Creating Estimated Expenses Using the Certinia Estimation Agent

You can ask the Certinia Estimation agent in an agent chat to create estimated expenses 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 Estimated Expense 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 Estimated Expense

To create an estimated expense:

  1. Open an agent chat and select the Certinia Estimation agent.
  2. Describe the expense you want to create. For example, enter Add a $500 flight expense called Travel to New York to the Services Proposal estimate. You must include the estimate name or ID, an expense name, and an amount.
  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 an expense type, such as Flight, Hotel, or Meals.
  5. [Optional] Mark the expense as non-billable for internal costs.
  6. [Optional] Link the expense to an Estimate Product and an Estimate Product Instance to tie it to a specific service package on the estimate.
  7. The agent creates the expense and confirms the outcome in the chat.
Note:

If you link an Estimate Product Instance, the agent searches for matching instances on the estimate and links the expense to the one it finds. If several instances match, the agent lists them and asks you to confirm which to use.

Note:

An expense amount cannot be negative. This applies when you create and when you update an expense.

Creating Multiple Estimated Expenses

To create several estimated expenses in one request:

  1. Open an agent chat and select the Certinia Estimation agent.
  2. Describe all the expenses you want to create in a single message. You must include the estimate name or ID, and an expense name and amount for each expense. For example, enter Add a $50 taxi expense, a $200 hotel expense, and an $80 meals expense to the <estimate name> estimate.
  3. The agent displays the full list of estimated expenses it is about to create and asks for confirmation before proceeding.
  4. Confirm to proceed. The agent creates the estimated expenses and confirms the outcome in the chat.
Note:

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