Tune Vee

Learn about the methods you can take to enhance comprehension of the questions from your organization for Vee for Enterprise.

Overview

As an administrator, you can enhance Vee's contextual understanding when it returns an unsatisfactory response or no response. This process is known as tuning. Tuning informs how Vee understands and interprets the questions you ask. Through tuning, you can train Vee to grasp the nuances of internal context, terminology, and language within your organization to achieve improved responses over time.

You can tune Vee in the following ways:

  • Add synonyms
  • Exclude objects
  • Reset the thread
  • Create an analysis tagged with Vee Examples

Note: The tuning process is only recommended when Vee returns an unsatisfactory answer to your question. Visier will support you through the tuning process and help you identify the methods that work best for you.

Prerequisites

Before you begin tuning:

  • Ensure you have loaded the sufficient data. If a question cannot be answered from your organization’s people data, you will need to load that data before Vee can answer your question.
  • If you are working in a project, publish it to production. Vee retrieves data from production, so to ensure any changes are recognized by Vee, you must publish your project. After publishing, allow 24 hours for the impact on Vee's responses to become evident. You will need to engage with Vee to initiate re-indexing by asking it a question, and after 15 minutes, Vee will be fully aware of the changes.

Figure out what needs to be tuned

The Vee Logs capture information about the questions your users are asking and feedback on the generated responses. Refer to the Vee Logs to see where there are unsatisfactory responses that may require tuning. For more information, see Vee Logs.

To get effective feedback for tuning Vee, provide feedback to Vee's responses by clicking the Helpful button or Wasn't Helpful button . When providing feedback, be sure to write comments that explain why the generated response wasn’t helpful and what you expected to see.

Tune Vee

The following methods enhance Vee's contextual understanding when it returns an unsatisfactory response or no response.

Add synonyms to objects

When the data exists, but Vee answers incorrectly because the question uses different terminology from the display name of the relevant metric or dimension, try adding synonyms. In your organization, you might have specific terms that don't match the display names of your objects in Visier. You can tell Vee about these terms by adding synonyms to objects so Vee and your organizational terminology are aligned. For example, if your organization refers to managers as "leaders", add the synonym “Leader” to the Manager concept.

Tip:  

  • Synonyms can be single words or phrases.
  • Avoid using the same synonyms for multiple objects.

To add a synonym, do one of the following:

  • For analytic objects, concepts, dimensions, metrics, and properties:
    1. In a project, select the object that you want to add a synonym to.
    2. Click the Basic Information tab.
    3. In the Synonyms field, click Add.
    4. In the Edit synonyms dialog, add the synonym.
    5. Optional: To add more synonyms, click Create synonym.
    6. Click Done.
  • For hierarchy dimension members:
    1. In a project, click Model > Dimensions.
    2. Select the leveled dimension that you want to add a synonym to.
    3. Click the Configure tab.
    4. In the Synonyms column, click the Edit button .
    5. In the Edit synonyms dialog, add the synonym.
    6. Optional: To add more synonyms, click Create synonym.
    7. Click Done.

Example: Use synonyms to clarify acronyms or add terms and phrases that refer to the same thing

If a dimension member uses an acronym, such as APAC for the Location dimension, Vee may not know what that acronym stands for. To help Vee craft its responses, spell the acronym out and add an Asia Pacific synonym to the APAC dimension member so Vee has context when responding to your questions.

Additionally, you may have a dimension member named City for the Location dimension. If your organization commonly refers to this dimension member as a site, add a Site synonym to the City dimension member. This way, when you ask a question using the term "site", Vee can associate the term with the City dimension member and use it to craft a response.

Finally, you can also add phrases as synonyms to objects. Let's say you want to relate the phrase "direct reports" to the Direct Span of Control Range dimension (which represents the number of direct reports a manager has), add the synonym Direct Report Count Range to the dimension.

Note: In some instances, you may find yourself adding the same synonym to multiple objects. For example, you may want to add a synonym to refer to Employees as Associates. However, adding a synonym to the Employee subject will address only one object but not all the metrics (e.g., Headcount, Turnover, Budgeted Compensation) that reference the Employee subject. To systematically address all aspects, we recommend you create a new concept for Associate that includes all employees that are considered as associates. In this instance, Vee will find the right metric and apply the new Associate concept as a filter to return the right results.

Exclude objects

When the data exists, but there is ambiguity on which object to retrieve due to similarly named objects or when multiple dimensions contain the same member values, try excluding objects. The quality of Vee's responses improves when there is a limited set of objects it knows about. By default, all objects that are visible in analytics are included with Vee. You can hide the less frequently used objects in your organization from Vee by excluding them, so it can better answer your most common questions.

Tip: In some instances, you may just want to change the display name of an object to remove ambiguity. For more information, see "Change a display name" in Change the Display Name, Description, or Explanation of a Visier Object.

You can exclude objects individually or in bulk.

Exclude objects in bulk

Note: Analytic objects cannot be excluded in bulk.

  1. In a project, select the objects that you want to exclude.

    Note: Some object types do not support visibility toggling and cannot be selected for exclusion. For more information on these objects, please contact your Customer Success Manager.

  2. Click Edit Visibility.

  3. Deselect Include with Vee.

    Note: Objects must be visible in analytics to be included with Vee. If Visible in Analytics is toggled off, then Include with Vee cannot be selected or deselected.

  4. Click Apply.

Exclude objects individually

  1. In a project, click the object that you want to exclude.
  2. Click the Basic Information tab.

  3. Deselect Include with Vee.

Example: Use exclusion to remove ambiguity

If there are similarly named dimensions or metrics, exclude some of them from Vee to help it craft its responses.

For example, if there are 3 different dimensions for job names called Job Title, Job Name, and Function, decide which dimension is most commonly used in your organization and exclude the others from Vee. This helps Vee more consistently map questions to the right dimension. Without exclusion, Vee's response may use any of the 3 dimensions, even if the same question is asked multiple times.

Additionally, ambiguity can also appear when multiple dimensions contain the same member values. For example, when asking a question about “Account Executives”, is that referring to the values from the Job Function or Job Name dimension? In this case, decide which dimension you want to use and exclude the other from Vee.

Reset the thread

When the data exists, there is no ambiguity on which object to retrieve, and Vee still returns an unsatisfactory answer, try resetting the thread and clearing the context. A long context window can sometimes confuse Vee on complex questions. Click Reset in the upper-right corner of the screen to start a new conversation.

Create an analysis tagged with Vee Examples

If none of the above methods work, you can tune Vee by creating analyses tagged with Vee Examples in the studio experience that focus on specific business questions. When creating an analysis for Vee, provide examples showcasing your common analytical questions and language, and incorporate charts with relevant data.

Note: Too many analyses tagged with Vee Examples can degrade performance, so always try to address feedback using the other methods first.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when creating your analyses:

  • Start fresh: Create brand new analyses instead of using existing ones that are shared within your organization.
  • Use charts: Vee pulls content directly from the charts in analyses, so focus on creating a series of charts rather than incorporating text blocks.
  • Keep it simple: Each chart should answer one business question.
  • Use a question-based approach: Pose questions in your chart titles in the manner that you would typically ask Vee.

Let's say you asked the following question: Where are we spending the most on employees?

When addressing questions starting with "Where", challenges may arise as Vee may interpret "where" as either location or department.

In this example, let's say Vee's response showed you where your organization was spending the most based on department, but you actually wanted to see the answer based on location.

You can create the following analysis and tag it with Vee Examples to tune Vee's response:

  1. In a project, on the navigation bar, click Model > Analyses.
  2. In the Analyses room, click Create Analysis.
  3. In the Create analysis dialog, type a display name and description for the analysis, and then click Create.
  4. In the analysis, click the Insert button > Add a chart button.
  5. Click Create new chart.
  6. In the visual title, select Breakdown of Actual Direct Compensation per FTE by Location.
  7. In the chart title, name the chart Where are we spending the most on employees?
  8. Click Save and Close.
  9. Once the analysis is complete, click Done editing.
  10. Assign the Vee Examples tag to the analysis so it becomes visible to Vee. For more information, see Assign the Vee Examples tag to an analysis.

Now, when you ask the same question in the future, Vee can associate the word "where" in the chart title to the Location group by in the chart.

Note: When you exclude objects from Vee, it will ignore the objects regardless if they are used in the analysis or not. We recommend removing the excluded objects from the charts and instead referencing objects that are included with Vee that would answer the question in the analysis in a meaningful way.

Assign the Vee Examples tag to an analysis

After you create an analysis, you must tag it with the Vee Examples tag to indicate its significance in the tuning process. Tagged analyses are then integrated into the Vee training model for your specific tenant. By default, analyses are excluded from Vee.

To assign the Vee Examples tag to an analysis:

  1. In a project, click Model > Analyses.
  2. Select the analysis that you want to assign the tag to.
  3. Click the Basic Information tab.
  4. In the Tags field, click Add or Edit.
  5. Select Vee Examples.
  6. Click Confirm.