Use AI to interact with books using natural language

The new Planning Analytics AI assistant lets you perform a wide variety of actions on books using simple natural language commands.

The initial release of Planning Analytics AI assistant supports English only. The Planning Analytics AI assistant is available only when working directly in a book. The assistant is not available when you open a book from a plan or application, nor is it available from a modeling workbench.

To use the assistant, open a book and click the Planning Analytics AI assistant icon on the toolbar, right next to your user name.

Type a natural language command or instruction in the Planning Analytics AI assistant. There are no hard and fast rules about how you issue a command, as long as the command includes a single action that you want to perform and (in most cases) the subject of the action. For example, if you want to swap the rows and columns in an exploration, all of these commands will work:

• swap rows and columns
• switch rows
• exchange rows and columns
• swap (notice there is no subject specified here)

To reuse a previous command from the current session, place the cursor in the Planning Analytics AI assistant text entry box, then use the Up and Down keyboard keys to cycle through recent commands. When the desired command is in the text box, press Enter to use the command.

Some commands require that an object or widget on a book be selected before typing the command, others require that the book be in Edit mode before the command can be executed. When your command is ambiguous or cannot be completed in the current context, Planning Analytics AI assistant prompts you for clarification.

For example, if you try to convert an exploration to a chart, the assistant notifies you that you must be in Edit mode to perform this action.

Similarly, if you are in edit mode and command "convert exploration to chart" (a somewhat ambiguous request), the assistant prompts you to specify which type of chart you want and then completes your request.

Of course, you're not limited to creating charts. You can use Planning Analytics AI assistant to change the configuration of a view, open a view on a different database, open a dimension or set, perform member calculations, suppress zeroes, and more.

Remember, a command specifies a single action; you can't issue a compound command to perform multiple actions. For example, the command "open the Revenue cube and suppress zeroes" won't work.

Here's a cheat sheet to help you start using Planning Analytics AI assistant. It shows all the actions that you can perform with the assistant.

Notice that there are multiple ways to express most commands. The assistant recognizes synonyms for most actions, so you're not limited to one specific command construct. Experiment with commands, knowing that the assistant will prompt for clarification if a command is ambiguous.