What Plexii can read and search
Plexii sees the desk you are on and searches your documents, desks, tables, notes, Brain, files, meetings, past chats and mail, with the web when it is on.
Plexii answers from your own work. Every time you ask a question, it looks at the desk you are on and searches the rest of your workspace for material that helps, then shows you exactly what it found. This article lists what it can read, how it chooses, and how to point it at the right thing.
Read this when you want to know whether Plexii can see something, why it found one document and not another, or how to get a better-grounded answer.
Before you start
- Every plan includes searching your workspace.
- Live web search is included in the Pro and Team plans. See Turn live web search on or off.
- Plexii reads only the organisation you are working in. If you switch organisation, Plexii searches that organisation's work instead.
The desk you are on
When you ask from a desk, Plexii sees the desk itself: its title, its notes and status, and a summary of every widget on it. It also reads the full text of the widgets, including notes, tables, documents, charts, PDFs and web pages open in a browser widget. A widget you point Plexii at with @, or by clicking it while Plexii is open, is read first. A widget open in focus mode comes next, together with the widgets wired to it.
On the Plexii hub you are not on a desk, so Plexii works across your whole workspace. A conversation that is linked to a desk keeps working with that desk. See Use the Plexii hub.
What Plexii searches
For each question, Plexii searches all of these and keeps the best matches:
| What | What it reads | Shown in the trace as |
|---|---|---|
| Brain knowledge | Your Brain entries: title, tags and text | PlexiBrain |
| Documents | Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, designs and drawings, matched paragraph by paragraph so a long document answers from the part that matches | Documents |
| Desks | Each desk's title and notes | Desks |
| Tables | Each table's title, column names and its first 40 rows | Tables |
| Notes on desks | Notes, sticky notes, Markdown and Page widgets | Desk notes |
| Other widgets | Living docs, cards, custom blocks, fields, desk agents, mind maps, diagrams and charts | Desks |
| Files | Files in Files with readable text: PDFs (including scanned ones), Word documents, spreadsheets and CSV files, text, Markdown, web pages and similar, up to 15 MB each. Files in the trash are left out. | Files |
| Past Plexii conversations | Your earlier conversations with Plexii, not counting the one you are in | Plexii chats |
| Meetings | Each meeting's title, summary and action items, and the lines of its transcript that match, with who said them and when | PlexiMeet |
| Decisions | Decisions you have recorded | No location label |
| Calendar | Your calendar entries from six weeks ago to six weeks ahead | No location label |
| If you have connected a mail account, the messages that match your question, including text from their attachments | The sender, subject and date |
The results are mixed in turn from each kind, so one busy kind cannot crowd out the rest, and Brain knowledge leads each round. Weak matches that share only a word with your question by chance are left out.
Plexii also keeps some background in mind for every answer: your calendar for the next seven days, the names of your recent documents, your desks and your chat conversations, and what it has learned about you. See What Plexii remembers about you.
The web
With live web search on, Plexii also searches the web for each question and reads a few results. Web results are numbered after your own sources. See Turn live web search on or off.
How the desk you are on changes the order
Asking from a desk does not limit the search to that desk. Plexii still searches your whole workspace, but things that belong to this desk come first: its tasks, tables, notes, widgets and calendar entries, the documents and files placed on it as widgets, and the same from any desks you have related to it. Matches from other desks come after them, so an answer that lives elsewhere can still be found.
Brain entries, meetings and documents that are not on any desk are ranked the same way wherever you ask from. See Related desks and 'since your last visit'.
Point Plexii at something specific
Searching finds what matches your words. When you know exactly what you mean, type @ and pick it, or click a widget on your desk while Plexii is open. Plexii reads what you mention in full, before it searches, and does not repeat it as a search result. See Point Plexii at specific things with @.
This is also the surest way to work from the document you have open: mention it with @.
See what it found
Above each answer, the trace lists every source the search returned, numbered, with where each one lives. Numbers in the answer show which source each statement rests on, and you can open any source with a click. See See what Plexii read: the trace and citations.
Matching by meaning or by keyword
Plexii always matches the words in your question. It can also match by meaning, so a question about "churn" finds a note about "attrition", when one of these is set up:
- An OpenAI key, added in Settings > AI. See Add your own API keys.
- A local AI model running on your computer. See Enrich documents with a local AI model.
When neither is set up, the trace's workspace line ends in keyword match, so you know the search was by exact words.
To see how much of your work Plexii can search, open Settings > AI and look for What the assistant can see. It counts how many of your documents, files and conversations are searchable.
When Plexii does not search
In Discovery mode, when you are answering Plexii's questions about an idea, replies such as "something calm and minimal" skip the search. The first message, a real question, an @ mention, or words about your own desks, documents or notes still search. See Explore an idea with Discovery mode.
Tips
- Use the words in the document. Without matching by meaning, Plexii finds what shares words with your question.
- Ask from the right desk. Its own material comes first, which keeps answers about that piece of work focused.
- Relate desks that belong together. Their material then ranks alongside the desk you are on. See Related desks and 'since your last visit'.
- Put lasting facts in Brain. Brain entries lead each round of the search, so a rule or decision recorded there is found first. See Build your knowledge base in Ask Brain.
Common questions
Plexii did not find a document I know is there. Check the trace: the document may have come back but not been cited. If it is not there, mention it with @, or ask again using words from the document. If the trace says keyword match, set up matching by meaning as above.
Does Plexii read my whole mailbox? No. When you have connected a mail account, Plexii looks only for messages that match your question, newest first, and reaches back into older mail when the recent messages do not answer it.
Can Plexii see another organisation's work? No. It reads only the organisation you are working in.
Does Plexii read a file I have in Files but never opened? Yes, if it is a kind of file with readable text and is no larger than 15 MB. Images and other files without text are not read.
Related tasks
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