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ARIES™2.0 End User Guide

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TeamConnect ARIES™  is a centralized hub for billing and spend information, that helps users access financial insights using natural language. This AI-enabled digital assistant allows users to ask questions in simple, everyday language and receive relevant, actionable insights in response. 

Note: All responses from ARIES™ are consistent with the user’s permissions.  Users will never get answers based on data to which they don’t have access.

ARIES™ Functionality

Users can ask financial questions in ARIES™. ARIES™ will answer using the data integrated with it, or respond with relevant information or a helpful message if it's unable to answer the question. To do this, ARIES™ user should follow these steps:

  1. Log into TeamConnect  and click the Widgets icon from the global navigation bar.

     

  2. Click the AskARIES option from the drop-down.

  3. The ARIES™ UI opens a pop-up chat box at the bottom of the TeamConnect window. This  includes:

    • Pop-out button to launch the widget into a separate window.

    • Close button to remove it from view.

  4. When popped out, the widget disappears from the main TeamConnect window and opens in a separate browser window. Users can continue navigating TeamConnect without affecting the functionality of the popped-out chat.
    Note: Upon popping out, attempting to open it again from the main window will not trigger any action, ensuring a single active instance.

  5. If the widget is closed and reopened, it restores the previous chat history. And the widget remains open across page navigations within TeamConnect.

     

  6. In the ARIES™ search bar, simply type your query.

     

  7. Click the arrow icon, or hit enter, and then ARIES™ will begin searching your financial data, creating an query, and applying permissions to ensure a secure, quality response.
    Note: When asking questions, please ensure that you exclude any personal data that is sensitive or confidential. This will help maintain confidentiality and adhere to data protection standards.  The system will prompt you if you enter things that look like an SSN or date of birth.  If the system detects patterns that look like sensitive data, it will warn you.

     

  8. You can click the Esc button to stop  generating the response you asked for.

     

  9. Along with query information, you'll notice several icons that provide extra functionality:

  • Like: Click this to mark the response as helpful.

  • Dislike: If you click this, it asks for suggestions. Select the area for improvement in your opinion and click the ‘Send Feedback’ button.  Selecting “Other” will give you a text prompt.

  • Copy: If you click this, it helps to copy the response, and you can paste it anywhere of your choice.

There is also a feature that offers an explanation of the results.  It will help users understand why the system came up with the answer that it did.  This is useful for instance where the system interpreted the question differently than what the user was asking.

What does TeamConnect ARIES™ do?

The primary objective of TC ARIES™  is to establish a robust data framework, separate from UI/UX and technical components. This will enable users to pose natural language questions, generating SQL queries that extract relevant data from the data mart in Snowflake.

TC ARIES™  focuses on reliably answering a diverse range of common questions through its AI engine. The current scope of the ARIES™  data set is limited to financial data specific to actual spend and related data.  Invoices and invoice line items along with associated vendors, timekeepers and matters.  Client customizations are not yet in scope.

Included In ARIES™ 

  • Invoices and Associated Vendors
  • Invoice Lines and associated Timekeepers
  • Matters with categories related to Invoices
  • Assignees associated with the related matters
  • Budgets and Cost Centers (Assuming FM)

The data model for the current scope of ARIES™ is
    

Not Included in ARIES™ yet

  • Other system objects (Tasks, Appointments, Documents, etc.)
  • Custom Object data

Key Features of ARIES™ Integration:

The ARIES™ integration offers several key features as follows: 

  • Opt-in Installation: Clients will opt-in to use ARIES™.  The first user from the client will receive the opt-in prompt.  Additional users will not see this prompt.
  • Currency Normalization: All spend information will be converted to the system currency.  Answers will be provided in the system currency.
  • Exchange Rates: Exchange rates will be based on the rates stored on the invoice at the time of posting as with standard TeamConnect functionality. Unposted invoices will use the exchange rate table for the exchange rate when the invoices are created or modified.
  • Matter Category: Matter types are leveraging categories in TeamConnect.
  • Rate-Related Questions: All questions related to rates will pertain to billed rates as opposed to approved rates on the contact.
  • Firm and Vendor: For ARIES™, Firm and Vendor are interchangeable.  The system does not have a way to distinguish between law firms and legal service providers or other vendors.
  • Record Level Security: All answers from ARIES™ are based on the user’s security.  Users will get answers based on the data to which they have access.  This means that two users can ask the same questions and get different answers.
  • Matters: Matters will only show in ARIES™ when they have received invoices.  Therefore, users can ask questions like “What matters were invoiced this month,” but not questions “What matters did not receive invoices.”  Because there could be matters that have not been billed at all.

Helpful Hints for Asking Questions

  • Be as specific as possible in your question.  
  • When asking questions for a firm or timekeeper, it is helpful to say what you are looking for. Suppose you are looking for what matters a specific timekeeper billed to.
    • What matters did OLIVE ALDERMAUS bill to in 2024?
    • What matters did timekeeper OLIVE ALDERMAUS bill to in 2024?
      The first question will likely not return a result because the system will likely think that you are looking for a firm.  By adding “timekeeper” it will know what you are looking for.
  • A question like “Spend per Matter Type” will show the spend including the parent and child categories.  Asking for the spend by primary matter type will show only categories marked as primary. 
  • ARIES™ does not know who is asking the question, so questions like “what was the spend for my matters,” will not return any results.  
  • Fiscal Years - ARIES™ now supports fiscal years as defined in the FM module.  Include that you want answers by fiscal year so that it does not get confused.

Question Set Covering the Data Model

The following set of questions were used in the development process and are examples of questions that will return good answers.  These are more for patterns than showing the complete list of what can be asked.

Invoice / Vendor Questions:

  1. What <number> of firms had the most adjustments in <time period>?
  2. How much was billed by firms in <country> in <time period>?
  3. Which approved invoices have not been paid?
  4. How many manually created invoices were submitted in <time period>
  5. What is the value of invoices pending approval?

Invoice Line Item Questions:

  1. How many invoices were rejected for <firm> in <time period>?
  2. What was the average billed rate for <firm> timekeepers in <time period>?
  3. What timekeeper from <firm> had the highest billed rate in <time period>?
  4. How much time was billed on <UTBMS code> in <time period>?
  5. How much was billed on <activity> by <firm> in <time period>?

Invoice / Matter Questions:

  1. What is the total spend on <matter> in <time period>?
  2. How much was billed to closed matters in <time period>?
  3. What has been spent on matters opened between <Date Range>?
  4. What open matters have not had any spend in <time period>?
  5. How many invoices have line item dates before the matter opened on date?

Invoice Adjustment Questions:

  1. What was the value of adjustments made by the Managed Bill Review group in <time period>?
  2. What was the value of reversed adjustments in <time period> by reviewer?
  3. What was the value of adjustments by reason code for <category> matters in <time period>?

Budget Questions:

  1. What is the remaining budget for open litigation matters?
  2. What is the budget by matter for open matters assigned to <assignee>?
  3. What open matters are within 80 percent of their budget?

Cost Center Questions:

  1. What was spent by cost center in <time period>?

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What is ARIES™?
    Team Connect ARIES™ is a centralized hub for billing and spend information, providing users with easy access to their financial data.

  2. How do I ask a question?
    To ask a question, simply navigate to the ARIES™ application, ask your query in the "Ask a Question" field provided, and click the send icon.

  3. Do I need an account to ask a question?
    Users will be given access to ARIES™ within TeamConnect.  

  4. How does Team Connect ARIES™ work?
    It uses artificial intelligence to allow users to ask questions in simple, everyday language and the system will generate SQL which is used to generate the response.

  5. How can I trust the accuracy of the answers?
    Extensive testing was performed to make sure valid SQL was being generated.  However, the system could interpret a given question incorrectly. 

  6. How long should it take to get an answer?
    Generally ARIES™ will return an answer within 30 seconds.  However some questions could take as long as two minutes.  

  7. Who can I contact for support?
    Users will follow the same process as for other TeamConnect support questions.

  8. How do I ask questions about law firms vs law firm offices?
    We have developed the semantic layer to be able to group by law firm based on the CSM firm structure.  When the word “firm” is used, the model looks for the grouped firm. If the word “vendor” is used, it will look for specific offices.

Accuracy

ARIES™ interprets your questions, generates SQL queries, and provides answers based on existing data. If it misinterprets a question, it may return incorrect answers or no answer. ARIES™ will not generate answers that are not supported by the data.  All it is doing is turning user questions into SQL statements against the known data model.

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