Scout

Ask Scout about your business

Scout is the assistant inside Biosphere. It reads your business’s records, your Knowledge documents and these help articles to answer questions, and it can propose some changes for a person to approve. Scout never changes your records itself.

Ask a question

1. Select Scout at the bottom of the sidebar for the full-screen chat. On other pages you can also select the Scout button in the corner for a floating chat.
2. Type your question in the message box and press Enter. Shift-Enter starts a new line.
3. Scout shows Working on it… while it looks things up, then answers.

You can also press Cmd-K or Ctrl-K, type the question and choose the row that begins Start a chat. A new conversation offers starter questions; selecting one puts it in the message box for you to edit or send.

What Scout can answer

Scout looks up current facts with your access, for the parts of Biosphere your business has:

• Stock: on hand, committed and available by item and location, and how a level changed.
• Catalog: items, variants, options, prices and SKUs.
• Orders: sales and purchase orders, their lines, and what is left to fulfill or receive.
• Intake: Inbox items, imports and their issues, received documents and email, and background jobs.
• History: a record’s Activity and the business-wide audit log.
• Knowledge: your business documents and Biosphere help.

When a part of Biosphere is not turned on for your business, Scout says so instead of guessing. When information is missing or incomplete, it says what is missing rather than claiming a full answer.

What Scout cannot do

• Scout does not create, edit, approve or delete records, and it cannot send messages. When you ask for a change, it tells you where to make it in Biosphere.
• Scout can propose two kinds of decision for you to review: which record an imported record matches, and merging catalog items. A proposal changes nothing until a person reviews and approves it in Biosphere. See Match imported records to existing ones and Merge duplicate catalog items.
• Scout reads files, documents and email as information, never as instructions.

Check where an answer came from

Scout supports its answers with the records, documents and help articles it found. A link to a Biosphere page opens in place, so the conversation stays open. Select Response activity above an answer to see the steps Scout took. The Tools menu below the message box lists the tools Scout used in this conversation.

To copy an answer, select Copy reply below it.

What to know

• A message can be up to 12,000 characters.
• Scout is available when your business has Scout turned on.
• Your own Scout usage is in Configure → AI connections → Agent activity. See Review agent activity.
• The Scout profile in Configure → AI connections decides how new responses are produced. See Connect an AI assistant to Biosphere.