Creating Estimate Vendor Line Items Using the Certinia Estimation Agent

You can ask the Certinia Estimation agent in an agent chat to create estimate vendor line items on a project estimate, individually or several at once. Enter your request in natural language and the agent completes the operation, respecting your Salesforce CRUD permissions for the Estimate Vendor Line Item object.

Note:

This feature is part of the Certinia Early Adopter Program. This program is only available to a limited number of customers. For more information, contact your Certinia Account Team.

Creating an Estimate Vendor Line Item

To create an estimate vendor line item:

  1. Open an agent chat and select the Certinia Estimation agent.
  2. Describe the vendor line item you want to create. For example, enter Create a vendor line item for AWS training on the <estimate name> estimate with a cost of $5,000 and a bill amount of $6,500. You must include an estimate vendor line item name, the vendor account, a cost amount, a bill amount, and a customer billing date.
  3. If the agent cannot determine any mandatory details from your message, it asks for them. Provide the missing information to continue.
  4. [Optional] Add a vendor billing date.
  5. [Optional] Link the vendor line item to an Estimate Product and an Estimate Product Instance.
  6. [Optional] Add a description.
  7. [Optional] Clear the Milestone checkbox if this vendor line item is not a milestone.
  8. The agent creates the vendor line item, calculates the margin percentage automatically from the cost and bill amounts, and confirms the outcome in the chat.
Notes:
  • When the cost or bill amount changes on an existing vendor line item, the agent recalculates the margin percentage automatically.
  • If you link an Estimate Product Instance, the agent searches for matching instances on the estimate and links the vendor line item to the one it finds. If several instances match, the agent lists them and asks you to confirm which to use.

Creating Multiple Estimate Vendor Line Items

To create several estimate vendor line items in one request:

  1. Open an agent chat and select the Certinia Estimation agent.
  2. Describe all the vendor line items you want to create in one request. You must include an estimate vendor line item name, the vendor account, a cost amount, and a bill amount for each record. For example, enter Create two vendor line items on the <estimate name> estimate: Office Supplies from Acme with a cost of $500 and a bill amount of $600, and Hardware from Dell with a cost of $1,200 and a bill amount of $1,500.
  3. The agent displays the full list of estimate vendor line items it is about to create and asks for confirmation before proceeding.
  4. Confirm to proceed. The agent creates the estimate vendor line items and confirms the outcome in the chat.
Note:

If you include an Estimate Product Instance when you create several vendor line items at once, the agent links all the vendor line items you create to the same instance.