A few small things make Plane Agent much more useful. Here are tips for how to phrase your prompts and how to get the most out of your conversations.
Tips for better answers
Be specific
The more specific you can be, the easier it is for the agent to give you a useful answer the first time.
Ask about a concrete detail, not a general state.
Vague: "Are all workers set up correctly?" — this may confuse the agent and cause it to do too much work, or ask you to clarify what you mean.
Specific: "Which workers are missing bank accounts?" — this is easy for the agent to interpret and will give you a clean, actionable list.
Narrow your time window when it matters.
Vague: "Do I have any payroll items that need my attention?" — the agent might look too far in the future and come up with a very long list.
Specific: "Do I have any payroll items that need my attention this month?" — the agent will look for payroll items with pay dates in the current month.
Say who you mean. If your question is about one person or one team, say so. Asking "what's Karen's compensation history?" keeps the answer on Karen. Asking "show me compensation history" invites a much bigger answer than you wanted.
Watch for similar names
If two people in your workspace have similar names, name the one you mean in full, or include their worker ID. The agent picks the closest match and tells you what it matched on, so read that line before acting on the answer. Asking about "Karen" in a workspace with both a Karen Alpine and a Karen Zee gets you one of them plus a note that the other exists.
Ask for fresh data after a change in Plane
Plane Agent remembers what you've already talked about in the conversation. If some time has passed and data has changed in Plane, you may have to ask it to check the most recent data. If you start a new chat, it will always pull fresh data.
About Plane IDs
Plane has internal IDs that you can see when visiting different pages in Plane. For example, a worker ID from their profile looks like wr_whBpxZWR9dnmF5. The agent generally won't expose these IDs in its replies unless you ask it to, but it knows how to handle them if you include one in your message.
Sample prompts to try
Your team
"Show me [worker name]'s profile."
"Who's starting in the next 30 days?"
"How many active employees do we have right now and where are they located?"
Payroll
"What are my next payroll pay dates?"
"What is the cash requirement for the monthly contractor payroll to be paid on [pay date]?"
"Is anything blocking the upcoming payroll?"
Payments
"What's the status of [worker name]'s payment?"
"Are there any payments that failed recently?"
Compliance
"Which contractors are missing W-8 or W-9 forms?"
"Are any employees missing their W-2?"
Reports and spreadsheets
"Build me a compliance report for W-8 and W-9 forms, showing who has signed, when they signed, and who's still missing one."
"Build me a headcount and turnover report for last quarter, broken down by department."
"Give me a spreadsheet of every contractor missing a tax form, with their country and start date."