Business Analyst Assistant (preview) is an in-app productivity tool that uses artificial intelligence to recommend popular workflows, data, infographic reports, and tips. It provides intelligent suggestions and understands geographic context through prompts or search queries.
Note:
For more information on the assistant, including credit consumption, security and privacy, and limitations and bias, see Business Analyst Assistant (preview) overview.
The primary objectives for the assistant include the following:
- Understand your needs through natural language prompts.
- Provide suggestions that can be run through Business Analyst Web App workflows.
- Allow users to refine and change suggestions to better suit their needs.
- Teach users how to run workflows through in-app interactive guided tours.
- Answer tech support and product documentation questions.
Use the assistant
Business Analyst Assistant (preview) uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant workflows, data, and reports for analysis queries.
Note:
The assistant is administered at the ArcGIS Online organization level and may be disabled by your administrator.
To use the assistant, do the following:
- On the app header, click Business Analyst Assistant (preview)
.The Assistant (preview) window appears.
- Use the assistant by doing either of the following:
- Click a suggestion to build your query.
- Enter a prompt that includes a topic and location you are interested in.
- Click Generate to perform your query.
Business Analyst Assistant (preview) suggests workflows, tips, and resources in the Assistant window.
- To interact with the suggestions, do any of the following:
- Create the suggested content.
- Click More options to modify the suggested content.
- Click Generate more to see additional suggestions.
- Click Refine results
to modify the prompt using suggestions from the assistant. Once you have modified the prompt, click Generate to perform your modified query. - Hover over a tip and click Show tip to launch the tip instructions. This experience is similar to taking a guided tour.
- To provide feedback on the assistant, click the Positive feedback
or Negative feedback 
button and complete the survey. The feedback is used to guide further development.
- To clear your query history and start over, click Restart
at any time. - To change the display options of the Assistant (preview) window, click Display options
.You can set your default assistant display preferences.
Example
Use the assistant to map population in California. Click the suggested prompt Create a map of population in California.
In the prompt, the highlighted text can be customized by clicking and editing—in this case, you could modify the topic (population) and the location (California). Leave the topic and location as the defaults. Click the Generate button to perform your query.
The suggestions appear in the Business Analyst Assistant (preview) window. The assistant recommends creating a color-coded map using the Total Population (Esri) variable. Click Create map to create the recommended color-coded map.
The color-coded map is created. For more information on how to modify the map, use the tips provided by the assistant. Tips provide instructional guidance, similar to taking a guided tour.
Understand best practices
Understanding how best to use the assistant can help you get better suggestions from your queries. The following sections describe best practices on writing prompts and using tips.
Prompts
To use the assistant, either select a suggested prompt or enter your own prompt to generate suggestions. Use the prompt suggestions as a resource for forming your own search queries. A well-formed query is short and direct; verbose queries take longer for the assistant to process.
You can use the examples below as guidance in crafting well-formed prompts:
| Verbose prompt | Concise prompt |
|---|---|
"I would like to create a map where it shows income distribution for the state of California in the United States." | "Create a map of poverty in California." |
"I would like to create a map that shows all the coffee shops within the city center of Glasgow." | "Show coffee shops in Glasgow." |
"I would like to search for fire stations that are within 5 miles to the address 380 New York St, Redlands, CA." | "Find the fire stations within 5 miles around 380 New York St, Redlands, CA." |
Note:
For guidance on writing prompts and using the assistant, you can scroll through best practices and more information in the Welcome window.
Tips
You can also click tips, which provide instructional guidance on writing prompts and performing workflows, similar to taking a guided tour. Enter a question in the assistant's prompt field and click Show tip to learn how to complete tasks in Business Analyst Web App.
Set preferences
You can set preferences for Business Analyst Web App in the app preferences. For the assistant, you can set display options. Administrators can set preferences for the entire organization.
To set assistant preferences, complete the following steps:
- On the app header, click My preferences
.The Preferences window appears.
- Expand the General section and click Assistant (preview).
- Use the Default display drop-down menu to choose a display option:
- Floating—The assistant window appears at full size in a movable, floating window on top of the app.
- Compact—The assistant window appears in a smaller size in a movable, floating window on top of the app.
- Dock right—The assistant window appears in a docked window to the right of the app, next to the map tools.
Note:
Display preferences for the assistant are not supported when viewing infographics and reports.
- Optionally, restore the default settings by clicking Restore defaults. To save your changes, click Save or, optionally, click Save and close to close the Preferences window. To view your changes, refresh the app.