Interactive Designer

Writing a good prompt blind is hard. The AI Report Designer lets you design the report in a conversation instead. You chat with the agent, the report takes shape on screen and follows every change, and when it is right the agent writes the instruction, so that unattended runs reproduce the report period after period.

Opening the Designer

Use Interactive Designer Agent on the instructions list or on the instruction card. The card saves itself first, so a new instruction needs at least a code.

You need access to the instruction (Owner or Read Only) and a configured AI provider (see Setup).

The page has two areas:

The report fills the main area: a live view of the draft, in the same sandboxed viewer as finished reports.
The chat with the agent sits in the FactBox pane on the right. If the pane is hidden, show it with the FactBox toggle in the page header.

The page caption shows the instruction code, its description and the period the session works on.

Before anything is designed, the report area shows a start page:

what to do,
whether the instruction already has a prompt ("ask the agent to build the report from it"),
whether reports exist ("ask the agent to start from the latest one"),
the period for today, or No period when the instruction has no formulas.

Designing

Say what you want, in your own words: "A one-page sales report for the sales managers: revenue and margin by salesperson for the period against the comparison period, top customers, and a chart of the last 12 months." If the instruction has a prompt, just ask the agent to build the report from it.
The agent explores and builds. It reads the instruction, looks up tables and fields, queries the data, renders charts and KPI tiles, and writes the page. The report appears within a couple of seconds of each change.
Look and ask for changes: "Amounts in thousands." "Swap the pie chart for a bar chart." "Add a column with last year's figure." "Only customers in the domestic posting group." "Make the header navy." The agent edits the page in place and tells you in a sentence or two what it changed. It never pastes the HTML into the chat.
Ask questions whenever you want: "Where does the revenue figure come from?" "Why is this customer negative?" The agent answers from the data and its tool results. When your request is ambiguous, it asks you.

The agent works with the same tools as an unattended run (see What You Can Ask For) and the same house style. It follows the same rules: figures only from tool results, and charts only through the app's renderers.

Starting from an existing report

Ask the agent to start from the latest report. It loads the newest completed report of the instruction as the draft. You can also name any report you may open, including one of another instruction, to use its layout. The loaded report's figures belong to its own period, so the agent re-queries before presenting it as current.

The period of a session

The session designs for the period the instruction's formulas give today (your work date). The caption shows it. When the formulas change, the data tools follow the new period from then on. That happens when the agent rewrites them, or when you edit them through the Instruction action.

The Two Results

1. The report: Save as Report

Save as Report, or asking the agent to save, stores the draft as a finished report of the instruction:

status Completed, with the instruction's permission list copied onto it, like a generated report,
the agent's summary if it gave one (otherwise Designed interactively in the AI Report Designer.),
a generation log with a single line saying who designed it, and when,
Reports to Keep pruning applies, as after any run.

You can keep designing and save again. Each save creates a new report. Closing the designer with changes that are not stored asks whether to store them first.

2. The instruction: let the agent write it

When the report is right, ask the agent to write the instruction. It rewrites the instruction so that a fresh agent, with no memory of your conversation, can produce the same report from the prompt alone on another day. The prompt it writes covers:

the audience and purpose,
every section in order and what it contains,
each KPI tile: the measure, how it is computed, the comparison and the favourable direction,
each chart: its type, categories, series and data source,
each table: rows, columns, sort order and limits such as "top 10",
the exact data sources:
- tables with the fields and filters used,
- financial reports and columns,
- spreadsheets with their slicer settings,
- sign conventions and flipped signs,
number formats, wording and style decisions beyond the house style,
the caveats to state.

It refers to "the report period" and "the comparison period", never to dates. It also sets the three date formulas so they resolve to the right period, and the description when it is blank or no longer fits. The new values show on the instruction at once.

Only owners can have the instruction rewritten. For a user with Read Only access, the agent puts the proposed prompt in the chat for an owner to take over.

Check it: Generate Unattended

Generate Unattended runs the instruction in the background exactly as a scheduled run would: from the prompt alone, with no conversation. Open Reports and compare the result with your design. Where they differ, tell the agent what differs and ask it to sharpen the instruction, then test again.

Actions

Action	What it does
Save as Report	Stores the current draft as a finished report of the instruction.
Generate Unattended	Starts a background run of the instruction from its prompt (requires a prompt).
Instruction	Opens the instruction card to read or edit the prompt and formulas yourself. The designer picks up the changes when you return.
Reports	The reports of the instruction, including the ones saved from the designer.
Download	Downloads the draft as an `.html` file, with its charts.
Print	Prints the draft from the browser.
Refresh	Redraws the report from the current draft and re-reads the instruction.

Good to Know

One designer per session. A second designer in the same Business Central session is refused (The AI Report Designer is already open for instruction …). The designer also cannot be opened while a Generate and Open run is in progress in the same session.
The draft lives in the session. Closing the designer discards the draft unless you store it, and you are asked first. The instruction and saved reports persist.
Limits. Max. Tool Rounds applies to unattended runs, not to the designer. Max. SQL Rows per Query applies to both.
An open instruction card goes stale. If you opened the designer from an instruction card, that card stays open underneath. After the agent rewrites the instruction, editing the old card fails with a message that the record was changed by another user. Close and reopen the card first.
Everything you type is sent to the AI provider, with the data the agent reads. See Data and Privacy.