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Autofill in Google Docs

(For Google Workspace Users)

Your teams spend significant time filling out responses to incoming RFP questionnaires and proactively sending out custom solution proposals. They have to craft content one section at a time, working through hundreds of questions or solutions to prospect requirements, often taking days before the first draft is ready for review.

SiftHub's Autofill for Google Docs cuts that time down to minutes by populating the first draft for entire documents simultaneously. Simply select all relevant questions or sections in the document, click Autofill, and watch as SiftHub automatically populates intelligent, contextual responses across your entire document in seconds. What used to take days can now be completed in a single batch operation.

 

Prerequisites to Autofill

To autofill a Google Document, ensure that the following requirements are met -

  • The SiftHub Browser Extension is installed and you are logged in with your SiftHub credentials.
  • Sufficient company knowledge is connected to SiftHub, since it will be used as a source for autofill. This can be in the form of uploaded Documents, Q&As or files from your connected apps such as Google Drive.
  • SiftHub has read and write access to the Google Doc which needs to be autofilled. The steps for the same are listed here.

  • The Google Doc you want to Autofill is hosted on your 'My Drive' (or move it to 'My Drive'). This is because your organization’s Shared Drives configuration may restrict users from providing external access to files in the Shared Drive.

    You can verify if the location of the Google Doc you want to Autofill is in your My Drive by clicking on “File” in the toolbar, clicking “Details” from the menu and checking the Location in the Document Details modal that pops up.

    Alternatively, if your organization has granted SiftHub's service account access to designated folders or Shared Drives (recommended), then you can Autofill the file at its original location directly.

  • For an Word Document (.docx file type) that you open from Google Drive, ensure to convert it to a Google Doc before continuing to Autofill selected cell(s) from the Floating Widget. You can do this by clicking on “File” in the Google Docs toolbar, and clicking “Save as Google Docs” from the menu.

 

How to Autofill a Google Doc questionnaire

When SiftHub detects that your cursor is active in a Google Doc, the Autofill icon is automatically displayed in the Floating Widget and the Projects tab in Browser Extension.

 

Steps to Autofill

1. Highlight the set of questions that you wish to Autofill.

  • You can highlight upto 50,000 characters (roughly 20 pages) of question text at a time.
  • SiftHub will auto-detect questions from the selection, while ignoring the rest of the text (such as sections, instructions, etc). So you can highlight the full text at once.

2. Click on Autofill icon in the Floating Widget or "Autofill" in the Project tab of the Browser Extension 


 

3. Grant access of the Doc to SiftHub, if not already done so. Here are the steps.

 

4. In the Autofill modal that opens up:

  • Select the Document Type you want to Autofill out of:
    Questionnaire: For responding to incoming prospect requirements such as RFPs, RFFIs, InfoSec or Product Evaluation questionnaires, and other due diligence documents.

    SiftHub will automatically detect headers, background context such as response guidelines or evaluation criteria to be factored into the response, as well as individual requirements and questions to be answered. SiftHub Autofills the document in Focused mode by default, creating concise, targeted responses that address the scope of the detected question or requirement from your connected Sources.

    Proposal: For customizing product descriptions and solutioning documents that can be shared with prospects in response to a Statement of Requirements or to bid for a contract.

    SiftHub will automatically detect section headers, background context such as placeholders, response guidelines or evaluation criteria to be factored into the response, as well as the most granular topics for which relevant information needs to be collated. SiftHub Autofills the document in Comprehensive mode by default, creating an elaborate rundown that encapsulates the key details of the detected topic by aggregating all relevant information from your connected Sources.
  • Keep the "Auto detect questions/topics" toggle on. This will allow SiftHub to detect and shortlist the questions or topics (from the sections, headers, instructions etc) and only respond to them. This will also allow SiftHub to read additional context from the neighbouring text (such as guidelines, comments, placeholders and any other criteria) that can help formulating a more contextual response.
  • Add instruction prompts to customize the formatting and content used for each Autofilled answer. These are similar to the Instruction Prompts used in 'Generate Answer' from the Browser Extension, except that they will apply to each answer that is autofilled in the activity.
  • Configure the Autofill Settings for your activity
  • Click Autofill.

5. SiftHub automatically detects all questions as well as neighbouring context from the document and for each question or topic identified from your highlighted text, the top answer option starts getting populated in a new line below the question.

  • Answers that fully address the question asked are autofilled with normal rich text formatting
  • For partial answers, the response is autofilled with a yellow text highlight color to inform users to check the answer.
  • Answers for which no information was found have a red text highlighted color to indicate that they need to fill a response there.

The answers are autofilled one at a time, and you can track the progress of the Autofill activity in the "Activity Center" in the Browser Extension. 

 

Review Autofill Answer

As the answers are being are Autofilled in the Doc, you can start reviewing them in the Copilot -> Answer tab of the Browser Extension. From here, you can verify its sources, view alternate answers and matched Q&As, modify answer, regenerate with instruction prompts and more.

 

 

To review the answer highlight any partial section of the autofilled answer text (or its corresponding question text) and click on "Review Autofill Answer" from the Floating Widget on your screen, placed at the bottom right by default. 

 

Ensure that you highlight some part of the question or response with the cursor, as you will see a "No answer associated with selection" message if you have simply placed the cursor within the text when clicking Review AI Answer from the Floating Widget.

After reviewing the answer and making the necessary modifications, you can copy it back into the same place.

Note: Review AI answer button and cell shortcut will always be visible in the Floating Widget within documents or spreadsheets where at least one Autofill run was previously triggered.

 

Autofill Settings

To configure the Autofill settings for your run, click on the Settings (Gear) icon next to the Autofill button in the modal -

Autofill settings are similar to Generate answer settings which allow the user to set the language of the Autofill run, or set the Generation Mode as:

  • Concise
  • Standard
  • Comprehensive

Changing an Generate Answer Settings in the Answer tab of the Browser Extension will not impact the Autofill Answer settings, and vice versa. However, once you have changed the Autofill settings for a specific document Autofill, it will remain applied for all subsequent Autofill runs in the same document, and will automatically reset when you try Autofill a new document.

Granting edit access of the Google Doc to SiftHub

SiftHub needs read and write access to the Google Doc it has to autofill to read its contents and edit it programmatically

Therefore, when an Autofill in Google Doc is triggered, a pre-modal is shown with steps to complete a one-time setup and provide the SiftHub email address with the required access.

Steps:

1. Copy the SiftHub email address from the modal to your clipboard and click “Share” in the top right corner of the Google Doc.



 

2. In the modal that pops up when you click “Share” within the Google Doc, paste the SiftHub service email address copied to your clipboard and provide it Editor access to the Doc

Note: Ensure to complete the access setup before you click “Continue” to avoid issues arising due to insufficient permissions granted for Autofilling the Doc.