CtrlScout: ask your vault as you would a colleague
CtrlScout is an AI assistant inside M‑Files. People ask it what they would otherwise ask a colleague, and the answer comes from the documents they are allowed to open, with its sources beside it.
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A contract owner wants to know which supplier agreements expire this quarter, and a quality manager needs the number of procedures still waiting for review. Both answers are already in M‑Files. Getting at them means building a search and opening documents one at a time, or asking the colleague who knows where everything is filed.
CtrlScout sits in a panel inside M‑Files, beside the documents people already work with. You ask in plain words, in your own language, and the answer comes back with the documents it was drawn from. It works on every M‑Files edition, in M‑Files Cloud or on-premise, and the AI model runs in Europe unless you choose otherwise.
Every answer names its sources#
An answer lists the documents and other objects it used, and each one opens in M‑Files. Related objects are followed too, such as the customers and employees a procedure is linked to, and the answer says which of them it read. If one of them is out of your reach, you are told the answer covers only part of the picture.
You can see the search it ran and the steps it took. Questions about history work as well: who changed a document, and when. When the answer is a long list, the list opens in the M‑Files listing and you carry on working from there.
Long documents read from start to finish#
A summary of a long contract is on the document’s own menu in M‑Files, and so is a comparison of two versions, which shows what changed in the wording itself.
Ask with a document selected and the question is about that document: what it says about retention, for instance, or where its risks lie. Files from your own computer work too. Drop in a Word file, a PDF or an email, and CtrlScout reads it alongside what is already in the vault.
Charts you can trace back to the vault#
Ask how many, per what and over which period. CtrlScout counts the objects and draws the chart, or several charts in one answer when the question needs them. The counting is done by the vault, under your permissions, and the AI writes only the sentences around the result.
Under a chart answer is a note of what was counted, for the day someone asks where a number came from. A chart copies straight into a report, and the objects behind the numbers open in M‑Files.
See a question answered and charted on the CtrlScout page.
The work that follows the answer#
After a search or a summary, ask CtrlScout to draft the status email. It writes in the language you asked in, and the draft downloads as a file that opens in Outlook, ready to edit and send. It fills in the addresses it has seen in the conversation and leaves the rest to you.
A new customer or project starts from a sentence too. Describe it, and CtrlScout fills in the fields of the new object for you to approve as it stands or look over in M‑Files first.
With the optional metadata suggestions, CtrlScout reads each document you add and proposes its details, such as the description, keywords, dates and the kind of document, each with the sentence it came from. You accept the ones that are right.
See every change before it is made#
Where your administrator allows it, CtrlScout changes objects as well. Describe the change in plain words, such as moving a set of procedures to their next workflow state, and it shows each object it found with its old and new value, along with any it has to skip and why.
Nothing is written until you approve it, and then it is written in your name. A change can be undone, and each object keeps its history.
It only sees what you can see#
CtrlScout reads and writes as the person asking, under their own M‑Files permissions, so the rights you already keep in the vault decide what it can find and change. Two colleagues asking the same question can get different answers, because their accounts open different documents.
Your administrator decides who gets the panel, everyone or chosen user groups, and separately whether it may change objects or create new ones. House rules of your own, such as your terms and the tone to write in, are added to CtrlScout’s rules and never replace them.
Cloud or on-premise, with the AI you choose#
CtrlScout runs inside your vault, on every M‑Files edition, in M‑Files Cloud or on your own servers. Each conversation is kept in the vault too, visible only to the person who had it, who can open it again later and carry on.
The AI model it works with is a separate choice, and the preset is a European service: Scaleway’s Generative APIs, hosted in the EU. Your administrator can point CtrlScout at OpenAI instead, or at a model running on your own servers, and content goes to the service set up for your vault.
The questions worth putting to any AI vendor about a document system, CtrlDocs included, are in our post on sovereign AI in document and information management.
See it answer questions like yours#
Bring the questions your people put to each other because searching takes too long. In a demo we show CtrlScout answering questions like those, and a change held until someone approves it. Every CtrlDocs product comes with a 30-day trial, CtrlScout included.
Book a CtrlScout demo or ask for a 30-day trial. We answer the same working day.