Work in an engagement with the agent

An engagement holds one client's work in the dashboard: the documents, the team and the tasks you give the agent. The agent reads the engagement's documents on our servers, so Excel does not need to be open. Open Engagements in the sidebar.

If the page says "Engagements aren’t available", they are not switched on for your organization yet.

Create an engagement

1. On the Engagements page, click New engagement.
2. Type a Name. Fill in Client (optional) if you want the client on the page.
3. Click Create engagement.

Any member of your organization with product access can create an engagement and gets full access to it. An owner or administrator invited without Product access, for example to manage billing only, can neither create an engagement nor open the organization's engagements. If you see "Your organization has no data region yet", the organization needs one before its first engagement. You cannot choose it from the dashboard: contact support with the chat on blast-audit.com/help.

Add members

In the Members tab, click Add a member. Choose a Person from your organization and their Access:

Owners and administrators of the organization who have product access have full access to every engagement. The person who created the engagement keeps full access, and cannot be removed from it, as long as they stay in your organization. A creator who leaves the organization and comes back starts with no access, unless they come back as an owner or administrator, who have full access to every engagement. Otherwise, add them again. Someone you remove stops seeing the documents and the tasks, and you can add them back later.

Import documents

In the Documents tab, drop files or click Choose files. The tab takes PDF, images, Office files, emails, text files (.txt), CSV or ZIP, up to 100 MB per file. Only members with full access import documents.

Each document goes through Uploading, Virus scan, Converting to PDF and Reading, then shows Ready. The agent can read a document once it is ready.

When a document fails, its row says why, for example a password-protected file, an unsupported file type or your organization's Advanced Re-reads used up. If the row offers Retry, click it. A password-protected file or an unsupported type has no Retry: fix the file and import it again. If the virus scan finds a threat, the file is deleted.

The menu of a row has Preview once the document is ready, Download original once the file has passed the virus scan, and Remove from engagement for members with full access while the engagement is open. The agent no longer sees a removed document. The workpapers of tasks already done keep their values and the record of their sources, but the document is no longer served: neither the preview, nor the original, nor the page behind a Cell source, which then says Document removed from the engagement. Download the original before you remove a document you may need as evidence.

Data sources

An engagement takes documents only. A data source, such as a FEC or a ledger exported as CSV, TSV or text, goes in an analysis project: open Analyses in the sidebar, then New project. If you do not see Analyses, analytics is not switched on for you yet. A CSV or text file imported in the Documents tab of an engagement is a document, not a data source.

Launch a task

In the Tasks tab, click New task. Members with full access launch tasks, in an open engagement.

1. Under Procedure, choose an agent from your library, or keep Free task to write your own instructions. Published procedure searches the procedures your organization has published. The task keeps the version you chose, even if a newer one is published later. An agent and a published procedure do not go together: the last one you choose replaces the other. With an agent from your library, your instructions come first where they differ from the agent's. With a published procedure, the agent applies its rules as written; if your instructions contradict a rule, it asks you which of the two applies and applies neither on that point until you answer.
2. Type a Title.
3. In Instructions, say what to check, on which documents, and what you expect back. The line above the box shows the documents the task reads: all the engagement's documents by default. Click it to choose some. Type @ to name a document or an agent. Choosing an agent with @ makes it the task's procedure: it replaces the agent or the published procedure already chosen, and a line under the box says so.
4. In Workpaper template, choose an .xlsx or .xlsm workbook from this engagement if you have one. The agent fills in its cells. With None (blank workpaper), it starts from an empty workpaper.
5. In Reviewer, choose a member with full access, or No reviewer. The task shows in that member's reviews.
6. Click Launch task.

The Agents and Procedures buttons at the top of the Engagements page open your organization's library.

The tab shows the tasks as a Board or a List. The board groups them by status, from left to right: Draft, In progress, Awaiting an answer, Ready to review and Done. Draft holds the tasks not launched yet. A task paused for lack of credits or because of a cap stays in In progress. Failed and cancelled tasks have no column: under the board or the list, Show N failed or cancelled tasks displays them, and Hide failed and cancelled tasks puts them away. My reviews keeps the tasks you review. The My reviews button on the Engagements page lists them across all your engagements.

Members with full access also see Automatic tasks in this tab. An automatic task launches a task by itself when new documents of a type or with a tag arrive. Each one has a reviewer and a monthly cap.

Follow the task

Click a task to open its page. The header shows its status, the cost so far, the number of steps and the time spent. Tasks use your organization's AI credits (see Choose a plan, buy licences or get a quote).

The agent's steps appear as sentences, such as "Read 12 documents" or "Wrote 4 cells". Click a step for its detail: the documents read, the code run in the sandbox, the cells written with their values before and after.

You can close the page. The task goes on without you. To add something while the agent works, use Write to the agent while it works, then Send. Cancel stops the agent after the current step. Sending and cancelling need full access to an open engagement.

A task can be in these states:

• Queued and Running.
• Waiting for its subtasks. The agent started subtasks. They run without you, and the task goes on when they are done.
• Waiting for your answer. See the next section.
• Paused: out of credits. The task resumes by itself, where it stopped, once the credits are topped up. Owners and administrators see Buy credits. Other members are told to ask one of them.
• Paused: monthly cap reached. The task resumes when the next period starts. To raise or remove the cap sooner, an owner or an administrator asks support: the dashboard has no screen for it.
• Paused: cap reached. An automatic task launched this task, and its own monthly cap is used up. The task resumes by itself when a member with full access raises the cap in Automatic tasks (Tasks tab), or when the next month starts.
• Stopped by a safety limit (status Paused). The cost of the task passed an internal safety limit, and our team has been alerted. Unlike the other pauses, the task does not resume by itself: a member with full access clicks Cancel, then launches a new task. A read-only member cannot cancel it.
• To review. The agent finished and waits for your review.
• Completed, Failed and Cancelled.

Answer the agent's questions

When the agent needs you, the task shows Waiting for your answer and the page opens on the question.

• A question in text. The page shows a box. Type in Your answer, then click Answer and resume.
• A set of questions. It comes as a card, one page per question, and can hold a single question. Pick an option, or Something else… to write your own answer. When the question accepts them, Attach documents adds documents of the engagement to the task. Skip passes a question, Answer later puts the card away, and Send answers sends them. The arrow keys move between options, Enter chooses and Esc skips; in a filled Something else… field, the first Esc only leaves the field.
• Automatic pause. If the agent stops making progress, the page says so. Give it a direction and click Resume with this direction, or cancel the task.

You can also write a message instead. It replaces the waiting questions, and the agent reads it in their place. Members with read-only access see the question but cannot answer.

Read the workpaper and its sources

The task page has three buttons: Workpaper, Review and Outputs.

Workpaper shows the Excel file the agent fills for this task, sheet by sheet. The grid opens read-only. Small marks in the corner of a cell tell you what to look at:

• Snip: the value comes from a document, and the cell has a source.
• To check: the value was written or taken from a document without a snip, or the check does not trust the formula: it uses a function the grid does not compute, a circular reference, a formula it could not read, a result Excel may round differently, or a cell that is itself to check. The To check list names each cell and the reason.
• Error: the formula returns an error.

Click a cell marked Snip. Its Cell source opens beside the sheet: the document page, with the words the value was read from boxed. When the position is not known, the page opens without a box. If a cell has several sources, use Previous source and Next source. On a narrow screen the document takes the place of the sheet: Back to the sheet brings the sheet back. Close the document closes it. A cell without a snip has no source, and the pane says so.

A member with full access can type values. Click Edit, then double-click a cell, or select it and type. The status reads Saving…, then Saved, or Not saved. Formulas are refused: enter a value. Meanwhile the other members see the workpaper read-only, and another member with full access can use Take over. Nobody can edit while the agent writes in the workpaper, once the engagement is closed, or once the review is finished. Stop editing ends your turn.

Download (.xlsx) saves the file. Under Versions, each version has its own download. With full access to an open engagement, Save a version keeps the workpaper as it is now. Every downloaded file has a journal sheet: the documents the agent read, the cells it wrote, its questions and the answers. Outputs gathers all this: the workpaper with Open and its download, the saved versions and the journal tab. It stays empty until the agent has written in the workpaper.

Review the work

When a task is To review, click Review. The screen lists the Points to check: values written without a snip, values taken from a document without a snip, formulas that return an error, formulas the check does not trust (see To check above), and the suggestions that wait for your decision. Pick a point to see the cell in its sheet. When the value has a source document, the document shows beside it. A value without one says No source, and a formula says Computed by a formula. Then:

• Looks right approves a value the agent wrote. It is not offered for a formula (whether it returns an error or the check does not trust it), for a date, or for a cell the agent did not write: leave a note instead. While a suggestion waits on the cell, decide it first. Withdraw takes the approval back.
• Leave a note writes a note for the agent. Click Add the note to keep it.
• For a suggestion, Apply writes the values, Don’t apply leaves the cells as they are, and Undo puts back what Apply changed.

When you have been through the points, you can:

• Send N notes to the agent. The agent answers each note, then hands the workpaper back.
• Finish review, or Finish without sending when notes are open. The workpaper is saved as a new version, and the task moves to Done. The screen lists what finishing leaves behind: points not approved, suggestions not decided and notes never sent.

Only members with full access approve, leave notes and finish. Members with read-only access can read the review. Once the review is finished, its approvals stay as they were given.

Close and reopen an engagement

Members with full access click Close engagement. The dialog says what follows:

• Every task that is not finished pauses: running, queued, waiting for an answer or for credits, or to review. Their work is kept.
• The engagement becomes read-only. Nobody can import documents, launch tasks or write to the agent.
• Deletion is planned for the date the dialog shows: the documents, workpapers and task history are then deleted for good. This cannot be undone. Deletion runs once a day, and a run that fails is tried again on a later day.
• You can reopen the engagement before then to keep it.

A closed engagement shows a banner with the dates. Members with full access also see a Reopen button. Reopening does not restart the paused tasks. Open each one, where it says Paused by the closure, and click Send back to the agent. Once the deletion has started, the engagement can no longer be reopened.

Download what you need before the deletion date: Download original in the menu of a document, and Download (.xlsx) on the workpaper or the version of a task. Where your data is stored and for how long says how long the content stays on our servers.

When nobody has worked in an engagement for 6 months, the person who created it, if still in your organization, and the owners and administrators get an email. If nobody acts on the engagement in the next 30 days, it is closed automatically and follows the same rules as a closure by hand. Any action on the engagement keeps it open.

Owners and administrators can delete an engagement at once. Open More actions, choose Delete engagement…, type the engagement's name and click Delete for good. Tasks that are not finished are cancelled. The engagement leaves your list straight away. Its content is erased by the daily deletion; a run that fails is tried again on a later day.