The Workshop
Where the things Asteria builds for you actually live, and why they are not just text in a chat.
When Asteria produces something you would call a deliverable (a document, a deck, a spreadsheet, a diagram) it does not dump it into the conversation. It opens the Workshop, a panel beside your chat that holds the real file.
That distinction is the point. A wall of text in a chat is something you have to copy out, reformat and paste somewhere. A Workshop document is a file: you can edit it in place, ask for changes, look at earlier versions, roll one back, and download it in a format your colleagues can open.
How it opens
You do not go to the Workshop. It comes to you.
Ask for something ("write this up as a two page summary", "put that in a deck", "build me a spreadsheet of the regional totals") and when the result is ready a card appears in the conversation with the document's name and type. Click the card and the panel slides in from the right.
Close it with the × or the Esc key. Nothing is lost: the card stays in the conversation, and clicking it reopens the panel.
The panel
Four controls sit in the header, to the right of the title:
| Control | Does |
|---|---|
| Maximize | Expands the panel to fill the window, for when you are actually reading. Click again to put it back. |
| History | Every version, who changed what, and the way back. See Versions and history. |
| Download | Saves the file to your computer. The formats offered depend on the document type. |
| Close | Hides the panel. |
The kinds of document
The Workshop holds several kinds of thing, and how much you can edit by hand differs by kind. This catches people out, so it is worth knowing up front:
| Kind | Edit in the Workshop? |
|---|---|
| Document (written from scratch) | Yes, directly, like a text editor |
| Word document (one you uploaded) | Yes, and it keeps its own formatting |
| Presentation | No. It is a preview: download to edit, or ask for changes |
| Workbook (spreadsheet) | No. Every figure is a live formula, so you ask for changes |
| Diagram | Yes, on a drawing canvas |
| PDF reference | No, it is there to be referred to |
The rule behind that table: where a file has structure Asteria maintains (slide layouts, live formulas), you change it by asking rather than by typing. Hand-editing those would break the thing that makes them useful. Everywhere else, type away.
Asking for changes usually beats editing by hand
Even where you can edit directly, the conversation is often the faster tool:
Make the second section shorter and lead with the recommendation.
The Q3 figure is wrong, it should be 1,050,000. Update it everywhere it appears.
Add a slide after the summary covering the risks.
Asteria edits the document in place and saves a new version, so the old one is still there. Direct editing earns its keep on the small stuff: a typo, a sentence to cut, a name to change.
Where the file ends up
By default it lives in the Workshop, attached to the conversation that made it, and you download it when you want it elsewhere.
You can also send it somewhere more useful. Ask Asteria to save it into a collection, and if that collection mirrors a Drive or SharePoint folder it lands there instead. See Where your files end up.