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Using Ask AI in the Work Order Grid

Work orders provide an operational view of active work inside larger projects — making the Work Order grid a great starting point for day-to-day analysis.

Navigate to Project Management on the left side panel. Then select the Work Orders.

REMEMBER: Prepare Your Grid. This is the single most important step. Ask AI works best when your grid is filtered down to the data that is relevant to your question.

  1. Apply workflow status filters (for example, exclude Closed and Completed work orders if you only want active work)

  2. Set any relevant date ranges

  3. Choose the grid view that best matches your analysis goal

  4. Remove records that are incomplete or not relevant (for example, work orders with no assigned project manager, or projects with zero estimated cost)

A broad, unfiltered dataset can produce empty results, misleading output, or cause Ask AI to get stuck on the first step of your analysis.

Getting Started

With 36,000 or more work orders in a typical dataset, start by filtering to only the work that needs attention. A recommended starting filter:

· Remove: Closed, Completed

· Keep: On Schedule, Due Today, Overdue

Example Prompts for Work Orders

Materials status summary:

"Give me a summary of work orders that need attention regarding their materials. How many work orders need materials ordered versus work orders that need the BOM created or approved?"

This type of prompt can surface material bottlenecks across thousands of work orders in seconds.

Work orders by workflow step (with chart):

"Show me a breakdown of work orders by workflow step and create a bar chart."

Ask AI can generate bar charts, pie charts, and table outputs directly in the conversation window.

Overdue work orders by project manager:

"Break down overdue work orders by project manager and compare them to completed work orders. Show the percentage of overdue work orders per PM."

Note: Ask AI may ask you to clarify which workflow statuses count as "complete" before calculating. Be ready to specify statuses like Closed, Completed, or Canceled.

Example Prompts for Job Costing

Budget performance by PM:

"Summarize projects that were under budget. Break the results down by project manager."

Results will show total projects, under-budget count, over-budget count, and percentage for each PM. Output can be copied to the clipboard, pasted into Teams or email, or downloaded as an XLS file.

Refinement Tips

· Exclude projects with no PM assigned

· Limit to specific PMs or date ranges for cleaner output

Built-In Prompt Types

Ask AI includes several default prompt templates to get you started quickly:

Prompt Type

Best Used For

Post-Mortem Analysis

Reviewing closed projects for estimating and process improvements

Mid-Mortem Analysis

Evaluating an in-progress project to check if it is on track (requires actual critical date data)

Additional default prompts are available inside the Ask AI panel depending on the grid you are in.

Conversation Controls

Control

What It Does

New Conversation

Clears the current session and starts fresh

History

Shows previous prompts and outputs from the same grid

Use History to revisit a successful prompt or learn from attempts that did not produce useful results. Prompting is iterative — do not be discouraged if your first attempt needs adjustment.

Tips for Better Results

  • Filter first, then ask. Narrow your dataset before writing your prompt.

  • Define your business logic. Tell Ask AI what "complete," "at risk," or "under budget" means for your organization.

  • Start specific. A focused prompt on one question tends to outperform a broad, open-ended one.

  • Rephrase if needed. If Ask AI returns empty or unclear results, adjust the prompt or broaden the filter and try again.

  • Give feedback. Use the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons inside Ask AI to help improve the model over time.

Important Limitations

Data quality matters. Ask AI depends entirely on the quality and completeness of your data. Incomplete records, missing dates, or incorrect role assignments will affect the accuracy of results.

· Ask AI is INNERGY's own solution and is not connected to an external large language model.

· The feature is actively evolving. Customer feedback directly influences future improvements.

Have a prompt that works well for your team? Share it with us — it may be added to the default prompt library.

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