Working with the Response Editor

You build every response in Privata using the Response Editor. Open it from a project with the Build Response button. The Extraction agent reads your source documents and turns them into sections, each one of three types:

• Q&A sections: extracted questions or requirements answered item by item.
• Essay sections: narrative, solution-style writing, such as an executive summary, a technical approach, a management plan, or a past-performance write-up.
• Table sections: a table extracted from the source document, such as a pricing sheet or responsibility matrix, whose cells the AI fills in.

A single response can mix all three types. You might answer a questionnaire, complete an extracted pricing table, and include a narrative cover section, all in the same response.

The Response Editor at a Glance

• A left rail titled Sections lists every section in your response, with Add section to create a new one.
• The top toolbar has Generate all sections, Edit prompt, AI reviewer, History, Download, and Save All.
• Editing is real-time and collaborative; teammates can work in the same response at once and you will see their cursors.
• Your work is saved per section with autosave, and a Save All button commits everything. An UNSAVED badge marks sections with pending changes.

Q&A Sections

Q&A sections answer extracted questions or requirements one item at a time. Use them for questionnaires, requirement checklists, and spreadsheet templates where each item needs its own response.

Where Q&A Sections Come From

When you upload a source document, the Extraction agent reads it and pulls out the questions and requirements: direct questions, requirements, and feature or service descriptions that need a response. These become the items inside a Q&A section, and the editor keeps track of where each question came from so answers can later be returned to the original file.

INFO

Extraction works across common business document formats, but the content and layout of the source file still affect how clearly response items can be identified.

Generating Answers

• Use Generate all sections in the toolbar to generate answers across the whole response at once.
• Select a Q&A section and use Generate Q&A section to answer all of its questions at once.
• Within a section, use Generate answer on an individual question to answer just that one.

When it generates an answer, Privata draws on the question, your selected collections and retrieval scope, any extracted or manual project instructions, your Approved Answers, and the current prompt settings.

Reordering questions

You can reorder the questions within a Q&A section by dragging them, which also controls the order they appear in the final document.

Confidence scores

Each generated answer includes a confidence score that reflects how well it is supported by your material. Use it to prioritize review; focus first on low-confidence answers that may need rewriting or verification. When an answer cannot be grounded in your collections, Privata tells you rather than showing a misleading score.

Required indicators

Some extracted questions are marked as required so you can prioritize them. Generating answers covers every question regardless of whether it is marked required.

Essay Sections

Not every response is a list of questions and answers. When you need to present a coherent, solution-oriented narrative (an executive summary, a technical approach, a management plan, a past-performance write-up), you build it as an essay section.

Q&A sections answer items one at a time; essay sections evaluate the relevant requirements together and produce one flowing narrative.

When to Use an Essay Section

Use an essay section when the value of the response comes from presenting one connected story rather than answering items in isolation. It works well when the source material describes:

• An overall solution to be proposed
• A set of requirements that should be addressed together
• A service offering and related deliverables
• A customer request that calls for a single proposal narrative

For example, in a Q&A section the questions "Do you support SSL encryption?" and "Do you support email notifications?" would each get their own answer. In an essay section, Privata can address both, along with any related capabilities, as part of one paragraph describing your overall solution.

Adding and Generating an Essay Section

1. In the Sections rail, select Add section and choose an essay (narrative) section.
2. Open the section to see What this section should cover, an on-demand summary of the requirements the section is meant to address.
3. Select Generate response to draft it.

When it drafts an essay section, Privata evaluates the project instructions, the relevant source-document requirements, your Approved Answers, and the selected collection context together to produce a single narrative.

TIP

Attach only the collections that apply to the opportunity. Because an essay section weaves many sources into one narrative, focused, relevant context produces a stronger and more consistent result.

Using Collections for Stronger Narratives

Essay sections are only as good as the material behind them. Helpful collection content includes:

• Product and service descriptions
• Previous deployments and past performance
• Previous RFx responses
• Statements of work
• Reference architectures and integration details

TIP

Treat the generated narrative as a strong first draft. Tailor it to the customer, the opportunity, and any required proposal format before you export and submit.

Table Sections

Some source documents include tables, such as pricing sheets or responsibility matrices, that must be completed in place. Privata extracts these as table sections. Select Generate table answers to have the AI fill the cells, edit any cell directly, then Save table. Columns flagged with a yellow border have an uncertain editable status, so review them before saving.

Refining with AI

To rewrite a single Q&A answer, use AI Refine. Enter a refinement instruction, for example "Make this more specific to our ISO 27001 certification" or "Shorten to two concise paragraphs", and select Refine Answer. You get a Preview of the rewrite, which you can Apply or Discard. Nothing changes until you apply it.

In an essay section, use AI Edit instead. You can select a portion of the narrative and have the AI rewrite just that part, then preview the change before you keep it.

Editing the Prompt

The Edit prompt button lets you add extra guidance that is applied to Generate / Generate answer / Generate all for the current session, for example "Emphasize our SOC 2 compliance and use a formal tone throughout." This is useful when you want to influence tone, structure, or emphasis beyond the default project instructions.

Reviewing the Whole Response

Use AI reviewer to run an automated review across the sections you choose. It checks completeness (for essay, Q&A, and table sections) and scans for consistency conflicts and writing-mechanics issues, then produces an AI Reviewer Report you can work through. Review results are kept for the rest of your editing session.

Approving Answers for Reuse

When you write a strong answer, you can approve it so it joins your company's Approved Answers library and can ground future responses. Marking a project Closed (won) also lets you promote all of its answers at once.

Version History

Use History to see a response's version history and compare or restore an earlier version if you need to roll back a change.

Downloading Your Responses

Select Download to open the download options. First choose where to Save to: This computer, SharePoint, Salesforce, or Google Drive. Then either take the Recommended option (the assembler picks the best mode and format for your response) or open Manual options:

• Return filled-in originals: fills your answers back into the exact files they came from. Best for questionnaires and spreadsheet templates.
• Generate one document: everything (essays, Q&A, tables) in one clean Word or PDF file.
• Generate by format: Q&A and tables as Excel, narrative sections as Word, zipped together.

For fine control over a single download, open Show instructions to review or override the Assembly briefing: section-by-section overrides, font size, page target, margins, and packaging notes that apply to that download only.

WARNING

When you choose Return filled-in originals, placing answers back into the source file can be ambiguous if the document does not clearly show where answers belong: for example a spreadsheet with columns such as Description, Comments, or Vendor and no obvious response column. Where you can, make the target clear before uploading; in Excel, a column named Answers gives the assembler an obvious place to write.

Best Practices

• Attach only the collections relevant to the source document, and set the right retrieval scope.
• Review extracted instructions and the Agent Briefing before generating.
• Use Q&A sections when items should be answered individually, and essay sections when the source document should be answered as one connected solution.
• Use confidence scores to find Q&A answers that need closer review.
• Use AI Refine on a Q&A answer or AI Edit on essay text to tighten wording, and Edit prompt when you need a different style across a run.
• Approve your best answers so they strengthen future responses.
• Review the final narrative before exporting, and if you plan to return answers to a spreadsheet, make the answer column easy to identify.

What to Do Next

• Review each section, refine the ones that need it, and save your work.
• Run the AI reviewer and a Project Readiness Review before you submit.
• Download the completed response, or return answers to the original files.

For related guidance, continue to the Approved Answers, Building Your Knowledge Base, and Project Readiness pages.