How to use the Farm assistant and AI Summaries

Why use Farm assistant ? 

Farm assistant is useful when you want a quick, clear answer about your farm finances without running a report manually. It can explain what a page shows, summarise your key reports, analyse your income and expenses, and generate charts — all from a simple question typed in plain English. Whether you're checking how actuals are tracking against plan, or exploring a report for the first time, Farm assistant helps you work with greater clarity and speed.

How to open Farm assistant

Farm assistant is available on every page in Farm Focus.

1. Select the AI sparkle icon in the top-right corner of the screen, next to the Farm Focus logo. 

2. A side drawer opens containing Farm assistant. 

3. To close Farm assistant, select the sparkle icon again or close the drawer. 

TIP: Farm assistant is aware of the page you are currently on. If you open it while viewing a report, it can answer questions about that specific report in context.

How to ask a question

Farm assistant supports two ways to start a conversation:

• Freeform field — type any question in plain English, such as "How are my actuals tracking against plan?" or "What does this page show?"

• Suggested prompts — pre-set questions appear based on the page you are on. Select a prompt to use it as your starting question.

After Farm assistant responds, it may also suggest follow-up prompts at the end of the answer to help you explore further.

The freeform field keeps a record of your last 20 queries, listed from most recent at the top, so you can quickly re-use or refer back to earlier questions. 

What Farm assistant can help with 

Asking questions about your farm data

Type a question about your income, expenses, plan, or actuals and Farm assistant will give you a direct answer based on your real farm information in Farm Focus.

Previous chats 

Farm assistant saves your chat history so you can pick up where you left off or refer back to earlier conversations.

Accessing previous chats

After opening Farm assistant, you will see two tabs:

• Current - the active chat session 

• Previous chats - saved chat sessions for the selected farm

What is stored

• Previous chats are stored per user, per farm.

• Each session is listed by the first question asked in that chat (shortened with ellipsis if long).

• The most recently updated chats appear at the top.

• Only the 20 most recent chat sessions are shown.

Continuing a previous chat

Select a session from the Previous chats tab to load it into the Current tab.

From there:

• New questions can be added to continue that conversation.

• Farm assistant is aware of earlier questions and answers in the session, so follow-up questions like "Explain that in simpler terms" will reference previous responses.

• As time passes, underlying farm data may change. Farm Assistant takes this into account when responding to older questions using current data.

Deleting a previous chat

Individual chat sessions can be removed from the Previous chats list. Select the delete option next to a session to remove it. Deleted sessions no longer appear in the list for that user and farm. 

Getting AI summaries of key reports 

As well as the option to use the Farm Assistant to summarise reports, some key reports have AI summaries built in. Use this to generate a plain-English summary of your most important reports without reading through every line of figures.

Supported reports include:

• Variance Report — how you are tracking vs your plan

• YTD Variance Report — year-to-date performance snapshot

• Trends Report — how your financials have shifted over multiple years

These reports are identified by the sparkle icon on the reports page.

To generate a summary, open the report and select the Summary button in the report header. The summary will appear in the Farm Assistant drawer and be added to your current chat session. 

Once the AI summary has been generated, the report will be summarized. Scroll to the bottom to choose between a Quick report summary for a concise overview or a Detailed report summary for more in-depth information.

TIP: If you change your report parameters after generating a summary, use the Refresh button to regenerate the summary based on the updated view.

Printing

Farm assistant and Summaries supports two printing options:

Print the entire chat

1. Open Farm assistant using the AI sparkle in the top-right corner. 

2. Ensure the Current tab is selected so the full conversation is visible.

3. Select the print icon or Print action within the Farm Assistant drawer.

4. Use the browser print dialog to print or save as PDF.

Print a single response

1. Within the chat, locate the individual AI response you want to print.

2. Select the print control associated with that specific response.

3. Use the browser print dialog to print or save as PDF. 

TIP: Printing individual responses also works for answers loaded from a previous chat session.

Additional information

• Farm assistant and Summaries are currently in beta. Responses are designed to be helpful and accurate, but may not always be perfect. If an answer doesn't look right, you can question it directly in the chat.

• Farm data is not used to train AI models.

• Farm assistant and Summaries work within Farm Focus's existing security framework.

• Canned prompts are available to help you get started if you are unsure what to ask. 

Have feedback about Farm assistant? We'd love to hear it — use the feedback option within the app or contact the Farm Focus support team.