TimeXtender’s new support copilot: Xpilot

In June 2023, TimeXtender launched its own online chatbot: Xpilot. This ChatGPT application is designed to provide users with information and support quickly and easily by serving as a search engine, user manual and knowledge base in one. Our Business Intelligence Consultant Martin Memelink puts it to the test.

Troubleshooting

Xpilot is designed to help with all questions about the TimeXtender software and related topics. Who better to explain that than Xpilot itself?

The main use case is as a next-gen search engine for troubleshooting problems in TimeXtender. When something unexpected happens in the software, it can be a challenge to figure out what is going on and where to find the solution, especially for new users. Xpilot is a valuable new tool for this. After trying out various everyday situations, it is striking that Xpilot can give useful answers on a wide range of topics.

Take the image below, for example, in which a question is asked about missing records. Xpilot provides a handy step-by-step plan to track down the cause. The culprit in this example could be a primary key violation, and by following the suggestions in the answer, the user does indeed quickly find that out.

Xpilot can also help with deploying to Power BI. When a common question about this is asked, Xpilot flawlessly provides the steps needed to resolve it. The Power BI on-premises data gateway is still missing as a possible cause of the error message, but by and large this answer is very helpful and available in a flash.

Other examples of helpful topics to ask about are general questions about data-driven working, required architecture (infrastructure) and SQL. Although these actually fall outside the TimeXtender software, Xpilot can still generate sensible tips about them.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations in the use of Xpilot that currently stand out. First of all, Xpilot is programmed to only give TimeXtender-related answers. In addition, Xpilot will mainly answer in English – probably because the support pages are in English. It is also currently not possible to enter rows of data as a prompt, so Xpilot cannot (yet) help analyze anomalies or data quality. This could be interesting in the future, allowing Xpilot to make recommendations based on source data, but for now that is still a thing of the future.

A well-known limitation of ChatGPT is slowness under heavy load. Xpilot sometimes seems to suffer from this a little too, but during testing an answer took about 10 seconds on average, which is acceptable compared to the time it takes to find the right information yourself. Unlike ChatGPT, however, Xpilot has no button to stop generating an answer, and it only processes one prompt at a time. So if you accidentally send the wrong prompt, you have no choice but to wait.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the way a question is phrased matters. Xpilot will not answer questions that are not related to TimeXtender (“I’m not sure about that”). If you get this answer to a relevant question, you can sometimes still get a useful answer by rephrasing the question. Xpilot also seems to be sensitive to spelling and capitalization. For example, if you ask what xpiloT or xpiilot is, you get no answer in either case.

Since June 2023, the chatbot has been in its public beta testing phase. TimeXtender says the model will be continuously updated and expanded, so users can look forward to future improvements and new features.

Holistic

As a company, TimeXtender pursues a holistic vision, which holds that how we as people spend our time matters – hence the name TimeXtender. For this blog post, we also looked at whether these aspects come through in Xpilot.

According to the bot, the power of TimeXtender is in any case no laughing matter.

And since TimeXtender as a company has an affinity with mindfulness breaks, meditation and breathing exercises, an overstressed data engineer can turn to Xpilot for some inspiration on these too.

There are more topics from the TimeXtender culture that Xpilot can explain, such as terms like Xfactor, Xgoals and Frankenstack. Funnily enough, Xpilot will also bring up the term Frankenstack on its own when asked complex questions about integrating different data systems.

Want to try it yourself?

Xpilot is a very useful tool for quickly and easily finding specific, helpful information about all aspects of TimeXtender. It is currently in the testing phase, and the model will keep being improved and expanded in the future. You can try Xpilot yourself using the button below. Want to know more about TimeXtender? Then sign up for our (free) live demo!

Try Xpilot TimeXtender Live demo