General Consultant Discussion

I noticed that Google's NotebookLM is pretty useable on my iPhone.

Most of the other AI providers have ( or soon will have ) something similar. For example ChatGPT has projects.

What I'm interested in using NotebookLM for are creating specialized AI resources for things that I might need to know while I'm away from my desk or things that otherwise would take me several searches across multiple resources. I'm not looking to replace my notes or have NotebookLM act as my primary KB.


If you haven't used Google NotebookLM - some aspects of it are free.

I upload PDF files which I frequently access and then instead of having to look in 10 different places I can ask the AI for a summary. 

It's good for things like: 

"What user rights does a service account need to run Sage 100"
"What versions of SQL are supported?"
" What was added to Sage 100 in version 2024"
"What's the recommended registry entry to expand memory available to services when running Sage 100 as a service"


It appears that you can take the URL from Sage KB and use that as a source in NotebookLM. The hidden "gotcha" (that Google doesn't tell you directly) is that when NotebookLM works with the URL what it does is import the page and that content becomes static. So future updates to a KB article would NOT show up in the NotebookLM. It would be better if saved URLs were refreshed periodically.

I created one for Sage 100 Premium.

I think other good topics would be Paperless Office, Supported Platforms

What's better with using type of AI: 

1. It actually works on mobile ( vs the Sage or HL  sites which can be slow or inconsistent in returning results)
2. It produces direct answers to very specific questions in a format that you could send to a customer or another consultant
3. It references multiple documents simultaneously - whereas the Sage KB is a painful click, back, click, back -- to search

What's worse with using this type of AI: 

1. It can be confidently wrong or will guess and provide confidently wrong information ( ie - it needs double checking )
2. It requires loading up the AI with source documents
3. Be careful if you are using a Google WORKSPACE account which does NOT allow sharing NotebookLM outside your company domain. There does not appear to be any similar restriction on the NotebookLM attached to a regular Gmail type account other than you may need to join the paid program which I think is called Google One AI Premium (about $20/mo)

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Wayne Schulz
wayne@s-consult.com
Schulz Consulting
(860) 516-8990
CT
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What I am finding with AI is if it gives a wrong answer don't just stop using it.

Figure out how to improve the experience - whether it's to change the prompt or add some other type of knowledge.

Sometimes it takes a little fine tuning to get the output to where it should be. I always verify key facts and have learned to read through the answers and not just copy and paste them assuming that they are right. 

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Wayne Schulz
wayne@s-consult.com
Schulz Consulting
(860) 516-8990
CT
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Thanks for sharing, Wayne! I haven't played too much with Google's suite of AI products, but I've been leaning in more and more to ChatGPT. Having a fresh perspective of another platform is helpful!

I will say creating custom GPTs has been interesting. The key is in the prompting. If you have a bad or simple prompt, you're leaving the door open to AI hallucinations and giving too much freedom to the AI to fill in gaps where it can't directly find knowledge for something. There could be a whole class taught at Meeting of the Minds solely on prompt writing (regardless of AI platforms).

And good point about static storage of information. With ChatGPT, you can enable automatic refresh of data from the sources you specify based on an interval that you define. For example, if the Sage KB is updated with any frequentcy - I would tell my custom GPT that uses the KB as a source to refresh the data daily. The Sage Community could be every 2-3 hours.

From there, you can ask your GPT when it last refreshed data from the sources you gave it and it can tell you. If outdated, manually ask it to re-train on the updated data. 

It's kind of crazy to think how far you can take this stuff. Point it at all the relevant public tax data for federal, state, and local, and you've got a sound financial advisor.
Point it at all sorts of product documentation and blogs posted by reputable partners and you've got a powerful SME on that product. Point it at your solutions, official KBs of a publisher, and other reputable sources and you've got a potent support rep that you can prompt with a situation and it'll suggest ways of solving the problem.

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Best Regards,

Basil Malik
President/CEO
e: basil@malik-inc.com
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I've had good success with NotebookLM. I loaded up all of the separate Operations Management/Job Ops manuals and have been enjoying just asking it specific questions and getting concise answers instead of searching all the PDFs for a term like "WIP". I appreciate that it "cites its sources" so I can click a link and read that portion of the PDF if something seems off.   I recommend it for any situation where you find yourself searching through documents! 

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Kate Krueger
Consultant
MicroAccounting
214.800.5555x553
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