Use the Business Analyst assistant

The Business Analyst assistant 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 about the assistant, including credit consumption, security and privacy, and limitations and bias, see AI in ArcGIS Business Analyst.

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 technical support and product documentation questions.

Use the assistant

The Business Analyst assistant uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant workflows, data, and reports for analysis queries.

Before you can access the Business Analyst assistant, confirm the following requirements:

• Your ArcGIS Online administrator must configure AI.
• You must have the privilege to use AI assistants.

To use the assistant, complete the following steps:

1. On the app header, click Assistant .

   The Assistant window appears.

2. Use the assistant by doing either of the following:
   • Click a suggestion to build your query. To view more suggested prompts, click More... and browse the sample gallery.
   • Type a prompt that includes a topic and location you are interested in.
3. Click the Send button to share your query with the assistant.

   Business Analyst assistant suggests workflows, tips, and resources in the Assistant window.

4. To interact with the suggestions, do any of the following:
   • Create the suggested content.
   • Click More options to modify the suggested content.
   • Hover over a tip and click Show tip to open the tip instructions. This experience is similar to taking a guided tour.
   • To provide feedback on the assistant, click Positive feedback or Negative feedback , and complete the survey. The feedback is used to guide future development.
5. To clear your query history and start over, click Restart at any time. To reset the assistant and the map, click the Restart drop-down menu, and click Restart and clear map.
6. To change the display options of the Assistant window, click Display options .

   You can set your default assistant display preferences.

Example

Use the assistant to map income in California. Click the suggested prompt Create a map. In the assistant's prompt field, the text Create a map of income in California appears.

You could modify the prompt, such as changing the topic (income) or the location (California). Leave the topic and location as the defaults. Click the Send button to perform your query.

The suggestions appear in the Assistant window. The assistant recommends creating a color-coded map using the Per Capita Income (Esri) variable. Click Create map to create the recommended color-coded map.

The color-coded map is created. For more information about how to modify the map, use the tips provided by the assistant. Tips provide instructional guidance, similar to taking a guided tour.

Best practices

Understanding how to use the assistant can help you get better suggestions from your queries. The sections below describe best practices for writing prompts and using tips.

Prompts

To use the assistant, either select a suggested prompt or type a 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.

Tips

You can also click tips, which provide instructional guidance on writing prompts and performing workflows, similar to taking a guided tour. Type a question in the assistant's prompt field, and click Show tip to learn how to complete tasks in Business Analyst Web App.

Limitations and bias

Esri is dedicated to mitigating bias within ArcGIS AI assistants. The Business Analyst assistant is developed with a filter that proactively blocks offensive language and avoids sensitive or biased associations. Suggestions generated using artificial intelligence can be misleading or inaccurate. To avoid potentially reinforcing any unintentional biases in the AI models used by the Business Analyst assistant, human judgement should be applied when interpreting and acting on the assistant's outputs.

Use the feedback feature in the assistant to report on the effectiveness of this filter to help improve Esri models in the future.

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.

On the app header, click My preferences . Expand the General section and click Assistant.

Set the following preferences:

Preference	Description
Default display	Select a default display for the assistant from any of the following: 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.
Open the assistant in its default display after closing a report	Use this check box to open the assistant in its default display after closing a report. If unchecked, the assistant will not re-open after closing a report.

To restore the default settings, click Restore defaults. To save your changes, click Save or click Save and close to close the Preferences window. To view your changes, refresh the app.