Magic Tables are a kind of AI workup in Decisional Knowledge Engines. You can use Magic Tables to generate any kind of table from the underlying sources in the Knowledge Engine.

Every cell in the Magic Table has its own AI Agent that is used to read sources and generate cell values in a specific format defined.

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Types of Magic Tables

There are two kinds of Magic Tables depending on what the primary column / key in the table is. For a default table the primary key / column is a source. For a custom table the primary key / column is any value that you provide it.

The primary column / key is the first column in the table from the left. It is a column of special importance since it, along with the column headers allow define the table structure

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Default Magic Table

In the default magic table the primary column / key is composed of the sources added to the knowledge_engine

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Custom Magic Table

In a custom magic table, the primary column / key is a text value that is added by clicking on the + add row button on the bottom of the table. In order to add a row click on the Add new row and hit enter after typing it out.

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Adding or configuring a Column

Once you have decided what kind of table you want to generate (default or custom), you can use AI to generate cell values by using the Add new column button found on the top right of the table. Clicking on this opens up a form where you can modify the configurations of the column.

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Column types

You can choose from options LLM or Metadata that allow you to specify what kind of column type you want to generate.

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AI Prompt

An AI prompt is the specific instruction you provide to guide the AI agents responsible for generating content in each cell of your Magic Table. Think of it as the question or directive that tells the AI exactly what information to extract or analyze from your knowledge sources.

An effective AI prompt should be:

  • Clear and specific: “What was the annual revenue for this company in fiscal year 2023?” is better than “Tell me about money.”
  • Contextual: The prompt should acknowledge that the AI needs to find information related to the primary key.
  • Format-aware: Consider the output type you’ve selected (text, currency, percentage, etc.) when writing your prompt.

When you create a column in a Magic Table, the AI prompt serves as the blueprint for what should appear in every cell of that column. The AI will:

  1. Consider the primary key (either a source document or your custom row value)
  2. Apply your specific prompt to that context
  3. Search through relevant information in the Knowledge Engine
  4. Generate an appropriate response in the format you’ve specified

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Output types

When creating a new column you can choose from a list of column types. This allows you to control the format in which AI is outputting values. For eg. Text is a general purpose output type where you will get the output in a text format. Currency will output values in a particular currency.

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Cell states

Once you add a column to a magic table, you will start to see values being generated. Initially, each cell is in the queued state and then progresses into the generating state followed by the terminal state of failed, not found or alternatively, the cell value is loaded into the cell. Here is a bried description on what each of these states mean:

  • queued means that the AI Agent is yet to pick this up for processing
  • generating means that an AI Agent has begun to process the cell value
  • failed means that an error was encountered and the Agent was unable to generate the answer
  • not found indicates that the AI Agent completed its task but was unable to find a relevant answer and decided to flag that the value was not found.

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Cell Values

Once the AI Agent has generated an answer the value will be visible on hovering over the call. There are multiple sections that can be found within the cell value hover.

  • Cell Value - this is visible at the top
  • Context - this is a trace that captures the reasoning or thinking behind how the cell value was generated