Creating Playbooks

Step-by-step guide to creating Playbooks in Formula Bot. Define analysis steps, attach data sources, add enrichments, and configure scheduling.

Learn how to create Playbooks that automate your recurring analysis tasks. This guide walks you through the complete process.

Before You Start

Have these ready:

  • A clear analysis goal
  • Data source (file or connector)
  • The steps you want to automate

Test your analysis in a regular chat first. Once it works, convert it to a Playbook.

Creating a Playbook

Step 1: Start a New Playbook

  1. Click Playbooks in the sidebar
  2. Click Create Playbook
  3. Give it a descriptive name (e.g., "Weekly Sales Report")

Step 2: Add Data Sources

Attach the data your Playbook will analyze:

For Files:

  • Click "Add Files"
  • Select from your uploaded files
  • Multiple files can be added

For Connectors:

  • Click "Add Connector"
  • Choose from your connected sources
  • Configure any filters needed

Step 3: Define Analysis Steps

Write the prompts that define your analysis. Each prompt is a step:

Example Steps:

Step 1: "Calculate total sales by region for the current month"

Step 2: "Create a bar chart comparing this month to last month"

Step 3: "Identify the top 5 products by revenue growth"

Step 4: "Summarize key findings in 3 bullet points"

Step 4: Configure Enrichments (Optional)

Add data enrichment steps to enhance your analysis:

Sentiment Analysis Analyze text data for emotional tone:

"Analyze the sentiment of customer reviews and categorize as positive, negative, or neutral"

Language Translation Translate content between languages:

"Translate the product descriptions from Spanish to English"

Text Extraction Extract structured data from unstructured text:

"Extract company names, dates, and dollar amounts from these contracts"

Web Scraping Pull data from websites (when enabled):

"Scrape the competitor pricing from their website and compare to our prices"

Enrichments use tool credits. Check your plan for credit allocation.

Step 5: Set Schedule (Optional)

Choose when to run automatically:

  • Manual - Run only when you trigger it
  • Daily - Every day at a set time
  • Weekly - Specific day and time
  • Monthly - Specific date and time

Step 6: Save and Test

  1. Click Save Playbook
  2. Click Run Now to test
  3. Review the results
  4. Adjust steps if needed

Writing Effective Prompts

Be Specific

Good: "Calculate monthly revenue growth rate for Q4 2024" Bad: "Show me the trends"

Use Clear References

Good: "Using the sales_data column from the orders table..." Bad: "Using that data..."

Request Specific Outputs

Good: "Create a line chart with months on X-axis and revenue on Y-axis" Bad: "Make a chart"

Chain Results

Reference previous steps:

Step 1: "Calculate total sales by product category"
Step 2: "Using the results above, identify categories with >10% growth"

Multi-Source Playbooks

Combine data from multiple sources:

Step 1: "From the Google Analytics connector, get sessions by channel for last month"

Step 2: "From the sales.xlsx file, get revenue by marketing channel"

Step 3: "Join these datasets by channel and calculate ROI per channel"

Using Enrichments

Sentiment Analysis

Perfect for:

  • Customer feedback analysis
  • Social media monitoring
  • Review aggregation
  • Support ticket categorization
"Analyze the sentiment of each customer review in the feedback column.
Add a new column with: positive, negative, or neutral.
Then summarize the overall sentiment distribution."

Language Translation

Perfect for:

  • International reports
  • Multilingual content
  • Localization workflows
"Translate all product descriptions from the source_text column
from German to English. Preserve the original meaning and formatting."

Text Extraction

Perfect for:

  • Document processing
  • Data entry automation
  • Unstructured data parsing
"From each invoice PDF, extract: invoice number, date,
vendor name, line items, and total amount.
Output as a structured table."

Web Scraping

Perfect for:

  • Competitor monitoring
  • Price tracking
  • Market research
"Scrape the product prices from [competitor URL].
Extract product name, price, and availability.
Compare to our pricing in the products table."

Troubleshooting

Playbook Fails to Run

  • Check data source is accessible
  • Verify connector credentials aren't expired
  • Review error message in run history

Results Not as Expected

  • Test steps individually in a chat
  • Make prompts more specific
  • Check data source has expected format

Enrichment Errors

  • Verify you have tool credits remaining
  • Check the feature is enabled in settings
  • Ensure data format is compatible

Next Steps