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Ask Yarken

Overview

Ask Yarken is Yarken's AI assistant for technology finance. It helps users ask questions about spend, budgets, forecasts, cloud costs, contracts, vendors, applications, cost centers, entities, operational drivers, and approved Knowledge Base documents using natural language.

Users can ask a question and receive a structured answer based on governed Yarken data and, where relevant, uploaded documents that have been processed in AI Studio > Knowledge Base. Ask Yarken can return summaries, variance explanations, charts, recommendations, source-backed document answers, and supporting analysis.

Results depend on the data available in your Yarken environment, the documents available in AI Studio Knowledge Base, and the permissions assigned to the user.

What Ask Yarken helps users do

Use Ask Yarken to:

  1. Investigate technology spend and cost drivers.

  2. Compare actuals, budgets, and forecasts.

  3. Explain budget, forecast, and spend variances.

  4. Analyze cloud spend, providers, services, and FinOps signals.

  5. Review vendors, contracts, renewals, and obligations.

  6. Ask questions about approved documents uploaded to AI Studio Knowledge Base.

  7. Create charts and visual summaries.

  8. Generate recommendations for cost control, planning, and operational review.

  9. Continue analysis through follow-up questions in the same chat thread.

Who should use Ask Yarken

Ask Yarken is designed for:

  • CIOs and CFOs.

  • FinOps teams.

  • TBM practitioners.

  • IT Finance teams.

  • Technology leaders.

  • Business stakeholders responsible for technology spend.

How Ask Yarken works

When a user submits a question, Ask Yarken:

  1. Interprets the user's intent.

  2. Identifies the right analysis approach.

  3. Uses governed Yarken data when the answer requires platform data.

  4. Searches AI Studio Knowledge Base when the answer requires uploaded reference material.

  5. Applies the user's permissions and configured guardrails.

  6. Returns a structured answer, chart, recommendation, document summary, or source-backed explanation.

When Ask Yarken uses Knowledge Base documents, it can search curated pages and the full source text created during indexing. This means it can answer questions about uploaded user guides, policies, SOPs, standards, taxonomies, or similar approved material, and provide source support when available.

Ask Yarken is not a replacement for governed workflows. It helps users understand data, explain change, inspect uploaded reference material, and identify next steps. Any operational action still follows standard Yarken permissions and approval processes.

Settings that support Ask Yarken

Administrators can manage Ask Yarken behavior from Admin > Settings > AI.

Current AI settings include:

Area

Purpose

Ask Yarken

Controls availability, organization context, and search lookup behavior.

Copilots

Controls Graph Explanation Copilot behavior for dashboard visuals.

Playbooks

Manages SOPs that guide repeatable Ask Yarken analysis workflows.

Knowledge Base

Maintains the dimensions index used to resolve business names and references.

For detailed configuration steps, see Manage Ask Yarken settings, Copilots, and Knowledge Base.

For document-based Knowledge Base setup, see AI Studio - Knowledge Base.

Access and governance

Ask Yarken respects Yarken security controls. Users only see data they are authorized to access.

Access can be controlled through:

  • User roles.

  • Cost center permissions.

  • Entity permissions.

  • Account permissions.

  • Organizational access policies.

Shared conversations do not bypass permissions. Users can only view analysis that falls within their authorized data scope.

Knowledge Base documents should be approved before they are uploaded to AI Studio. Ask Yarken can only answer from document context that has been uploaded, processed, indexed, and made available for use.

Before using Ask Yarken

Confirm that:

  1. Ask Yarken is enabled.

  2. The user has the required license and permissions.

  3. Required financial, cloud, vendor, contract, and master data is loaded.

  4. Cost allocation mappings are configured where needed.

  5. The Knowledge Base dimensions index is current when users ask about named Yarken values.

  6. Relevant AI Studio Knowledge Base documents are uploaded and processed when users ask about uploaded reference material.

  7. Relevant Playbooks are reviewed if your organization uses SOP-guided analysis.

Related articles

Get started with Ask Yarken

Ask better questions (scenario based examples)

Use Ask Yarken for spend, variance, cloud, contracts, and planning analysis

Configure Playbooks and SOPs for Ask Yarken

Manage Ask Yarken settings, Copilots, and Knowledge Base

AI Studio - Knowledge Base