How to Use Regulatory AI 

Overview

Regulatory AI is a powerful research assistant within the HData platform, built specifically to streamline utility regulatory analysis. Unlike general-purpose AI tools, its responses are based exclusively on official regulatory filings selected by the user. This means that every answer is grounded in the documents you choose and includes transparent, verifiable citations. With Regulatory AI, you can interact with regulatory documents in new ways: asking questions, surfacing insights, comparing filings across jurisdictions, monitoring for updates, and exporting your findings in professional formats.

The following guide provides a comprehensive overview of how to use Regulatory AI, from creating your first session to advanced features like comparing documents across catalogs, setting up Alerts, conducting an Advanced Search, using citations, and sharing sessions.

Creating and Managing Sessions

Every analysis in Regulatory AI begins with a session. A session is your workspace: it contains the documents you’ve selected, the questions you’ve asked, the answers generated, the insights uncovered, and citations in multiple formats. Sessions allow you to focus on a specific regulatory topic or docket and return to it over time. Because sessions save automatically, they also serve as your personal archive of research.

Watch the demo video below for a step-by-step guide to creating a new session and several of the other features and best practices discussed in this article.

To create a new session:

• Open Regulatory AI from the HData platform.
  
  
• Click Create a New Session in the upper right.
  
  
• Select up to 200 documents from the HData Library or your private documents in Data Hub.
  
  
• Launch the session by clicking the arrow at the bottom of the screen.
  
  

Once created, your session will generate AI-powered summaries of each selected file. You can manage your sessions at any time by renaming, duplicating, or deleting them directly from Regulatory AI or from Data Hub. Learn more about Data Hub and how you can manage your Regulatory AI sessions by reading the Data Hub Knowledge Base article. 

Asking Questions and Exploring Insights

The primary way to interact with Regulatory AI is by asking questions. You can type your own questions or use suggested prompts provided in the Insights panel. Insights give you a starting point, highlighting key topics, people, entities, and events that appear in your selected documents. This makes it easy to quickly identify relevant angles of analysis without starting from scratch.

Ways to explore with Insights:

• Open the Insights panel using the lightbulb icon at the bottom.
  
  
• Search by keyword or filter by categories, including key topics, people, dates and events, or companies and entities. 
  
  
• Scroll through insights, select a suggested follow-up questions, and select it to get Regulatory AI’s response.
  
  

As you ask questions, Regulatory AI provides detailed responses supported by citations. Each answer also includes answer-level insights, which explain the logic behind the response, suggest next questions to ask, and make it easy to refine your line of inquiry.

Citations and Transparency

One of the defining features of Regulatory AI is its emphasis on transparency. Every answer includes citations that trace back to the exact regulatory filing source. Citations are available in multiple formats, making it easy to verify the accuracy of your research and reference documents in your own reporting.

Read the How to Use Regulatory AI Citations Knowledge Base article for a comprehensive overview of our citations features.

In-Text Citations

With in-text citations, quotation mark icons appear inline with answers. Clicking on an icon opens a side panel showing the document title, the exact page number, and a direct link to the cited passage. This lets you see precisely where information came from without leaving your session. Citations also appear in the Answer Details panel, in Files View, and in downloadable Book Reports. Clicking an In-Text Citation icon opens a side panel with:

• Document Title – the name of the regulatory document referenced
  
  
• Page Number – where the cited content appears
  
  
• Document Link – a direct link that opens to the cited page
  
  

Tips:

• Click a citation icons to view citation details in the sidebar.
• Use in-text citations to quickly gather references for reports, memos, or presentations.
  
  

Book Reports

Book Reports are interactive PDFs that preserve your session questions, answers, tables, and citations in a polished, shareable format. Unlike static exports, Book Reports include clickable links back into the platform, ensuring you or your colleagues can revisit source documents with a single click. They also maintain table formatting, making them ideal for complex data presentations.

To download a Book Report:

• From any session, click the Download button.
  
  
• Select “Download Book Report”.
  
  
• Save the interactive PDF for use as a professional research archive or shareable deliverable.
  
  

Why it matters: Book Reports create a lasting archive of your research. They’re more than a record, they’re a working document you can use to review insights, share findings, or revisit sources with a single click.

See an example Book Report and learn more about how to download and use them in the How to Use Book Reports Knowledge Base.

Navigating with Session View and Files View

Regulatory AI gives you two ways to navigate your research. Session View is the conversational interface where you interact with the AI, ask questions, see responses, and explore Insights. Files View, on the other hand, is a document-centered view designed for sorting and evaluating files directly.

Files View is especially valuable when you want to identify which sources are driving your insights, or when you need to drill into metadata and file-level summaries. From this view, you can sort documents alphabetically, by catalog, or by citation count. You can also click any file to open it in full, or preview AI-generated summaries before diving deeper. Importantly, Files View also allows you to launch a new session based only on the most relevant documents, giving you a way to move from broad exploration to targeted analysis.

Watch the brief demo video below about navigating with Files View.

Starting a New Session from Files View

With sessions now supporting up to 200 files, it’s more important than ever to focus on the documents that matter most. Files View makes this simple by showing which sources are driving your insights.

From Files View, you can pinpoint the most relevant documents by sorting by citation count or topic. Then, select files for deeper analysis and launch a new, targeted session from your chosen documents.

This workflow helps you move seamlessly from broad exploration to focused analysis, ensuring every session starts with the files most relevant to your goals. Learn more about using Files View by visiting the Sessions View vs Files View Knowledge Base article.

Advanced Search 

When working with over a million authoritative regulatory documents in the HData Library, finding the right filings can feel overwhelming. Advanced Search gives you greater control, helping you move beyond simple keyword searches to tailor results to exactly what you need. By refining or expanding your search criteria, you can zero in on precise phrases, exclude irrelevant terms, or cast a wider net when exploring new topics.

A standard search checks both document text and metadata, such as filer names or docket titles, to return all files containing your terms. This is especially useful when you’re unsure of the exact phrasing used in filings. For example, searching transmission line siting would return results containing transmission line, line siting, or transmission siting.

Advanced Search expands these capabilities with additional options:

• All of these exact words/phrases → Returns only results with an exact match in the order you typed.
  
  
• Any of these words/phrases → Returns results containing at least one of your terms, even if others are missing.
  
  
• None of these words/phrases → Excludes results containing terms you don’t want.
  
  

These options can be used together and combined with catalog filters such as date ranges, jurisdictions, or filer names, giving you highly targeted results. For example, you might search for documents that:

• Must contain the phrase transmission line siting
  
  
• Must also include Arizona Public Service
  
  
• Must also include oppose or opposition
  
  
• Were filed between 1/1/22 and 8/31/24
  
  

This kind of precise query narrows the Library to just the filings that matter most. By mastering Advanced Search, you can make the most of the HData Library, surfacing the filings that matter for your research.

To learn more Advanced Search techniques, visit the Advanced Search Knowledge Base.

Compare Across Catalogs 

Regulatory AI supports research that spans across multiple catalogs in the HData Library. For example, if you want to compare Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) filings across several states, you can combine documents from different jurisdictions into a single session.

To compare across catalogs:

• Start a new session and select documents from your first catalog.
  
  
• Before beginning the chat, click the dropdown next to the catalog name.
  
  
• Add documents from one or more additional catalogs.
  
  
• Launch the session as usual to begin your cross-jurisdictional analysis.
  
  

Alerts

Alerts help you stay ahead of new regulatory activity by monitoring for companies, keywords, or topics you care about. Once set, Alerts notify you in-platform and/or by email whenever new filings match your criteria. Each notification includes an AI-generated summary so you can quickly decide whether the filing is relevant. View an example of an AI-assisted Alerts email here.

Example: Create an alert for the keyword “vegetation management” tied to “San Diego Gas & Electric Company” in the California Public Utilities Commission catalog. As soon as a new matching filing appears, you’ll receive a summary and direct access to the document.

Alerts help you:

• Scan new filings at a glance
  
  
• Prioritize your work by relevance
  
  
• Stay ahead of regulatory changes without manual searching

Learn more about setting up Alerts in the How to Use HData Alerts Knowledge Base article.

Session Sharing

The Session Sharing feature makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues or share a session with your HData Customer Success Representative. You have full control over who can access your sessions, with options to share directly from Regulatory AI or through Data Hub. Watch the brief demo video below for an overview of how to share a session from Regulatory AI or from Data Hub. 

How to Share a Session from Regulatory AI:

1. Open the session you’d like to share.
   
   
2. Click the share icon in the top left corner.
   
   
3. Use the sharing modal to:
   
   
   • Toggle sharing on or off
     
     
   • Generate a shareable link
     
     
   • Grant access to individuals in your organization or your HData Customer Success team (with view-only or edit permissions)
     
     

How to Share a Session from Data Hub:

1. Open Data Hub from the left-hand navigation menu.
   
   
2. Go to My Drive > Saved Content to see your saved sessions.
   
   
3. Right-click the session you want to share and select Share.
   
   
4. Use the sharing modal (same options as above) to manage access.
   
   

Manage Access Anytime: Reopen the sharing modal at any time to update permissions, add/remove individuals, or disable sharing altogether.

Learn more about how to share session in the Session Sharing Knowledge Base article here.

Best Practices

Regulatory AI is most effective when you approach it with a clear strategy. By combining thoughtful question design, smart document selection, and use of advanced features like Files View and Alerts, you can maximize both the speed and accuracy of your research. This section outlines proven tips to help you get better results, avoid common pitfalls, and make Regulatory AI a trusted part of your regulatory workflow.

• Start broad with multiple documents, then use Files View to narrow down to the most relevant sources.
  
  
• Check in-text citations to confirm accuracy and gather references for external reporting.
  
  
• Use Book Reports to create professional, ready-to-share outputs.
  
  
• Set Alerts for priority topics so you never miss a relevant filing.
  
  
• Share sessions with colleagues to streamline collaboration and reduce duplication of effort.
  
  

Next Steps

You now have a detailed overview of how to use Regulatory AI, from setting up sessions and asking questions to advanced features like comparing across catalogs, Alerts, Book Reports, Advanced Search, and Session Sharing. By combining these tools, you can make your regulatory research more efficient, transparent, and impactful. Explore our other Regulatory AI Knowledge Base articles to dive deeper into these topics.

Additional Questions? Let Us Know