Continual

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AI Assistant ​

The Continual assistant is a conversational AI built into the portal and mobile app that lets you ask questions about your operational data in plain language, without needing to navigate dashboards or write queries.

Who Can Use This ​

All authenticated users can access the assistant. Data is automatically scoped to your organisation.

How To Access It ​

In the portal, go to Assistant in the sidebar or use the Ask bar on the home page. In the mobile app, open Troubleshoot and tap Ask the Assistant (when enabled for your organisation). Each conversation is saved so you can return to previous threads on either device.

Opening the assistant from a specific machine (always the case on mobile's Troubleshoot screen, and available in the portal too) scopes that whole conversation to that machine — the assistant already knows which machine you mean, so it won't ask, and it also unlocks attaching a troubleshooting photo (see below).

What The Assistant Can Do ​

The assistant can answer questions across four categories:

Operational Questions ​

Ask about check completion, compliance, and activity for any factory, line, machine, or time range.

The assistant receives each Line's current operational status. It understands that a shut-down Line remains part of the factory while new scheduled and format-change work is paused, so it does not treat that expected absence as a compliance failure.

Examples:

  • "How did Line 3 perform last week?"
  • "Which checks were missed most often in the last 30 days?"
  • "What is our overall completion rate for this month?"

Defect and Deviation Analysis ​

Understand patterns in failing CIL checks (defects) and out-of-target centreline checks (deviations), including root causes and resolution times.

For the newer Centreline workflow, the assistant can separate readings that were corrected immediately, left for follow-up, or used to dispute the target. It can also review the evidence and lifecycle behind a fail-linked target proposal or temporary target trial, including target versions, expiry, and the final keep/revert decision. Managers, Admins, and Owners can inspect the review queue and make the decisions described below; Operators can inspect only proposals they submitted. The assistant does not include ordinary portal change proposals or new-check creation proposals in this deviation-specific view.

Examples:

  • "Show me the top repeat offender machines for defects this quarter."
  • "What is the average time to resolve a defect on the packaging line?"

Reviewing Disputed Targets ​

Managers, Admins, and Owners can complete deviation review decisions from a conversation after inspecting the proposal evidence or trial history. Each decision appears as an approval card and does nothing until you approve that card.

The assistant can:

  • Approve a pending target-change proposal and apply the proposed target.
  • Reject a pending fail-linked proposal. You must explicitly choose whether to raise a deviation action and provide a review note; the assistant will not infer either value.
  • Accept a fail-linked proposal temporarily for 1 to 14 days. If you don't give a duration, your organisation's default is used. You must provide a review note.
  • Keep a temporary trial target permanently or revert it, with a required resolution note.

The completed tool returns the saved proposal or trial state so the assistant can confirm the outcome. If someone else has already decided or invalidated it, the check has changed since the proposal was created, the target conflicts with another active trial, or the item is outside the conversation's machine scope, the decision is not applied and the assistant reports the conflict. You can ask it to reload the proposal evidence, trial, or check timeline before or after deciding.

The assistant always requires a review note when rejecting, including when you choose not to raise a deviation action. This is intentionally stricter than the portal's noteless reject-without-action path: the conversational approval card must show an explicit rationale rather than infer or omit one.

Examples:

  • "Approve the proposed target for the Oven temperature check."
  • "Reject this proposal, raise a deviation action, and note that the sensor needs calibration."
  • "Accept this target for 14 days with the note 'Validate across both shifts'."
  • "Keep the trial target. Resolution note: readings stayed stable for the full window."

Action Tracking ​

Query open, pending, and resolved actions — including who raised them, root causes, and resolution notes.

Examples:

  • "List all open actions for Factory North."
  • "Which actions have been open for more than 7 days?"

Platform Guidance ​

Ask how to use Continual features. The assistant searches the documentation and explains workflows without you needing to leave the page.

Examples:

  • "How do I set up a check that fires at shift start?"
  • "What is the difference between Centreline and CIL checks?"

Creating and Updating Checks ​

The assistant can create new checks and update existing ones — individually or several at once — directly from a conversation. Every change is proposed for your approval before anything is saved.

Examples:

  • "Create a daily CIL check called 'Belt tension' on the packaging machine."
  • "Change the grace period on the morning temperature check to 30 minutes."
  • "Set up these three centreline checks on Line 2." (each is approved separately)

Who can make changes: Only managers, admins, and owners can approve check changes — the same permission required to edit checks anywhere else in the portal. Other users can still ask the assistant to read data.

Create a Check from an Uploaded Manual ​

You can ask the assistant for maintenance guidance or help designing a check from a machine's uploaded manuals. Name the machine and describe the outcome you want. The assistant searches the current manual, cites the pages it used, and asks you for important details such as the target machine or schedule when the manual does not provide them.

Include fault codes, alarm messages or part numbers exactly as shown. The assistant can look up that text directly and read the surrounding pages for the procedure and its warnings. Open the citations to review the source pages yourself.

Manual-derived checks use the same approval card as every other assistant-created check. Uploading a manual does not create proposals automatically.

Examples:

  • "Search the Filler manual for drive-chain maintenance and help me turn it into a check."
  • "What does the Sleever manual say to inspect weekly? Create an appropriate CIL check."

Attach a Troubleshooting Photo ​

When you're in a conversation scoped to a machine (see How To Access It), you can attach a photo to your message for extra visual context — a jammed component, an error screen, unusual wear. Use the camera or photo library on mobile, or the file picker in the portal. The assistant still bases any manual guidance only on cited manual passages; it won't diagnose the machine from the photo alone, and it won't use the photo to guess which machine you mean.

This is only available when your organisation has photo attachments enabled, and only inside a machine-scoped conversation — the option won't appear in a general conversation that isn't tied to a specific machine.

How approval works:

  1. When you ask for a write or review decision, the assistant shows an approval card summarising exactly what will happen (the check details, proposal decision, trial duration, action choice, and notes as applicable).
  2. Nothing is saved until you click Approve. Click Reject to discard it.
  3. If several changes are proposed at once, each gets its own card, and an Approve all / Reject all shortcut appears.
  4. After a check create or update is applied, an Undo button appears for the current session. Undo reverts an update to its previous version, or archives a check the assistant created. It is refused if someone has edited the check since the assistant's change. Review decisions use their normal proposal and trial lifecycle instead of the check-write Undo control.

How Conversations Work ​

  • Type your question in the message input and press Enter.
  • The assistant may call internal tools to retrieve data — you will see a summary of what it looked up.
  • Each message is saved to the conversation history, so you can continue a thread or start a new one.
  • In the portal, use the + button to start a fresh conversation. On mobile, open conversation history and tap New conversation.
  • On mobile, tap the stop button to end a response that is no longer useful. If you scroll up while an answer is streaming, the app leaves your reading position alone and shows a jump-to-latest button.
  • Manual citations open the cited PDF in the mobile app at the referenced page.
  • The mobile assistant requires an internet connection. Content already on screen remains readable while offline, but questions and approvals are disabled until you reconnect.

What The Assistant Cannot Do ​

  • No changes without approval: The assistant never saves a change on its own — every check write or deviation review decision must be approved by a Manager, Admin, or Owner first. It cannot edit factories, lines, machines, or ordinary corrective actions; its action mutations are limited to the explicit deviation follow-up choice on proposal rejection and closing a temporary-target review action with a keep/revert verdict.
  • No invented manual details: For manual-derived checks, the assistant uses cited passages from a fresh search. If the manual does not specify a schedule or target, it asks you instead of guessing.
  • No external access: It only has access to your organisation's data and the Continual documentation — it cannot browse the internet.
  • No real-time alerts: It answers questions on demand; it does not proactively notify you of issues.

Tips For Better Results ​

  • Include a time range in your question: "last week", "this month", "from 1 May to 15 May".
  • Name the factory or line you are asking about: "for the Auckland factory".
  • If the answer seems incomplete, ask a follow-up: "Can you break that down by machine?"
  • For platform usage questions, ask directly: "How do I archive a check?"