Autocomplete

This page describes the Autocomplete capability.

Crystal is always ready to land you a helping hand!

While talking to your data, you will be able to see some proactive suggestions of words and phrases appearing in the Conversational Bar as you type.

Crystal is able to understand your intent and enables you to write coherent questions faster and to explore your Topics directly in Conversation - in the case you don't know what to ask.

Please Note

On the first access to Crystal, Autocomplete is always enabled by default.

Of course, you can choose to turn it off and on again as you like: just check the icon on the left side of the Conversational Bar to know whether the Autocomplete is active or not and to choose your preferred settings.

On all subsequent accesses, the settings will remain consistent with your choices: e.g. if Autocomplete was active, it will stay active; and vice versa.

Get Customized Suggestions

While the Autocomplete capability is on, you will get suggestions that are based on your typing process: based on what you have already written, Crystal will be able to continue the phrase in the best way.

You can always choose whether to accept a suggestion (by selecting it with the arrow keys or the mouse or by tapping on it) or to discard it (by keeping writing).

If you keep writing, notice how the Suggestions list gets updated with more coherent suggestions.

You can continue the process until finding a desired Suggested Topic or sending an autonomously composed question.

Please Note

The suggestions that appear are always chosen among the Topics that you have been granted viewing permissions to by the Admin
In the cases of Databases with custom Row-Level Security policies applied, the displayed suggestions of Filter Values are restricted only to those values that you have permissions for at Database level

Let's now deep dive on all the possible ways Crystal can complete your sentence.

Remember

A question to Crystal must always contain the name of a Topic, therefore an Objective and an Entity must always be both present.

Learn more about the Conversation Rules here.

Full Topic Suggestions

If you are at the beginning of the question and still didn't specify any Topic, you will be shown a list of full Topics.

For example:

write a greeting or a question formula, like “Show”
notice that Crystal starts suggesting a list of full Topics that match this word, e.g. "the total of profit"

Objectives Suggestions

If you started the question by specifying an Entity, you will be shown a list of Objectives.

For example:

make a straight Entity request by writing “Profit”
notice that Crystal starts suggesting a list of Objectives for this Entity, e.g. "distribution by city"

Entities Suggestions

If you started the question by specifying an Objective, you will be shown a list of Entities.

For example:

make a straight Objective request by writing “Comparison”
notice that Crystal starts suggesting a list of Entities for this Objective, e.g. "earning by city and facility type"

Dynamic Filters Suggestions

If you asked both Objective and Entity, Crystal will suggest you a list of possibile Dynamic Filters to apply, chosen from the ones that are available for that specific Topic.

For example:

write a full sentence containing a whole Topic: “Find me the breakdown of profit by city”
add the word "for"
notice that Crystal starts suggesting, this time on the right side of the Input Bar, a list of possible Filters to be applied to this Topic: e.g. "sector type, country, city, etc."
choose one Filter from the list - by simply clicking on it

Filter Values Suggestions

Once you have chosen a Filter, you will also be shown the list of Values that are available for that Filter.

For example:

suppose you have chosen the Filter "country" from the list
notice that Crystal is now suggesting, always on the right side of the Input Bar, a list of possible values for that Filter, e.g. "Albania, Algeria, etc."
choose a value for the Filter (always by clicking on it) and send the request to Crystal

Please Note

If no value gets chosen at this point, it will still be possible to send the request, but the Filter won’t be actually applied as no values were specified.

Remember

Crystal will suggest you Filters and their values also when concatenating Filters, i.e. when you write “and for” in order to add a Filter to a Topic that is already filtered.

You can write "and for" both:

after a full Topic request with Filters
as a stand-alone request (because Crystal can keep memory of the context of the conversation, as explained more in depth here)

Next Word Suggestions

To speed up the process even more, Crystal will also suggest you single words in order for you to type faster.

For example:

let’s start again by writing "Show"
now be careful to type a space after the first word
notice that Crystal suggests the most probable word to come after it: for example, "Me"

Please Note

Crystal can predict any type of syntactic word, eventually leading to a fully meaningful question that corresponds to an actual Topic
While typing, you can accept all the words that you need as you prefer: you can potentially accept all of Crystal’s suggestions, accept just some of them, or ignore them all
The choices that you make about word suggestions will not have any impact on the Topics Suggestions

How Does It Work?

The Autocomplete capability combines two different functionalities that, added together, enable you to experience Crystal's full support during writing.

To better understand how it works, it is necessary to distinguish between:

Topic Related Suggestions, which include the suggestion of Full Topics, Objectives, Entities, Filters, and Filter Values
Next Word Suggestions

Let's deep dive!

To give you customized suggestions related to Topics, Crystal compares the sentence you are typing with the sentences present in the training set.

Rules & Limitations

Suggestions Based on Configured Topics Autocomplete only considers and suggests Configured Topics, i.e. the ones that have been manually created by the Admin, whereas auto-generated Topics are not included
Filter and Topic Suggestions Based on User Permissions The system aligns both Filter and Topic suggestions with your viewing permissions set in the Console. This means that you can only see Filter values and Topic suggestions that you have the permission to view
Possibility of No Data within Selected Topics There might be situations where, after applying specific Filters and Values, you select a Topic that does not contain any data. This could be due to the nature of the data or the specific combination of filters applied. If you land on a Topic with no data, the system acknowledges this with a message that informs you of the absence of data and prompts them to try a different query or Topic
Stable Suggestions on Deletion Deleting words from a query does not update or change the suggested Topics list

Next Word Suggestions

To give you customized word suggestions, Crystal makes a probabilistic prediction based on the sentences present in the training set.

Rules & Limitations

Suggestions Based on Configured Topics Autocomplete only considers and suggests Configured Topics, i.e. the ones that have been manually created by the Admin, whereas auto-generated Topics are not included
Single Word Suggestion To ensure the relevance and accuracy of predictions, Crystal suggests only one word at a time. This approach allows the system to provide predictions that are contextually appropriate to your current input
Limitation in Recognizing Untrained Sequences If you type a sequence of words that is not recognized within Crystal's training set, the system will not offer predictions for the next word
Predictions Beyond User Permissions Crystal might suggest words related to Topics even if you don't have viewing permissions for those Topics