Creating Templates, Instructions, and Assistants

You may also see Amplify Helpers on your side menu, these are prompt templates and custom instructions that the Amplify GenAI Development team has deemed “helpful” to Amplify GenAI users.

Prompt Templates

Prompt Templates are designed to streamline the process of using the same prompt or sharing a prompt with slight differences. A prompt template is a prompt with placeholders. You can select a prompt template, fill in the placeholders and run the prompt with the model of your choice. This is a great tool if you create a detailed prompt that you plan to use to complete a similar task more than once that may be focused on different content.

(Vanderbilt documentation)

1. Click the “+Prompt Template” button in the top right-hand sidebar to create your custom instructions
2. Complete the required fields: Name, Description, and Prompt.
   1. Name: Provide the name of the prompt template that you want to be displayed in the right-hand sidebar
   2. Description: Provide a brief description of your prompt template
   3. Custom Instructions: From the Dropdown bar, select either the default instructions or a specific set of Custom Instructions
      1. Custom Instructions create rules structuring Amplify’s response that will be used and reinforced throughout the entire conversation
      2. In contrast, information thay ou include in the prompt section will be used only once (unless you reuse the prompt within a conversation)
   4. Prompt: Provide the prompt that you want to reuse, denoting variables with {{Variable}}
      1. For example, “You are an expert in {{Subject of expertise}}.”
      2. Another example is the variable {{Source file:file}} , which allows you to include a file upload as part of your prompt.
3. Once your prompt template is created, any variables you define will appear as places to input information or upload files.

Note: Prompt Template will automatically be selected. To create a prompt template, you do not need to change the template type.

4. When you’re happy with your prompt template, click Save at the very bottom.

Custom Instructions

Custom Instructions in Amplify are basically a set of rules at the start of a conversation designed to prime the AI tool to get a more focused and desired response. These instructions can include details about desired tone, style, or content, allowing you to customize the language model's responses to better suit their individual requirements. Examples of custom instructions could be ones focused on turning data into a visualization or taking detailed text and reformatting it into a PowerPoint presentation.  

(Vanderbilt Documentation)

1. Click the “+ Prompt Template” button in the top right-hnad sidebar to create your custom instructions.
2. In the pop-up window, scroll to the bottom and select Custom Instructions as the Template type
3. Once you select the custom instructions option, the required fields abovet he template type will change
4. Complete the required fields
   1. Name: Provide a name for your custom instructions
   2. Description: Provide a brief description of your custom instructions
   3. Prompt: Add a prompt for your custom instructions

Note: given the nature of custom instructions, write your prompt as a set of instructions that will apply at the beginning of any message sent in a conversation where your custom instructions are applied.

5. Once you have everything entered, review your custom instructions, then click save

Assistants

Assistants are Conversation “overlays” that can be used to add data sources automatically to a pool of resources for the model to interact with. They can automate repetitive tasks, generate specifically formatted content like articles summaries or code, and assist with research analysis and decision-making.

1. Click the “+ Assistant” button in the top right-side navigation menu.
2. Enter the required information:
   1. Name: Provide a name for your assistant
   2. Description: provide a brief description of what the assistant will do. This helps keep track of different assistants.
   3. Instructions: Customize the response types, or specifically formatting prompts to start with
      1. Example: You are a customer service bot. Respond with processional and clear answers
   4. Optional:
      1. Disclaimer to Append to Responses: allows you to add a note or predefined disclaimer to every response the assistant generates.
         1. Example: "AI-generated responses may not always be 100% accurate. Please cross-check information before relying on it."
3. Add Data Sources to connect knowledge sources your assistant should reference when responding to users.
   1. Document Types you can upload:
      1. Comma-Separated Values (.csv) 
      2. Compressed file (.zip) 
      3. Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx)  
      4. Hypertext Markup Language - HTML (.html) 
      5. JavaScript (.js) 
      6. JSON format (.json)  
      7. Markdown (.md) 
      8. Plain text (.txt)  
      9. Portable Document Format (.pdf) 
      10. PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx) 
      11. Python format (.py) 
      12. Word documents (.docx)  
4. In advanced settings you can
   1. Select Data Source Options
   2. Message Options
   3. Feature options
   4. Set Tags
   5. Set conversation tags for easy searching by the user later on.