Release Notes - 4.3 - AO Easy Answers
Intended audience: ALL USERS
AO Easy Answers: 4.3
Release Date
August 2025
Overview
Release 4.3 builds on previous 4.x releases of the AO Easy Answers solution.
The 4.3 release continues to focus heavily on improving the overall user experience, usability, and functionality in the AO Easy Answers solution, including a brand new Home Page, enhancements to Question interpretation using LLMs, and new Data Summaries generated from Easy Answers Results, Dashboards, and Quick Insights.
This topic includes a high-level introduction to the new and enhanced features made during this release.
New in Release for AO Easy Answers
Home Page
A brand new and much improved Home Page has been introduced which allows customization of both appearance and which section to show on the page. The Home Page includes sections for Topics, Questions, Dashboards, Insights, Data Summaries, and additional Resources for easy access to the various components based on recency, popularity, or if marked as favorites.
Customization is ultimately controlled by the Solution Developer who can create unique appearance and sections per Role of users, but if allowed, individual customization can also be done.
The customizable Resources section includes direct access to Documentation, Tutorials, ChatGPT-based AO Knowledge Assistant, and other AO resources as the default, but any other organization specific resources can be added.
Questions and Results Page
The top of the Results page has seen some reorganization of icon options, and the question asked has been moved to a second line to make room for longer questions.
A new structured filter option has been added to allow a question to easily be extended with filters using the Query Builder dialog. On save, the filters are automatically added to the previous question, and the question is rerun.
When the question interpretation cannot be fully resolved, a new page will be displayed which will provide clarity in what has either gone wrong or what needs further clarification. It’s important that our users feel confident and can fully understand how natural language questions are being interpreted by the system in order to generate accurate and trusted results. In addition to the clarification provided, the user will also be able to add their own clarification on any ambiguities or select from alternative near-match questions.
New ability to generate Data Summaries for the full set of Apps generated in response to a question. Data Summaries can also be added to the new Data Summaries page.
Dashboards Page
New ability to generate Data Summaries for the full Dashboards page and add them to the new Data Summaries page.
New menu option in the User menu to Schedule Report Downloads in either concise or verbose format. Users will receive both on-screen Notifications as well as an email with the downloaded PDF report.
Insights Feed Page and Quick Insights
A number of existing Quick Insights have received configuration improvements to allow more flexibility in data type input and output, as well as some additional visual output options.
New ability to generate Data Summaries for Quick Insights, providing additional clarification about Insights in plain English. Insight Summaries can be found on the Insights Summary when viewing an Insights in Full Story mode.
Data Summaries Page
A new page has been added to Easy Answers solutions called Data Summaries. Available from an icon in the Header section in the Easy Answers UI. All Data Summaries generated from Easy Answers Results, Dashboards, and/or Insights can be added to this page.
Individual Data Summaries can be opened and viewed per App (or Insight), as well as an overall summary of summaries.
A Chatbot is available to allow either Suggested Questions or any ad-hoc questions to be asked about the content in the Data Summaries. Answers to Chatbot questions can be downloaded and/or copied to the clipboard to be easily transferred to other systems.
Finally, Data Summaries can be downloaded as a PDF file.
Documentation
Updated the Open Source Library list included with AO Platform and AO Easy Answers as of July 2025.
The product documentation can be accessed from outside the software. However, the documentation is not publicly available; a token is required to access it unless accessed from within the AO Platform and Easy Answers product UI in the User menu. Use the following URLs:
AO Easy Answers - https://docs-easyanswers.apporchid.com
AO Platform - https://docs.apporchid.com
The ChatGPT-based AO Knowledge Assistant, which was introduced in the 4.2 release, has been updated with 50+ new and updated topics. The combined AO Platform and Easy Answers documentation has been used to create a GPT that can generate summarized responses to practically any question about the functionality and use of the AO Platform and Easy Answers solutions.
Deprecations/Removals
None
Known Issues
In the new Topic/Properties/Value replacement functionality in Easy Answers questions, it can happen that the dropdown for alternative values cannot find or resolve any other values. In such cases, the dropdown is either empty, or in rare cases, the output may say [object object] due to wrong word (token) recognition. Try rephrasing the question.
System Requirements
For workstation system requirements, see System Requirements.