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
- 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.
- Type your question in the message box and press Enter. Shift-Enter starts a new line.
- 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. Scout answers in a floating chat while your current page stays open. 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.
- Projects and deliveries: membership, areas, linked orders, shipment journeys, confirmed counts, client previews and decisions waiting for review.
- Costs and reporting: stock value, order margins, Project and business financials, contributing records, saved exchange rates and incomplete amounts.
- Payments: current status, confirmed transactions and uncertain attempts.
- Sources: retained worksheet evidence, reviewed layouts, source checks and field ownership. Image metadata is separate from seeing image contents.
- 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.
Ask Scout to prepare a change
Ask Scout to prepare a product edit, physical count, record-match decision or catalog merge. Nothing changes until the requesting person approves the exact change. See Review changes prepared by an AI assistant.
What Scout cannot do
- Scout cannot apply business changes or send messages. For changes outside those four preparations, such as source choices, exchange rates, payments or order execution, it points you to the ordinary Biosphere controls.
- 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 to every active business.
- Your own Scout usage is in Configure → AI connections → Agent activity. See Review agent activity.
- The Scout model in Configure → AI connections decides how new responses are produced. See Connect an AI assistant to Biosphere.
Review an import plan
When an arrival needs interpretation, Scout prepares its record type, fields and possible matches for your review. It keeps choices you already made and asks you to confirm uncertain ones. Preparation does not apply records.
If preparation fails, the upload and choices already saved remain available. Open the arrival in Inbox, review those choices, or select Try again to request another preparation. Scout does not automatically repeat a failed preparation.