Learn practical AI for business and earn your AI Professional certification. — Learn More

Box Status
Print

Best Practices with Box AI

End User , Product Utilization , Established , Instruction , Box AI , P1

 

With Box AI, you can transform your content strategy and unlock the full potential of your unstructured data. Plus, you maintain the same enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy you know and trust with Box. Get more value from your content by summarizing large amounts of information in seconds and surfacing business insights quickly, generating new content, and more.

 

General principles for writing good prompts

 

To get the most from Box AI, start with building a good prompt. By taking time to carefully construct your prompts, you can communicate your intentions better and enhance the effectiveness of Box AI when it comes to generating content, answering questions, and providing recommendations.

 

  • Be specific and clear: State your request or question clearly. Avoid ambiguity or overly broad queries. The more specific your prompt, the better the response.
  • Provide context: Briefly explain the context of your request. This helps Box AI understand what you’re looking for and deliver a more relevant answer.
  • Ask open-ended questions: Avoid yes/no questions and instead ask questions that encourage detailed responses. 
    • For example, “Can you explain the process of...” rather than “Is this possible?”
  • Iterate and experiment: Revise your prompt if the initial response is not what you expected. You can rephrase or clarify your request to get a more accurate answer.
  • Avoid biased language: Be mindful of the language you use to avoid any unintentional biases. Clear and neutral language is generally best.
  • Limit length: Be clear and specific — avoid extremely long prompts. A concise, well-structured question is more likely to yield a focused response.
  • Ask for explanations: Ask for an explanation or reasoning behind an answer to better  understand the content.
    • For example, “Why is this the case?” or “Can you elaborate on...”



Best practices for prompts with Box AI for Documents

  • Ask questions that can stand alone, because questions asked in previous Box AI conversations are not taken into account (if you ask a follow-up question, however, Box AI factors in previous questions)
  • Remember answers pertain only to document text (Box AI does not access metadata such as file size, page, and word count)
  • Box AI does not follow hyperlinks inside the document’s content
  • Avoid asking Box AI to count the number of times a specific word or topic appears in a document
  • Avoid asking for answers of a specific length, whether in words or paragraphs

 

Visit Box AI for Documents for additional instructions

 

Best practices for prompts with Box AI for Notes

  • Specify the format for output (a list, a step-by-step explanation, pros and cons, or examples)
  • Include relevant details for context if your question or instruction refers to a specific topic or previous conversation
  • Craft prompts with three sentences that specify how the response should look to receive higher-quality results
  • Begin your conversation with a brief introduction to help set the context and guide the model’s response
  • Generate creative ideas outside the norm by explicitly asking for creativity in your request
  • Specify a length or word count to avoid overly verbose or long answers, such as “up to X words”
  • Ask Box AI to provide supporting information that backs up responses with sources or evidence. However, it’s important to independently validate responses.

 

Visit Box AI for Notes for additional instructions

 

Writing good prompts for different use cases

Box AI for content generation

The more detail you include in the prompt, the better the output. For example: 

  • Asking Box AI to “write an agenda for a customer call” generates a basic response. 
  • Asking Box AI to “write an agenda for a customer call to introduce a new AI product release around metadata extraction” generates a more accurate and specific response.

Box AI for content refinement

The content you select for refinement should be substantial and meaningful. For example:

  • Highlighting general text that says “I don’t know” or “Sure, no problem!” — then asking Box AI to expand on it — does not yield effective results. 
  • Well-defined content such as “The S&P 500 has risen today” or “Christmas Day is one of eleven federal holidays recognized nationwide by the United States government” yields much better results.

Box AI for specific industry writing

Clarify if you are working within a specific industry (or writing about a specific industry). For example:

  • If you work for a consulting company, use an industry-specific prompt such as “Draft an agenda for a client call about reducing costs for a soda brand.” 
  • If you work for a nonprofit, consider this sort of prompt: “Brainstorm 10 different ideas to encourage volunteers to take action about climate change.”

 

Lastly, be sure to experiment. Remember that writing a good prompt often involves a bit of trial and error. Try out different techniques, and adjust your prompts to get the most accurate and useful responses from Box AI.

Related articles