Add text and audio

Open Train from the menu on the left, then choose Text / Audio, the fourth of the five tabs across the top of the page. You need Train access to see it. Admins always have it, and an admin can give it to anyone else from Edit users and roles.

The tab is a single form, and nothing you create is listed on it. Each document goes to the Files tab, where you tag, rename and delete it alongside everything else in Train.

Both routes end in the same place: a document in Train that Centrus searches when someone asks a question. The difference is where the words start.

• Use Text / Audio when the knowledge is not written down yet, or is scattered across emails and messages. Good examples are a site induction, the checks an experienced engineer makes when a fault comes in, a customer's access arrangements, or the outcome of a phone call the rest of the team should know about.
• Upload a file when the document already exists, such as a manual, a contract, a price list or a set of RAMS. Uploading keeps the original file, its tables and its name, and saves you retyping it. See Upload files.
• Upload an audio file when you already have a recording, such as an .mp3 or .wav of a meeting. The Files tab transcribes it for you. Record Audio on this tab only listens to your microphone, so it cannot open a recording you have saved.

1. 1In Document Title, type a name people will recognise, such as Riverside House induction. A title is required, and Centrus saves the document under that name with .html on the end.
2. 2In Document Content, type or paste the text. The box takes plain text only, so there are no buttons for headings, bold or bullet points.
3. 3Leave a blank line between paragraphs and between steps. The next section explains why this matters.
4. 4Add tags if you want to, then click Create Document.

If you click Create Document without a title, the form shows Please enter a title under the box. With a title but no content, a message at the top of the screen says Please enter contents of document. Pressing Enter in the title box also submits the form, so if the content is already written, the document is created there and then.

Clear All empties the content box straight away, without asking you to confirm. It leaves the title and tags as they are.

When you create the document, Centrus turns the text into a simple web page (HTML). A blank line starts a new paragraph. A single line break is not kept: the lines either side of it are joined, with a space between them. A list typed one item to a line is therefore saved as one long paragraph.

Centrus can still read a joined-up list, but separate paragraphs keep each step on its own, which is easier to follow when Centrus quotes it back. Leaving a blank line between items is the simplest way to keep them apart. Spaces at the start and end of each paragraph are removed.

Record Audio lets you speak the notes instead of typing them. What you say is turned into text and placed in the content box, where you can check and correct it before you save. The recording itself is not kept in Train: only the text becomes part of the document.

1. 1Click in the content box where you want the words to go. If you have selected some text, the transcript replaces it.
2. 2Click Record Audio. The button changes to Stop Recording while it is listening.
3. 3The first time, your browser asks whether app.centrus.ai can use your microphone. Allow it.
4. 4Speak clearly and at a normal pace, then click Stop Recording when you have finished.

There is no pause button. To add more later, click where the new words should go and click Record Audio again. Each recording goes in at the cursor, so you can build a document up in several short takes.

Do not type in the content box while a recording is running. When the words appear as you speak, each update rewrites the box from the point where you started recording, so anything typed in the meantime can be overwritten. Click Stop Recording first, then edit.

How the words reach the box depends on your browser.

• In browsers with built-in speech recognition, such as Chrome, Edge and Safari, the words appear as you speak. The last few can change as the browser settles on what you said.
• In other browsers, such as Firefox, nothing appears while you speak. When you click Stop Recording, the button changes to Transcribing while the recording is turned into text, and the whole transcript then appears at once. Create Document cannot be clicked until it has finished.

Either way, read the transcript through before you create the document. Speech recognition can mishear site names, people's names, part numbers and fault codes, and it may leave out punctuation. A long recording also arrives as one block of text with no paragraph breaks, so add blank lines where each new point starts.

Text / Audio works in the browser on a phone too, which is useful for recording notes while you are still on site. Open Centrus in your phone's browser, go to Train, then Text / Audio. The form is the same as on a computer, and the Sources bar underneath stacks its details to fit the narrower screen.

09:41

Centrus

Train

Add data sources to train Centrus

Create Text / Audio Document

Add a new document to your knowledge base

Document Title

Riverside House induction

Document Content

Enter your document content. Text will be formatted as HTML when you create the document.

Clear All

Sign in at the security desk on the ground floor. If the desk is unattended, call Sarah Price, the facilities manager, on the number on the job sheet

Document Tags (Optional)

SOPsSecond tag

Download Options

Download a copy

Stop RecordingTap to stop

Create Document

Sources6.4GB / 10GB limit

64%

Tap in the content box, then tap Record Audio, and allow the microphone when your phone asks. Keep the screen on and the browser open until you have tapped Stop Recording and the words are in the box, because switching to another app can stop the recording. On a noisy site, hold the phone close or step somewhere quieter, because noise from plant and traffic makes mistakes more likely.

When a recording fails, a message appears at the top of the screen and the button goes back to Record Audio. Each message points to a different cause.

• Microphone permission is required to use this service, try again means the browser has been told not to let app.centrus.ai use the microphone. Allow it in your browser's settings for the site, usually reached from the icon beside the web address, and then try again.
• No speech detected, try again means the browser heard nothing it could use. Check that the right microphone is selected, and start speaking soon after you click.
• Could not transcribe audio, try again means the speech could not be turned into text, which can happen after a dropped connection. Record again, in shorter takes if the first one was long.

If none of these help, type the notes instead. Everything else on the tab works without a microphone.

Tags work here as they do on the Files tab. A document with no tag is never used in an answer, and until it has one, only admins and the person who created it can see it in Train. Upload files explains how tags decide who can use a document.

1. 1Under Document Tags (Optional), click Primary tag and choose a tag from the list. Start typing to narrow the list down, or type a new name and choose Create to make a new tag there and then.
2. 2If different groups of people need the document, add a Second tag and then a Third tag. Each appears once the one before it is set.
3. 3To change a tag, click it and choose another. To remove one, click the small cross beside it.

At the moment, clicking Primary tag, Second tag or Third tag on this form also submits it. If the title and content are both filled in when you click, the document is created straight away, without the tag you were about to choose. To avoid this, choose your tags before you type the title, or create the document first and tag it on the Files tab. If you pick tags before the title, Please enter a title appears as you click; that is expected, and it goes once you type one.

Tags chosen here are added a moment after the document is created. Check that the new row on the Files tab shows them, and add any that are missing there. The list only offers tags you have been given, and parent tags never appear, because they group other tags rather than hold documents. Which tags exist, and who can use each one, is set up in Settings: see Control who sees what with tags.

1. 1If you want a copy on your computer as well, tick Download a copy. Your browser saves the document as an .html file with the same name, which opens in any web browser.
2. 2Click Create Document. The Uploading Files panel opens in the bottom right corner and shows a green tick when the document is in Train.
3. 3When Document created successfully appears at the top of the screen, the form clears, ready for the next document.
4. 4Open the Files tab. The new document is at the top of All uploaded documents, which lists the newest first.

On Files, the document shows the plain document icon, its title with .html on the end, its size, when it was created and who created it. To list every document made on this tab, choose Filter, then Document Type, then Generic Document. That filter also includes other file types that have no icon of their own, such as Markdown files.

If the document would take your organisation over its storage limit, it is not created. The Uploading Files panel shows it with a red cross, a message says Failed to create document, and everything you typed stays in the form, so you can free up space and try again.

Once it is created, a Text / Audio document behaves like any uploaded file. On the Files tab you can rename it by clicking its name, change or remove its tags, add it to a folder, and delete it with the bin at the end of its row. When you rename it, there is no need to type .html, because Train keeps the extension for you.

Train cannot open a document for you to change its text. To update the notes, create a new document with the corrected text, tag it, and then delete the old one so that Centrus does not answer from both. Deleting cannot be undone, and Centrus stops using the document straight away. If you expect to revise a document, tick Download a copy when you create it, or keep the text somewhere you can copy it from.

Centrus answers by finding the passages that match a question, so notes work best when each document covers one subject and says plainly what it is about.

• Name things in full. Write the site, the equipment and the people by name in the text itself, rather than relying on the title. A passage that only says the panel could be about any site.
• Keep to one subject. A separate document for each site or procedure is easier to tag for the right people, and easier to replace when something changes.
• Date anything that changes, such as contacts or opening hours, so it is clear how current the information is.
• Leave out secrets. Anyone who can use the tag in chat can get answers from the document, so keep passwords, alarm codes and personal details out of it, and say where to find them instead.

Text / Audio documents count towards your organisation's storage limit like every other document in Train: once at their size, plus once more for each extra tag. They are small, because a page of typed notes is usually only a few kilobytes, so they rarely make much difference.

The Sources bar at the foot of this tab shows how much storage is in use, the limit, and the percentage used. It turns red at 90 per cent. Before saving a document, Centrus checks that it fits in what is left. If it does not, delete files you no longer need, remove tags you can do without, or ask an admin about extra storage. See Add-ons.