Leveraging Generative Grid – Help Center

Get answers at scale using natural language prompts across multiple documents simultaneously

What is Generative Grid?
Accessing Generative Grid
Adding Documents to a Grid
Use Grid Automation to keep Generative Grids up to date
Adding and Editing Prompts in Generative Grid
Prompt Engineering Tips for Generative Grid
How to View Citations
How to Download and Share Responses
- Download the Grid as a CSV file
- Share Single Responses
FAQ

What is Generative Grid?

Generative Grid enables you to ask multiple natural-language questions across numerous different documents all at once, in a table format.

It works on BOTH your own proprietary content, as well as on the AlphaSense library of 300M+ documents like filings, call transcripts, expert interviews, news, and regulatory content.

Use Generative Grid to:

Track the same topics over multiple quarters of earnings releases
Track management comments on certain topics over time
Summarize multiple expert interviews on a topic
Extract KPIs across a peer set
Summarize key info in private deal documents
Summarize reports from/about portfolio companies
Parse clinical trials, ESG reports, and macroeconomic releases

Accessing Generative Grid

To access Generative Grid, click on the icon in your left sidebar.

From the Generative Grid home screen, you can:

Add a custom template from scratch
Use a pre-made template such as “Industry Read-Through” or “Earnings Analysis” and then populate the companies you’d like included
Access previously created Grids.

Adding Documents to a Grid

You can add documents to the Generative Grid as rows in the main table. Each prompt you’ve set will automatically apply to every document and appear as a column. There are several ways to add documents, depending on what works best for you.

When viewing a Grid, click “Add” in the Document column of the grid. A new window will appear.

From here you can add documents from AlphaSense by choosing one of the following:

Search Content
Saved Searches
Upload Files
OR Use a Selected Integration (ie. Sharepoint, Box, etc.)

search content.png

Search Content:

Choose a Universe by entering a company name, watchlist, or industry.
Select a document source and specify a date range.
Add keywords or tags to further refine your search (optional).
Review the filtered results in the “Matching Results” section.
To add documents to the grid:
- Click the “Add #” button to add all results at once, OR
- Click “+ Add” next to specific documents to add them individually.

Saved Searches:

Select or type a saved search into the “Saved Search” bar.
Review the filtered documents that appear.
To add documents to the grid:
- Click the “Add #” button to add all results at once, OR
- Click “+ Add” next to specific documents to add them individually.

NOTE: Clicking “Done” without selecting any documents will close the popup without adding anything to the grid.

Upload Files:

Click “Choose Files.”
Select the files you want to upload from your computer.
Click “Done” to finish the upload.

NOTE: You can also drag and drop a file directly into the Grid window. It will automatically be added as a new row in the table.

Use a Selected Integration:

Select your File Integration from the carousel.
Select the folders you would like to add.
Click "Done" to finish the upload.

Use Grid Automation to keep Generative Grids up to date

Generative Grid now supports Grid Automation, which automatically updates a grid when new documents match the grid’s document criteria. Grid Automation helps you maintain ongoing analysis workflows without manually adding or removing documents. This is especially useful for monitoring use cases, such as tracking earnings across a portfolio, following sector developments, or running competitive intelligence workflows.

When you enable Grid Automation, Generative Grid keeps the grid’s document set current based on the criteria you define in the Doc Picker. Grid Automation can:

Automatically add new documents

After Grid Automation is enabled, Generative Grid automatically adds new documents that match the criteria set in the Doc Picker.
You do not need to manually check for new documents or add them one by one.

Identify newly added documents

When a grid contains new documents, a blue badge appears next to the grid name. When users open the grid, newly added documents are highlighted in blue.

Edit the document scope

You can update the underlying search query to change the grid’s document scope.
Generative Grid automatically adds matching documents and removes documents that no longer match the updated query.

Add recent documents during setup

When you first enables Grid Automation, Generative Grid adds the 50 most recent documents that match the selected document criteria.

Adding & Editing Prompts in Generative Grid

Each column in a Generative Grid is a generative AI prompt, with the prompt at the top of the column.

To Add a New Prompt:

Click “Add Column” in the right-most column header (you might have to use the scroll bar on the bottom of the screen to see "Add Column")
Give the prompt (column) a name
Select if you’d prefer the output to be text or numerical
Add a natural language prompt. The new prompt will automatically apply to each document (row) in the table.

To Edit a Prompt:

Select the column header and the prompt editor will appear.
Make your edits and then click “Apply.” The new prompt will apply to each document in the table (1).
You can also specify the output format, such as "What is the data of the document? Only answer in MM/DD/YYYY format."

To Delete a Prompt:

Click the column header
Click Three Dots next to the header title
Click "Delete Column"

Prompt Engineering Tips for Generative Grid

Below are helpful examples on prompt engineering tactics for Generative Grid. While some of these best practices apply to Generative Search, best results will show when using Generative Grid.

Add Instructions on the format of the response

"Start every answer in new row with a dash."
"Start with one word, in all caps. (e.g. INCREASED, MAINTAINED, LOWERED)"
"Return just the date."
"List only the headwinds with no other text."
"Format the date like mm/dd/yyyy."
"If there were no mentions of X, answer only with 'None'."
"Start every sentence with a bullet point in a new row."

Broadening your Question, especially on event transcripts

"When did management use avoidant language?"
"What was the most positive/negative response to an analyst question?"
"Which topics had multiple questions from analysts?"

Increase Specificity

"Include any specific plans and transaction structures. (M&A)"
"What type of drug is it? Common types include X, Y, Z. Answer only for [product name], if given."
"List the questions [speaker] asked on this call." (earnings transcript)
Longer questions will get you to the specifics you need, especially when drilling down on a sub-sector or product.

Numbers & Figures

"Return figures from only most recent period."
"Include both dollar amount and percent growth."
"Return only the number with no other text."
Gen Grid is currently not well suited for counting tasks, like “how many times was AI mentioned in this call

Examples of Grid Prompts:

What were the comparable store sales for the quarter?
What are the concerns mentioned in this document?
What is the guidance mentioned in this document?
Which geographies were mentioned as weak?
What did management say about macro effects?
What are they saying about pricing?
What is the executive compensation mentioned?

How to View Citations

Generative Grid will structure its response to your prompts as a short-form summarization, providing a simple answer with the relevant text or KPI. Each summary will provide a direct citation to the source material it was summarized from.

Click on the answer cell
Click “View Citations” to view the source snippet(s) within the document from which it was pulled

Check out our best practices around Prompt Engineering to learn more about building queries that will supply the answers you need in the most useful format.

How to Download & Share Responses

Download the Grid as a CSV file:

Click the "Three Dots" in the top right-hand corner
Select “Download Grid"

Share Single Responses (cells):

Click on the cell you want to you highlight
Click “View Citation” to view the snippet in the source document, where you can add to a Note with AlphaSense OR

Click the "Paper Icon" to copy the text to a clipboard

FAQ

How does Generative Grid work?

Gen Grid uses a number of natural-language process and machine learning techniques to interpret questions, retrieving all relevant information from a document, and reason over the data to analyze/summarize findings.
It retrieves snippets for a query from the document (rows in the table) relevant to your search. These snippets are then used by our large language model to generate an answer, with the query (columns in the table) applying to each document.

Generative Grid didn't produce an answer in a table cell - what does that mean?

Gen Grid will tell you when it doesn't have an answer: Rather than hallucinate an answer, it will let you know when it cannot find any relevant content within that document to generate an answer. If your question is not producing responses, you might try reformatting your question or adding a new document.
It could be that there is no/not enough content around the topic you're searching for, which you can verify through the classic AlphaSense search experience.

What content in AlphaSense can Generative Grid use to reason over?

Gen Grid can source its answers from documents within your AlphaSense library, including company documents, expert call transcripts, news, and regulatory documents. It can also source answers from internal content uploaded to AlphaSense, whether through synced platforms (Integrations), uploaded/emailed-in ((My Workspace), or uploaded directly to Gen Grid from your device.

Are there any limits to the number of documents (rows) and/or prompts (columns) I can use with Gen Grid?

Currently within a grid, you are limited to 400 documents (rows) and 12 prompts (columns).

Where are documents uploaded into a Grid stored, and who is able to view this content?

Content uploaded into Generative Grid is local to Gen Grid and not accessible 1) in other parts of the platform nor 2) to other users. AlphaSense never trains its models on user-uploaded content.

How do I change the date range in Generative Grid?

To change the date range in Generative Grid, select the column header for your prompt, use the prompt editor to specify your desired date range or format, and click 'Apply.'