Skills

Who this is for. Anyone with SmartResearch access: analysts, managers and finance leads. Access. Included for everyone at an organization whose subscription covers SmartResearch, whatever their role. No permission needs to be assigned. See the Roles and Access Reference.

A skill is a reusable workflow. The product defines it as an analysis you teach SmartResearch once: its steps, defaults, and output, so you get the same result every time, just by asking. The catalog describes them as reusable workflows you teach SmartResearch once, then run again and again, consistently, every time.

Open the Skills catalog

  1. In the sidebar, select Skills.

The catalog opens. To return to the workspace, select ← Back to chat.

The Skills page on the Personal tab, showing the routes to create a first skill

Figure 1. The Skills catalog with no personal skills yet.

How the catalog is organized

The tabs split skills by where they came from, and each tab label carries a count.

Table 1. Skills tabs

Tab

Holds

Count shown

Personal

Skills you authored.

Personal 0 until you create one.

Default templates

Ready-made skills shipped with the product.

Default templates 3 in a typical tenant.

With no personal skills, the page opens on an onboarding state headed Create your first skill rather than an empty list.

Ways to create a skill

The page presents them in order of speed. Reuse a recent prompt appears only once you have asked something in this tenant. In a workspace with no conversations yet, the page offers the other two routes.

Table 2. Creation routes

Route

On-screen guidance

Use when

Reuse a recent prompt
Shown under Fastest way to start

“Turn a question you recently asked into a repeatable skill. Pick one and SmartResearch drafts the steps, defaults, and output for you.”

You have just asked something worth repeating. Recent questions are listed for selection, for example Current DPO.

Start from a template

“Begin with a ready-made skill and tailor it.”

A shipped template is close enough to adapt. Templates include 13-week-cash-forecast, budget-variance-breakdown and vendor-concentration. Select All templates for the full set.

Describe a new skill

“Tell SmartResearch what you want, the way you’d ask in chat. It drafts the steps, defaults, and output for you.”

You can describe the workflow in a sentence. Select + Create skill to submit it; SmartResearch drafts the steps for you. The box shows the level of detail that works: Every Monday, summarize overdue invoices by customer and flag anything past 60 days…

Every route ends in the same builder, and in all four SmartResearch drafts the steps, defaults and output for you to accept or change. None requires you to write a skill from a blank form.

Shipped templates

The Default templates tab is introduced with: Ready-made workflows to start from — pick one, tailor it in a quick conversation, and save it as your own. Each template names what it is for and, deliberately, what it is not for.

The Default templates tab showing the three shipped skill templates

Figure 2. The three shipped templates, each with its domain tag and scope note.

Table 3. Templates supplied with the product

Template

Domain

What it does

13-week-cash-forecast

cash

Refreshes the cash outlook against last week’s actuals and flags the variances that need attention. Not for P&L work.

budget-variance-breakdown

fp-and-a

Breaks down spend variances by department and account, and explains the drivers behind material movements. Not for cash or AR work.

vendor-concentration

payables

Measures how concentrated spend is across vendors and flags dependency risk. Not for invoice-level troubleshooting.

The “not for” sentence in each description is a scope exclusion. It stops the skill firing on questions it was not built for, which is why it is worth writing one into your own skills

Every supplied template has the same shape: four steps, two triggers and three defaults.

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Use a template

  1. Select the Default templates tab, or select All templates.

  2. On the template you want, select Use template.

  3. Tailor it in the conversation that opens, then save it as your own.

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