Annotate: point at anything and ask Dexter
Open a report in Files, click Annotate in the sidebar (or press A), and click the figure you want to ask about. Hold Option (Alt on Windows) to take the whole block of text, or drag across a passage, then type your question and choose Send now or Add comment.Each comment leaves a numbered marker, and Send all gives Dexter every comment in one message, each tied to the exact passage it is about, so you no longer have to describe where something is. Comments can span pages, and Annotate works across ProDex:Apps
Click any part of an app. When you pick a row in a list, Dexter knows which row it was, even when two rows read the same.
CAD models
Hover a face and it lights up on the model. Hold Alt to take the whole part, then click to ask.
Data and files
Point at a dataset cell, a column header, a whole dataset or a file. Dexter gets the exact row, column or file path.
Models, pipelines and more
Modeler nodes, traced values, pipeline steps, data checks and status marks, BOM entities and components, knowledge base entries and charts.
Dexter can send email
Ask Dexter to email you a summary when it finishes, or have a scheduled task email you its report every Monday, and it arrives in your inbox from Dexter’s own address. By default Dexter emails only you; to let it email teammates, add them in Settings under Email from Dexter, by address or by your company’s domain. Dexter never emails anyone outside your team, and team admins can see who each member has added.Email from Dexter is being turned on one organization at a time. Ask your ProDex contact to enable it for your team.
Retired features and what to use instead
- Experiments and Monte Carlo. The Experiments page, its compare view and Monte Carlo replication are gone. Ask Dexter to compare scenarios as variants of your saved model on as many seeds as you want, or start from the Scenario scoreboard or Scenario brief template.
- The Results page. A run’s replay, summary and event log stay in the Modeler, and old Results links open the run there. For a results dashboard, start from the Simulation results template.
- Snapshots. Save current work as snapshot and the snapshots menu are gone from the Modeler. Ask Dexter to run a variant to try different values, or to copy the model for a structural change.
- Data Insights. The Insights pages and the Generate an insight button are gone. Start from the Data insights template or ask Dexter for an app.
- Projects. The Projects pages, the project folders and the project mode are gone, and your conversations stay. Save a procedure you repeat as a workflow, or set a goal for work with a clear finish line.
- Undo and redo in the Modeler. Cmd+Z (Ctrl+Z) no longer undoes model edits, because the history could overwrite newer edits made by Dexter or another tab. Every edit still saves immediately.
- Factory version history. The Version history entry in factory settings is gone. To keep a copy of a factory as it is today, export it.
- Ask Dexter about this and chart Explain. These menu items and the ? button on chart cards are gone, so use Annotate instead. Selecting text in one of Dexter’s replies now offers Quote, which quotes it into your message.
Smaller improvements
- The Dexter message box shows bullets, numbered lists, headings, bold and links as you type, and pasting from a document keeps its structure.
- Pasting a very long block of text into the message box attaches it as a text file, so it no longer runs into the message length limit.
- Apps built on older components show Ask Dexter to rebuild, and Dexter rebuilds the app, checks it in a preview and publishes the new version.
- Tables inside apps have column filters and pinned columns.
- The PDF viewer shows which page you are on (“Page 3 of 12”) and has a rotate button for sideways scans and landscape tables.
Introducing Pipelines
Some data arrives again and again: a weekly MES export, a monthly stock report, a nightly pull from your ERP. Pipelines let Dexter prepare it the same way every time. Describe what comes in and what should come out, and Dexter writes the steps, tests them on your data and walks you through the result. From then on the pipeline runs by itself, whenever you press Run or on a schedule.Pipelines live on the Pipelines tab of the Data page. Ask Dexter to build one, or click Create pipeline.Runs on its own
Press Run and the steps run one after another, without Dexter, or right-click a step and choose Run from here. Click Schedule and say when it should run.
Every stage is a versioned table
Each table a step produces is saved in Datasets, with a new version whenever a run changes it. Inputs, in-between tables and final outputs are marked bronze, silver and gold.
Checks that catch bad data
Checks flag rows that are wrong, such as negative stock, and either warn or stop the run. Click a failing check to jump straight to the rows that fail it.
Fix with Dexter
When a run fails, Fix with Dexter opens a conversation where Dexter works on the failure. When a run succeeds but some checks fail, Investigate hands those checks to Dexter.
Faster simulation runs
Simulations now run on a new engine that finishes runs faster, so results come back sooner and Dexter can try more model changes in the same time. If a run cannot use the new engine, it falls back to the previous one on its own. A run started without a seed now uses seed 1, so running an unchanged model twice gives the same answer.Swarms of agents in Ultra mode
In Ultra mode, Dexter can now start a swarm: many agents working on parts of one job at the same time. A swarm shows as a card in the conversation with how many agents are working and how many are done, and you can open it to follow its phases and read the result. Swarms also have their own section in the side panel, next to Agents and the Workboard.Right-click menus across ProDex
Right-click almost anything for its actions, from conversations and Data page files to chart and KPI cards, Modeler and BOM nodes, apps and pipeline steps. The same list sits behind a ⋯ button when you hover, and on a touch screen you press and hold. In the Modeler, node actions have moved from the floating toolbar into the right-click menu.Share dialogs take email addresses
The share dialogs now take email addresses instead of a list of everyone in your organization, and anything that is not an email turns red. After you send, ProDex lists anyone it could not invite and why, and keeps those addresses in the field so you can fix them. Invites you have already sent are listed underneath, with Cancel on the pending ones.Smaller improvements
- In the Modeler, the schedule picker now offers every schedule in the factory, so you can run any model with any schedule.
- Gantt charts open framed on their work, and hovering a bar shows its start, end, duration and description.
- A new Shop schedule app template lays out your open work orders by work center and tells you whether a new order fits or how late it would ship.
- You can download, move or delete a whole selection of files on the Data page at once.
- The CAD viewer has a new Explode slider next to Section that pulls an assembly apart so you can see how it fits together.
- STEP assemblies with up to 512 parts now preview in the CAD viewer.
Introducing Dexter Apps
Dexter can now build you a working page, not just an answer. Describe what you need, such as a what-if calculator, a board for recording decisions, or a view of which orders will ship late and why, and Dexter builds it and publishes it to your factory. Everyone who opens it works from the same live data.Open the new Apps page in the left navigation and click New app to describe a page or start from a template that runs on sample data. To change an app, click Annotate, comment on any part of the page and send the comments to Dexter.
Data insights
Yield by line over time, with every day that left the ±2σ band flagged.
Project plan
A new line’s installation, from capex approval to first parts.
Sensitivity analysis
Can the line absorb more demand, and which lever matters most?
Scenario scoreboard
Four capacity options scored on every KPI, and where the bottleneck moves.
Since October 18, apps and app templates also take over the jobs of several older pages, including Experiments, the Results page and Data Insights. The October 18 entry lists what moved and what to use instead.
Settings open in a two-pane window
Your settings now open in a two-pane window instead of a menu. Pick General, Voice dictation or Account on the left and change language, theme and desktop notifications on the right. Help (onboarding replay, page tours, feedback and documentation) has moved into the user menu.Share one simulation model without sharing the factory
Choose Share… from a model’s menu in the Modeler, pick the people, and send. They choose which of their factories to save it to, and the model arrives with its entities, lookup tables, constants and nested models, but not its run history. Nothing in their factory is overwritten: a model or entity with the same name arrives alongside it with a “-2” suffix.Smaller improvements
- Sharing a whole factory opens on who you are sending to and Send, with the full list of categories folded behind Choose what to share.
- Word reports from Dexter use the same branded design as its PDF and PowerPoint reports and stay editable in Word.
- Each conversation in the Dexter sidebar shows a spinner while Dexter is working and a blue dot when a finished reply is waiting for you.
- You can upload SQL, YAML, TSV, XML, TOML, INI, log and Python files as plain text, in chat, on the Files page and in apps.
Introducing Goal mode
Goal mode lets you hand Dexter a job with a clear finish line and have it keep going until the job is actually done, rather than stopping after each turn. Choose Goal from the + menu, or tell Dexter you want to set one. Dexter asks what it needs up front, then proposes the outcome, the criteria for “done” and the constraints for your approval.Once approved, Dexter works on its own without stopping to ask questions, and lists every decision it made in its report. A separate checker reviews each criterion against the evidence before the goal counts as finished, and if Dexter needs something only you can supply, the goal is marked blocked and tells you why. Click the goal pill in the composer to pause, resume or cancel.Scheduled tasks
Describe what you want and when, in plain language (“every weekday at 5am, run the simulation and generate a PDF of the results”), and Dexter confirms the schedule with you before creating a task that repeats or fires once, in your timezone. Each run is an ordinary Dexter conversation saved to your history. The Scheduled page in the Dexter sidebar lists every task in the factory with Run now, Pause, Resume, Edit and Delete and its recent runs, and a custom workflow can be put on a schedule from its own page.Machine breakdowns and shift calendars
Give a resource failure modes, with how often it fails (in calendar time, working time or completed jobs) and how long a repair takes, or just a station’s availability and repair time. Give it a calendar of shift windows that repeat daily or weekly and change capacity, and choose whether the job in hand pauses, finishes first, or finishes while the repair runs. Set both in the Modeler’s resource panel or ask Dexter, and Results now separate time down for repair from time off shift and report realized availability.Share a single file
You no longer have to share a whole factory to hand someone one report: every report and upload in the Data Hub has Share… in its menu, and the file’s own page has a Share button next to Download. The recipient picks which of their factories to save it to, or creates a new one. Shared files land beside what is already there and never overwrite anything.Reply thumbs and suggested follow-ups removed from chat
The thumbs up and down under replies have been replaced by an occasional check-in card above the composer. The three suggested follow-up replies under each answer are gone, so type your next message in the composer instead.Smaller improvements
- Messages you send while Dexter is working keep their attachments, and Send now delivers a queued message straight away instead of waiting for the next pause.
- Ask Dexter how something in ProDex works and it answers from the rebuilt help docs, now also in Spanish, and links the page it relied on.
Introducing voice dictation
A microphone sits to the right of Send, in the main composer and in a helper’s panel. Tap it to start and stop, or switch to push-to-talk in the user menu. What you said lands in your draft so you can edit it, and nothing is sent until you press Send.You can also double-press Right ⌘ (Right Ctrl on Windows and Linux) to start or stop, or hold it down to talk. Transcription knows the names in your factory, so stations and part numbers come out spelled the way you spell them.Message helper agents directly, and a shared Workboard in Ultra mode
A helper working in the background now has its own message box, so what you type goes straight to that helper instead of through Dexter, and one that has gone quiet starts working again when you message it. When helpers message each other, a collapsed row in your main conversation shows the exchange, and when your instructions and Dexter’s disagree, yours win. In Ultra mode, Dexter and its helpers plan from one shared Workboard in the side panel next to Agents, which lists every task with who claimed and finished it and a coloured circle for its status.Dexter reports back when long work finishes
When a long simulation or background job finishes, Dexter reports the result in the conversation that started it, even if you left that conversation idle in the meantime. If you have moved to a different chat, the one that finished lights a blue dot in the sidebar. The dot follows you across reloads and devices, and it clears once you open the conversation.Simulation: held resources, interchangeable pools and repeating schedules
A process can now hold on to a resource, such as a bench, through setup, test and unload, draw from any of several resource pools for cross-trained operators, or pass its freed resources straight to the step that should take them next. Model settings let you choose whether a request that can be filled right away may skip ahead of blocked work, and scheduled actions and material releases can repeat on an interval from a new Repeats column in the schedule editor. Existing models run exactly as before, and Dexter can set all of these up for you.Smaller improvements
- Click a file you attached in chat, or a report or file Dexter names in its answer, to open its preview.
- Multipage TIFF scans open with page-by-page navigation, and SVG files open as images.
- Closing the tab or reloading halfway through an upload no longer loses the upload.
- A turn that fails offers Retry, which asks Dexter to pick up where it stopped.
- Dexter’s PDF reports, slide decks, Word and Excel files and report charts use your brand kit’s layout, fonts and colours.
- The share dialog has a What to share picker, so you can leave out conversations, Gantt documents or individual models.
A 3D viewer for native CAD files
STEP, STP, STL and flat DXF files now open in Files as shaded 3D geometry. Hide or isolate parts in the assembly tree, slide a section plane through an assembly, and measure between two faces.BOMs in every factory
BOMs are now available in every factory with no setup, and Dexter can create, edit and explode them for you. Use the Graph view to drill from a finished good down to its raw materials, and the Used in list to see everything a component feeds.Quote passages of Dexter’s replies and comment on each
Select a passage in one of Dexter’s replies and click Annotate to quote it in your message, then add your comment underneath. Repeat for each passage, so one message answers all of Dexter’s questions or corrects all of its assumptions at once.Smaller improvements
- Messages keep the time they were actually sent, and older messages with no recorded time show no time instead of the current one.
- ProDex has a new logo and wordmark.
- A file preview has Download in its header.
- Large Excel exports of results reach you noticeably sooner.
Bring your Power BI files to Dexter
You can now attach a Power BI Desktop file (.pbix) to a Dexter conversation, or upload it to Files, and Dexter will work with what is inside. Dexter reads the data model saved in the file, including tables, relationships, DAX measures and Power Query steps, and the report itself, page by page and visual by visual, so you can ask what a dashboard is showing and where each number comes from.Add teammates beyond your licensed seats
Your licensed seat count no longer caps how many people can join your organization. Team admins can add members, and new single sign-on users can get in, even when you are already at the count. Seats still size your credit pool and appear on your statement as before.Smaller improvements
- Language, light or dark theme, and desktop notifications are now saved to your account, so they apply on any browser and in any factory.
- When a saved KPI or chart was not computed for a run, the Results page now names each one, and one click hands the list to Dexter to fix and compute them.
- Bar charts in the reports Dexter writes can now show negative values, so margins, variances and cost deltas draw below a zero line.
- Every Modeler canvas button now has a tooltip, including the auto-organize wand, which lays out the whole model in one click.
- Factory exports and downloads now keep their full names, including dashes and accented letters.
Introducing Response Modes
Response modes let you choose how Dexter balances speed and effort for every message. Pick the pace that fits the work, from a quick answer to a deeply checked solution, and switch modes whenever the job changes.Turbo
Get straight to it. For quick answers and momentum. Dexter makes sensible assumptions and gets right to work.
Fast
Move quickly, stay sharp. Your everyday pace. Dexter works fast, pausing only for the questions that truly matter.
Max
Dig into the details. For complex work where correctness matters. Dexter clarifies assumptions, plans the work, and brings in extra agents when useful.
Ultra
Leave nothing unchecked. For your highest-stakes problems. Dexter applies maximum rigor and independently verifies consequential claims before answering.
Share a factory, share the conversation
When a colleague accepts a factory you shared, they now get its Dexter conversations with it: the full transcript, the files attached along the way, and Dexter’s own memory of the thread. They can reply to a conversation they inherited and Dexter picks up where it left off, with all the context you built up.Accepting is instant now. The factory appears straight away and fills in behind a banner instead of making you wait on a loading screen.Working-time calendars in the Gantt
A schedule can now know when your plant is actually open. Give a document, or a single row inside it, a calendar with weekly working patterns and dated exceptions for holidays and shutdowns. Non-working time is shaded on the timeline, so the gaps in a schedule explain themselves.Dependencies that hold work together
Drag from the connector on one bar to another to link them. A dependency can do more than put two items in order:Minimum lag
Force a wait between two items. Curing, cooling and transport time stay respected however you move the work around.
Maximum lag
Cap how far apart two items can drift. If an edit would push the second one too late, ProDex tells you instead of accepting it.
Planning results you can read at a glance
Planning results have been rebuilt around the questions people actually ask:- An inventory adherence heatmap that accounts for what your BOMs consume and when orders are actually due
- Resource utilization measured against real capacity rather than a flat assumption
- An order fulfillment Gantt, which you can flip into a by-resource view to see the same plan from the shop floor’s side
- Filtering by the resource kinds you authored, so a big plan narrows to the part you own
Find out why a plan could not be solved
A plan that cannot be solved no longer just says “infeasible” and leaves you guessing. ProDex re-solves it while relaxing one family of rules at a time, narrows in on the specific constraint, resource or order that is blocking, and names it.Finished runs also report the solver’s own numbers: the objective value it reached, how far from optimal it stopped, and why it stopped there.Chat folders, and exports that carry conversations
Conversations file into folders you create, so a long-running factory stays navigable. Factory exports can now include your Dexter conversations as an opt-in, alongside projects, Gantt documents, model explanations and the knowledge base.Dexter Preferences
Tell Dexter how you like to work once, and every new conversation in your factory starts that way.Set the things you find yourself repeating: how much detail you want back, the units you work in, how much Dexter should check with you before it acts. Preferences apply across the whole factory, so you stop re-explaining yourself at the top of every chat.Helper agents you can watch and steer
When Dexter brings in a helper agent for a piece of work, it shows up as a named card in your conversation. Open it to follow that agent’s own thread, see what it is doing, and send it a note mid-run if it needs pointing somewhere else.Send a message any time
You no longer have to wait for Dexter to finish before you can type. Send whenever you like: your message queues visibly and gets picked up at the next safe moment, so nothing is lost and nothing is interrupted halfway.Sends and half-written drafts survive a page reload, a closed tab, or a connection that drops.Rows that cannot double-book
Every Gantt row now declares whether its work is allowed to overlap. Mark a machine that can only do one job at a time as exclusive, and the timeline flags it the moment two items collide. There is also a new table view for reading a schedule as rows and dates rather than bars.Validation that tells you everything
When a model fails validation you now get the complete list of what is wrong. Long lists used to be cut off with “and 4 more”, which meant fixing one problem only to discover the next. You can also hand the whole list to Dexter in a single click and ask it to work through them.The Gantt workspace
A new place to build schedules directly, rather than only reading one that came out of a planning run.Each factory gets a library of Gantt documents. Inside one, you author the timeline yourself: rows holding items across their planned interval, items split into segments you can move independently, milestones, colours and dependencies. Drag a bar to move it, drag its edge to resize, drag a row to reorder.Start from one of three shapes:Blank
An empty timeline for when you know exactly what you want to lay out.
Project plan
Phases and milestones, for planning a piece of work end to end.
Resource schedule
One row per machine, line or team, for loading real capacity.
Uploads up to 2 GB, and they resume
Files now travel straight from your browser to storage, in parallel, with a progress bar that actually moves. The size limit is 2 GB per file.If an upload fails partway, Retry reuses the parts that already made it across instead of starting the whole file again. Re-uploading a revised file now lands as a new version of it, rather than silently overwriting what was there.A real file manager
The file browser grew up. Nested folders for uploads and reports, moving files by menu or by dragging them, and desktop-style selection with Shift and Cmd for picking out a range.Bulk Move, Download and Delete apply to whatever you selected. Download any selection, or an entire folder including everything nested inside it, as a single ZIP.Usage and spend for team admins
Team admins get a Usage section showing where the organization’s credits are going: pooled allocation, a per-member table of conversations and credits used, licensed seat and overage charges, and a CSV export for taking the numbers elsewhere. Each admin sets their own warning thresholds.The Usage section applies to organizations on a usage-based contract.
Explain this chart
Every chart and KPI card has a ? button. Press it and a written explanation of what you are looking at streams into a popover: what the chart is measuring, and what the shape of it means. It does not touch your main conversation, so you can ask about a chart without derailing what you were working on.Experiments now run every scenario many times
A single simulation run is one roll of the dice. Comparing two scenarios on one run each tells you very little about which is genuinely better.Experiments now run each scenario up to 1,024 times with different random seeds, and report mean, median, a 95% confidence interval, and min/max for every one. You can finally see whether two scenarios are meaningfully different or just noisy. Monte Carlo now lives on the results page alongside the rest of your analysis.Model explanations on the canvas
Dexter’s written explanation of what a model represents now sits as a pill on the canvas itself, instead of being buried in a conversation you had last week. Node names inside it are clickable and focus the canvas behind the explanation.If you have edited the model since the explanation was written, it says so, so you are never reading a description of a model you no longer have.Enterprise sign-in options
Two new ways for organizations to handle sign-in:- Magic link sign-in, so people get in from an emailed link with no password to manage
- Trusted header mode, which lets a customer-hosted deployment sit behind your own identity provider with no separate registration at all
Custom workflows
The procedures you repeat can now be captured as workflows that persist across conversations, instead of being re-explained to Dexter every time. Correct one once and the correction sticks.The builder gives you templates to start from, a stepper for walking through the shape of a workflow, a graph view for seeing how it fits together, and a schedule editor for workflows that should just run on their own.Reports you can hand to someone
Dexter’s reports are real deliverables now: PDFs, PowerPoint decks, Word documents and Excel workbooks. PDFs and decks render through a shared design system, so a report you produce in March and one you produce in September still look like they came from the same company. Word and Excel outputs are clean, editable copies rather than branded ones.Report folders keep the library organized as it grows.Excel recalculation and macros
Dexter can open a workbook, read its formulas and macros, recalculate it, and run a macro for you. It checks the result against a known-good copy before handing it back.Your uploaded file is never modified. You always get a new copy.Planning constraints in plain language
Some rules do not fit a standard planning form: a minimum lot size, a cap on how many distinct products run in one interval, a minimum run length, two products that must never be made at once.Describe the rule to Dexter in ordinary English and it becomes a real constraint the optimizer solves against. If a rule genuinely cannot be expressed, you find out immediately rather than after a long run.Service status, visible in the product
If ProDex is degraded, a banner now tells you so, with detail on what is affected. A slowdown is explained by the product rather than discovered through a click that will not complete. During planned maintenance, a maintenance mode can hold non-admin users out until the work is done.Dark mode
Search everything
Press Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) anywhere for one search across the whole product: models and the individual nodes inside them, files, insights, reports, knowledge base documents, and your Dexter conversations right down to the text of single messages. Matches come back with the surrounding snippet highlighted, so you can tell which result you want before opening it.The evidence behind every number
Any number a model produces can now show you where it came from. An Evidence panel sits collapsed as a row of badges, marking each input as assumed, stated or data, and expands into a full ledger of what fed the result.Click a segment of the badge row and the canvas dims to just the nodes it refers to, so “which part of the model does this rest on?” becomes something you can see rather than something you have to trace. Evidence survives a snapshot restore and travels with a factory export.Runs that tell you what they changed
Simulation engines quietly fix things: a value out of range gets clamped, a missing setting gets a default, a number arrives as the wrong type and gets coerced. Those adjustments used to be invisible, which made a surprising result hard to explain.Every one of them is now recorded and surfaced three ways: as a toast while the run is going, as rows in the event log placed at the simulation time they happened, and as a table you can query afterwards. A model that runs away now stops with a real diagnostic instead of disappearing.Seeded runs you can reproduce exactly
Single runs now accept a random seed. The same seed gives the same trajectory every time, so you can replay an anomaly exactly as it happened, or compare two configurations knowing the difference between them is your change and not a fresh roll of the dice.Preview Excel, Word and PowerPoint
Every file has its own full-screen page with a real link, so you can send someone a URL that opens the file rather than telling them where to look for it.Preview now covers Excel workbooks with a sheet switcher, plus Word and PowerPoint. That matters most for Dexter’s own reports, which used to be download-only.Planning that models how you really produce
A significant step up in what the planner can represent:- Routes, so the same product can be made several ways, and the plan tells you which route made each quantity
- Fractional recipe quantities, for when a component is not consumed in whole units
- Production lead time, so a plan respects how long making something actually takes
- Per-interval resource profiles, for capacity that changes week to week
- Work already in progress, declared with an availability offset so a plan starts from where you really are