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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.

  10. Review vendors and commercial records, including Contracts, Purchase Orders, Invoices, and the relationships between them.

  11. Review recent activity and recorded changes from Audit Logs, including who performed an action and when it occurred.

  12. Attach supported files directly to a conversation and ask questions about their content.

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.

Use files in an Ask Yarken conversation

When file attachments are enabled by an administrator, you can attach supported files directly to an Ask Yarken message and use the file as additional context for your question.

Supported file categories include:

  • PDF

  • Word

  • Excel

  • CSV

  • images

  • text files

Availability and limits: Your administrator controls whether attachments are enabled and the limits for file size, files per message, PDF pages, spreadsheet rows, and retention under Admin > Settings > AI > Ask Yarken.

Important: Files attached to Ask Yarken conversations are sent to the configured AI provider so their content can be read and used in the response.

Conversation attachments and Knowledge Base documents

File use

Where it is managed

Purpose

Conversation attachment

Ask Yarken conversation

Use a file as context for the current conversation.

Knowledge Base document

Admin > AI Studio > Knowledge > Knowledge Base

Manage approved reference content that is processed and indexed for governed document search.

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, conversation-context summarization, ambiguous name matching, and conversation file attachments.

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. For Cloud data, Ask Yarken also applies the user's Access Policy where required.

Access can be controlled through:

  • User roles.

  • Cost center permissions.

  • Entity permissions.

  • Account permissions.

  • Access Policies for Cloud data.

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

Admin and Cost Model Manager users do not require an Access Policy. Other users whose roles require Access Policies must have a policy assigned to access Yarken.

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.

  8. For linked Contract analysis, ensure the relevant Contracts, Purchase Orders, and Invoices are available and linked where required.

  9. For conversation attachments, confirm file attachments are enabled and the file is within the configured limits.

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