Manual
Asking questions
What it knows
With every question the Assistant knows the company’s pages (each page, its table and a list’s fields), the page you have open, who you are, the company’s name and today’s date. It reads records as the pages show them, with your permissions, and never guesses a figure it can look up.
Questions it answers
| Kind of question | What it does |
|---|---|
| Records (“show me the open purchase orders”, “what VAT posting groups do we have”) | Reads the list and shows the records in a table, saying how many there are. |
| Totals and rankings (“our ten biggest customers this year”, “sales by item last week”) | Counts and adds up the records, by customer, item or account, over the dates asked. |
| Balances (“what does Nakawa Family Supermarket owe?”, “bank balances today”) | Reads the balances the cards show, for the dates asked. |
| Finance (“profit last month”, “who is overdue”, “the VAT for September”, “a statement for Joy Events”) | Works out the income statement, the aging of customers or vendors, the cash position, the VAT of a period or a customer’s or vendor’s statement from the ledgers. |
| What happened (“what did Moses do yesterday?”, “who changed this customer’s credit limit?”) | Reads the change log: who posted, created, changed or deleted what, and which actions failed. Only the tables you may read are told of. |
| How things work (“what is the Due Date Calculation for?”) | Explains pages and fields, from their captions and help. |
It takes the most likely meaning of a question (the page you have open, the latest record, this month) and says what it took, so you can correct it, rather than asking you first.
How it gives figures
- In its words, figures are rounded as people say them: 21,612,340 is 22M, 450,300 is 450k. Ask for the exact figure if you need it.
- More than three figures, or a comparison, come in a table under the answer, with exact values. Copy copies it to paste into Excel; Excel saves it as a workbook.
- Ask for a chart (“put it in a pie chart”, “sales by month as a bar chart”) and it draws a pie, bar or line chart of the figures. Picture saves the chart as an image.
- Amounts are in the local currency unless it names another.
Pages, reports and exports
| Ask | What you get |
|---|---|
| “Open the customers in Kampala” | The page opens, filtered. Asked on a list you have open (“only the open ones”, “sort by amount, largest first”, “go to the next customer”), it filters, sorts or moves on that list. |
| “Run the aged receivables” | It finds the report, fills in its options and filters, and gives you Preview, Open PDF or Download buttons under the answer. |
| “Export the item ledger entries of this month to Excel” | A Download Excel button with every field of the records the filters leave. |
Files and voice notes
Attach a file with the button beside the message box (Attach a file): spreadsheets and text files reach the Assistant as their rows, pictures and PDFs as they are. It can read a supplier’s invoice or a list of journal lines and propose them as records (see Getting things done). A voice note reaches it as its transcript.
What it can’t do yet
It can’t delete records, send email, or schedule anything. Asked to, it says so and tells you which page and action to use.