Using AI to write Custom Report Formulas

Writing Advanced Calculated Formulas for Custom Reports can be time-consuming and often requires specific technical knowledge. Suggest a Formula is an AI-powered feature that allows you to describe what you need to calculate in plain English, and Arbor will instantly create the correct formula for you.

Permissions

• School: General Admin: Export Data or Custom Report Writer: Superuser permissions are needed to edit and create Custom Reports.

If you don't have the relevant permissions, ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

How Suggest Formula works

Similar to writing a formula yourself, when you use Arbor AI to suggest a formula for you, Arbor AI creates a formula that manipulates data already included in your report into a new output in a separate report column.

For example, if you have two attendance columns, one for last week and one for this week, you can write a formula to compare the percentages between weeks.

However, if you do not have any attendance data in your report yet, or your report type does not support attendance data at all, the AI will not be able to write the formula for you, just like you would not be able to write one yourself in this situation.

How to use Suggest Formula

To use Suggest Formula, please first make sure you have:

• Created or found the report you want to add a calculated column to 
• Added the data you want to manipulate with the formula (Suggest Formula can only write formulas for data already in your report)

Next, add an Advanced Calculation/Formula Column to your report (more on adding report columns here) and make sure to click Add Column to open the Edit Column slide-over.
 

Instead of manually writing a formula in the box, click the Suggest Formula button, then provide a description of what you would like the formula to do in natural language input in the What should the formula do? box. 

In the example from earlier in this guide, where a report has an attendance column for last week and this week, you could enter something like the following: 

• "Output the word "Concern" if a student's attendance this week is below 80% or their attendance this week and last week was at 90% or below. Otherwise, show the word "Good"

Next, click Save and Suggest Formula will attempt to convert your instructions to a formula, using AI. 

The new column has now been added to your report. Click the Pencil icon next to the column to view the underlying formula on the Edit Column slide-over, including the exact columns the formula uses to create an output.

Click Save & View Report to see what the column looks like in your report.

Example applications

• Create Data Banding: "Divide each student's average attendance across the academic year into different bands, for example: “Very high”, “High”, “Meeting expectations”, “Cause for concern”."
• Calculate Averages: "Calculate a student's average mark across each of their subjects."
• Apply Formatting/Highlighting: "Highlight any students with more than 10 behaviour points."
• Combine Columns: "Concatenate a student's first name and last name."

Tips for using Suggest Formula

• Ensure you have all of the data you want to combine or manipulate with your formula in your report before using Suggest Formula
   
• Make sure not to use subjective language and explain definitions. The AI does not have this context otherwise.
   
  • Instead of saying "highlight students with good attendance", say something like "highlight students with attendance above 95% for the year"
     
• Be specific about what you need. 
   
  • If you have multiple columns of the same type, for example, assessment or attendance columns, make sure to be clear about which columns you want the AI to use so that the AI cannot get confused over which of these columns you mean.
     
• Sense check the column output and try again if needed. Just open and view your report or formula to check if things look 'off' or not.
   

  • AI can get things wrong, especially if the instructions you provide it are not explicit, vague or subjective. This is because the AI will try to fill any gaps you leave up to interpretation, and because it does not have your specific context, this can be different to what you intended. If this happens, review and clarify your instructions (prompt) for Suggest Formula before retrying. Find helpful guidance on prompting Arbor AI here: Prompting Arbor AI and Ask Arbor (the Basics)

     

• Be realistic about what you ask Suggest Formula to write or for you. Suggest Formula has access to the same functions you do when manually creating a formula, and these functions do have certain limits. See more on the available functions here: How to use calculated fields