis text and the escalation settings.

It does not see files on your disk, other workspaces, or anything outside the open project. It reads; it cannot change the project. When a change is the right answer, it tells you where in the product to make it.

Getting good answers

• Ask for the audience: "for the steering committee", "for the site team", "in two sentences for the dashboard".
• Ask it to show its working: "which activities and figures lead you to that".
• Ask for the next step: "what should the planner do this week".
• Ask for a format: a narrative, a bullet list, a table, a variance analysis with cause, impact and corrective action.
• Check figures against the panel it names. The model reasons from the summary; the product is the record.

Privacy and limits

The summary and the conversation go to the model provider through our server, with the key kept on the server; nothing is sent until you ask. The content is not used to train models that serve other customers. Questions are limited per address to keep the service available. If the server has no model configured, the panel says so.