Time required: 6 minutes

Prerequisites:

Expected results: After reading this article, you will know how to open the Gustav workspace, run a search in plain language, read the results, and use files, conversation history, and the speed setting.

You need to know which apartments a tenant occupies, or every open case in a building, or who the service provider on a work order was — and you'd rather just ask than click through filters. The Gustav workspace searches across all of your data in plain language, in German or English.

Click Gustav in the sidebar. The welcome screen appears with the heading "Where should we start?", an input field, and a few starter suggestions for getting started.

Type what you're looking for and press Enter, or click one of the three starter suggestions to begin:

A suggestion fills the input with an opening phrase — complete it (for example, add the name or address) and send. You don't need the suggestions, though; plain questions work just as well:

Gustav searches across ten kinds of records:

Results appear as cards. Each card shows the record type, a title, its status and category, and a few key details. From a card you can:

Gustav uses fuzzy matching, so when several records look similar — two tenants with the same name, say — it shows you the candidates and lets you pick the right one.

A search is a conversation, not a single query. Once Gustav shows a result, you can refine without starting over:

Gustav remembers what it just found, so you can narrow down step by step.

You can hand Gustav a file to work from. Drag an email or document into the chat, paste it from your clipboard, or use the Attach file (or paste from clipboard) button. Gustav reads the file and can act on what's inside — for example, paste a tenant's complaint email and ask Gustav to find the tenant and the affected property.

Your searches are saved. Open Conversations to return to an earlier one, or start a New chat when you move on to a different topic. Coming back to a conversation later keeps all of its context.

A Fast / Normal switch lets you trade speed against thoroughness. Fast answers quicker and is right for standard queries; Normal is slower but works through complex, multi-step questions more carefully. Fast is suitable for most things and is therefore the default — switch to Normal when a question is more complex.

Gustav can do more than find things. Once it has the context, you can ask it to draft an email, a work order, or an ERP ticket from what it found. Those drafts always wait for your review before anything is sent or created — see Getting the best out of Gustav.