Drafting templates with the assistant

You describe the report you want in plain language, and the assistant writes the template, checks it against your records and proposes it in the conversation. You refine it one request at a time, and the template changes only when you apply a version.

Starting from a description

You can begin in either of two places.

From the template list:

1. Open Report templates in Setup and create a template. See Report templates.
2. Pyron opens the template editor. Open the assistant with Cmd + J (Ctrl + J on Windows and Linux). It docks beside the preview.
3. Describe the report you want, and send it.

From the assistant anywhere else in Pyron, type what you need, then use the shortcut its empty conversation offers for starting a report. Pyron asks for the template's name, opens the editor with the assistant alongside, and sends what you typed as your first request.

While a template is open, the assistant reads everything you ask as being about that report: what it shows, the records it draws on, the details it asks for, its wording, its layout and its look, such as colours, fonts, spacing and borders. A short or loosely worded request is acted on rather than turned away. If the assistant cannot tell what you mean, it asks you one short question.

Writing a good description

The more you say about the finished document, the closer the first draft. Name the sections, what each table lists and which columns it shows, the order things appear in, how the pages should look, and what the report needs to be told each time it is made. For example:

• "A daily site summary for one site and one day: a header with our name, the site and the date, a table of the day's incidents with their severity, and a closing line with the day's totals."
• "Add a section listing every overdue inspection, with the site and the date it was due."
• "Use our navy for headings and a light grey background behind table headers."
• "Start each site on a new page, and keep each incident's details together."

Describe the document in your organisation's words. The assistant finds the records and fields you mean, so you do not need to know what they are called inside Pyron.

What the assistant does with your description

1. It looks at the entities in your workspace and the fields each one has.
2. It decides which details the report needs each time it is made, such as the site and the day, and makes them the template's inputs. See Report inputs.
3. It writes the template, checks it against your records and the inputs, makes a trial copy over sample inputs and looks at the printed pages, then fixes anything that does not fit before you see it.
4. It proposes the template in the conversation, on a card that says what saving it would do, with Apply and Discard.

The conversation shows what the assistant is doing while it works. The assistant only reads your data while it drafts: nothing is created, changed or sent until you apply a version, and even then the only thing that changes is the template.

Iterating on the draft

Each proposed version waits on its card until you apply or discard it. Applying saves it to the template straight away, with no separate save step, and the preview is made again with your preview inputs. If it cannot be applied, the card says why.

Check each version in the preview before you ask for the next change. Choose inputs where you know entries were logged, so tables and totals have something to show. See Previewing the report.

Asking for changes

Keep asking in the same conversation. The assistant edits the template in place and changes only what your request is about, so "move the incident table above the summary" moves that table and leaves everything else as it was. For example:

• "Make the totals row bold."
• "Rename the Overdue section to Needs attention."
• "Drop the severity column from the second table."
• "Ask for a date range instead of a single day."
• "Print it landscape."

Each request builds on the version the template has saved. Apply a version you want to keep before you ask for the next change, otherwise the assistant works from the saved template and the version you skipped is left out.

You can also ask the assistant about the report, such as where a figure comes from or what a section lists, and it answers without proposing a change. If what you need lives somewhere else in Pyron, it can point you to the right place.

Going back to an earlier version

A card is made for the template as it was when the assistant proposed it. Once the template has changed, an older card can no longer be applied, and it says so. To step back, ask the assistant to put back what you had, such as "bring back the severity column".

If you come back to the template after a break, the assistant may start a fresh conversation and offer to resume the earlier one.

If someone else changes the template while you are working, Pyron refuses to overwrite their change and the editor loads their version. Look over what they changed, then ask the assistant to make your change on top of theirs.

What the assistant works from

The assistant writes a template from your workspace as it is: the entities you keep, their fields, and the people, sites and other things those records name. Its trial copies are made with your own access, so they show what you can see.

A template can show only what your records hold. Pyron checks every version against your records before you see it, so when you ask for a detail they do not keep, the assistant tells you instead of proposing it. Either record the missing detail first, for example by adding a field to a form, or ask for the report without it.