Why Doesn't Copilot Answer Simple Text Prompt Questions?

[Alexander Osipov 3]

Hi team,

I have successfully deployed and am running Orchestrator, and I can ask questions using the Spotfire Copilot extensions.

However, I am confused about why simple text prompt questions are not being answered.
For example, if I ask Copilot some generic questions, it fails to respond, but it can successfully explain things about existing visualizations or data in the opened analysis file.

 

 

In Orchestrator log files I see the following error:

Error Posting to orchestrator

The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error.

Does it mean that in order to reply to generic text prompt we must have VectorDB deployed? And why Copilot/Orchestrator cannot answer generic questions?

Thanks,  
Alex

[Ahmad Fattahi]

Hi Alex, sorry you're running into issues. As per the deployment documentation, you would need a Vector DB or otherwise search service for document-based questions. In this case and when you choose the Spotfire mode, the Copilot will first consult with its local index (the Spotfire document we have included in the install kit) to retrieve the context. The retrieved context is then augmented to the prompt to the Gen AI or LLM (hence the name Retrieval Augmented Generation or RAG). Therefore, you will need a Vector DB for any type of RAG-based query. The upside of this approach is that not only you can continue to easily update the Spotfire documentation over time, you can also add any arbitrary internal documentation and have that as additional context to your users. Hope it helps.