Answers from your own procedures, with sources
An assistant that answers staff questions from your controlled documents only, citing the document number, section and revision, and saying so when the answer is not there.
- Sources
- Current, approved revisions only
- Citation
- Document number, section and revision on every answer
- Languages
- Questions in Arabic or English
- Access
- Follows your existing document permissions, per user
- First assistant live
- Two to four weeks from an agreed document set
A document assistant answers questions from the documents you load and from nothing else. Every answer cites the document number, section and revision it came from. When your documents do not answer the question, it says so instead of guessing. Each person sees answers only from documents they are already allowed to open.
- 01 Enquiry
- 02 Systems audit
- 03 Specification
- 04 Build
- 05 Pilot
- 06 Deploy
- 07 Handover
- 08 Support
Answers from your own procedures, with sources sits at step 4 of the build cycle. You receive a working increment you can use.
The first week finds your contradictions
Load two hundred procedures into anything that reads them all at once, and it notices what nobody has noticed.
Two procedures tell a supervisor different things about the same task. A forklift charging procedure asks for face shields and the warehouse safety procedure leaves them out. An approval limit is stated one way in finance and another way in purchasing.
An assistant loaded with contradictory procedures gives contradictory answers, each one correctly cited. So the first deliverable is a contradiction list, sent to the document owners. They resolve it, and then the assistant goes live.
How one answer is built
The citation matters more than the answer. A supervisor can open the cited section in seconds and check it, which is how trust gets built and how an error gets caught.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Question | A person asks in Arabic or English, in their own words. |
| Search | The assistant searches only the current, approved revisions this person may open. |
| Select | It picks the passages that answer the question. |
| Answer | It writes the answer from those passages and only those. |
| Cite | Each statement carries the document number, section and revision. |
| Not found | If no passage answers it, the assistant says so and logs the question for the document owner. |
What you hold at go-live
The loaded-document index
Exactly what the assistant can see, by document number and revision.
The contradiction list
Every place two documents disagreed, with the owner's resolution against each line.
The test record
Questions with known answers, run and checked before go-live, with the results written down.
The question log
Every question asked, and a monthly report of the ones it could not answer for the document owner.
The configuration
The assistant's instructions and settings in plain text, in your repository.
The operations manual and runbook
How to add a new revision, change a permission group and read the logs, written for your administrator.
From document set to go-live
- 01
Agree the document set
Current, approved documents only, with the permission groups you already use. A named document owner signs off the list.
- 02
Load and compare
Every document is read, and passages that disagree with each other are listed.
- 03
Resolve
The document owners work through the contradiction list and issue corrected revisions through document control.
- 04
Test
Questions with known answers are run and checked, and the results go into the test record.
- 05
Go live
Staff ask in Arabic or English, and every answer carries its citation.
- 06
Read the log
Each month the owner reads the questions it could not answer. That list shows which procedures are missing.
Night-shift questions in a warehouse
A logistics operator in Riyadh runs its warehouses on procedures written in English, and its supervisors ask the QHSE coordinator the same questions on every night shift.
The document set is agreed first: current, approved procedures only, with the permission groups the operator already uses. Loading them produces a list of procedures that disagree, which the QHSE manager resolves over two weeks.
The assistant then goes live for supervisors in Arabic and English, and every answer cites its source. Questions it cannot answer are logged, and after a month that log reads as a list of procedures nobody has written yet.
The operator holds the index of loaded documents, the resolved contradiction list, the question log and a runbook for adding a new revision.
Keeping the answers right
Only as current as your document control
When a new revision is approved, the index updates and the superseded text drops out. If nobody can say which copy of a procedure is current, that gets fixed first, and the systems audit will tell you so. The document control systems page describes the fix.
Arabic questions, English procedures
Many sites run English procedures with a workforce that asks in Arabic. The assistant answers in Arabic from an English source and cites the English original, so a supervisor can check it. That answer is a working translation. For safety-critical instructions the controlled Arabic version of the procedure governs, and where none exists, the question log shows where one is needed.
A named person runs the index
The software hands the judgement calls to a named document owner, because they are the calls a regulator or an auditor will ask a person about: which documents are loaded, when a new revision goes in, and what to write where the log shows a gap.
- Chooses the loaded document set
- Approves each new revision into the index
- Receives every question the assistant could not answer
Questions before the first document goes in
Will it make things up?
It is built to say so when no passage supports an answer, and before go-live we test it with questions whose answers are known and record the results in the test record. No system of this kind is perfect, which is why every answer carries a citation a reader can check in seconds.
Where do our documents go?
The hosting location and the model provider are chosen at specification and named in the written scope, before the first document is loaded. The assistant searches an index built from the documents on the loaded-document index.
Can it read scanned PDFs?
Once the text has been extracted. Poor scans go through data extraction first, with a person checking what was read.
What happens when a procedure changes?
The change goes through your document control route and its named approver. When the new revision is approved, the index updates and the old text drops out of the answers.
What drives the cost?
The size of the document set, how many permission groups exist, how many contradictions the owners must resolve, and whether it connects to the system where your documents live.
Pairs with
Document control systems
The controlled register the assistant reads from, with one current revision per document.
Read moreDigitalData extraction
For scanned procedures whose text has to be read before they can be loaded.
Read moreConsultDocument control, written
Writing and controlling the procedures themselves, so there is one current copy to load.
Read moreTrainingAI and digital tools in operations
A one-day course on drafting, checking and approving work done with AI.
Read morePart of one system
Every division keeps records to the same standard, so the second one you need works the way the first one did.
Bring the questions you answer every week
The systems audit looks at your document set and your permission groups, and tells you whether the documents are controlled well enough to load.