Oxygen AI Positron Assistant Add-on

31 May 2024

Read time: 10 minute(s)

The Oxygen AI Positron Assistant add-on provides support for helping technical documentation writers generate, re-write content, overview and research. It also supports performing AI checks and AI-based modifications on multiple files by integrating AI extensions with XML technologies like Schematron or XSLT.

This article is intended to be a general overview of the Oxygen AI Positron Assistant add-on installation, licensing, and functionality.

We've envisioned this add-on as a way to offer you a personal assistant that contains useful actions for checking content (readability, grammar), translating, explaining, and creating overviews.

Installation and Licensing Overview

Oxygen desktop allows installing two flavors of the add-on:
- AI Positron Assistant add-on.
  
  This add-on works through a subscription-based model using the Oxygen Positron Service platform, which in turn uses the OpenAI API and functionality.
  
  Users can create new subscription accounts or authenticate using their existing Google or Github accounts. The first subscription month is free and a monthly subscription can be purchased to receive a number of credits each month.
  
  You can control which AI engine is used by default for performing actions and for chatting. This can be done from the Preferences page.
- AI Positron Assistant Enterprise add-on.
  This add-on allows end users to connect to their own AI engine server. The following connection types are supported:
  - OpenAI - Connect to your own OpenAI server using your own key. Or connect to OpenAI-compatible servers like Ollama.
  - Microsoft Azure Open AI - Connect to an Open AI instance hosted as a virtual machine on Microsoft Azure.
  - Anthropic Claude - Connect to Anthropic Claude using your own key.
  From the licensing point of view, the AI Positron Assistant Enterprise add-on works free of charge with any Oxygen XML Editor installation using an Enterprise license type for Oxygen XML Editor. For other cases, a special license key needs to be purchased for the add-on to enable this direct access. You can use the Register button in the AI Positron Assistant side view to configure the special license key.
Oxygen XML Web Author also allows installing an AI Positron Assistant plugin with similar functionality as the one in the Oxygen Desktop application. Currently, the WebAuthor and Content Fusion online demo websites come with the AI Positron add-on pre-installed. In the near future, an AI Positron Assistant Enterprise plugin will allow using either a license server or a special Web Author license component to configure a custom AI engine.

Integration and Features Overview

After installing the add-on, the following features are available in the Oxygen desktop:

AI Positron Assistant side view. This side view contains the following functionality:
- Invoke various actions to generate and re-write content using AI.
- Chat with the AI.
- A History list of previous interactions.
- A Favorites drop-down list and a way to mark inputs as favorites.
- The Insert Editor Variables drop-down list allows inserting various editor variables which are expanded when the chat message is sent to the AI engine.
- An Attach button to attach images or XML text resources to the chat message.
AI main menu entry with support to invoke actions or to go to the add-on's preferences page.
AI Positron Assistant contextual menu for all XML documents opened in the Author visual editing mode.
AI Positron Assistant quick assist actions available on the left vertical stripe for all XML documents opened in the Author visual editing mode.
AI Positron Refactoring actions added to the Project and DITA Maps Manager views as a way to run actions on multiple files.
When validation problems are displayed in the Results pane, you can right-click on a problem and use the AI Positron Fix action to ask the AI Positron platform for help with fixing the problem. It will propose content in the chat pane (within the AI Positron Assistant view) that can be used to solve the problem.
The add-on contributes two XPath extension functions (ai:transform-content and ai:verify-content) that can be used to rephrase content or to perform validation checks on existing content.

Predefined and Custom Actions

Once you log in to the server, a set of predefined actions are available, grouped in categories: Accessibility, Content Generation, Development, Rewrite, Overview, Marketing, and Translation. The AI Positron Assistant Samples Playground samples project contains useful samples to test the functionality of these actions.

Custom actions can also be created and used. The same AI Positron Assistant Samples Playground contains some sample custom actions. Some usage examples can be found in the samples playground.

Visual Image Recognition (Vision)

The pre-defined Generate Documentation Draft and Update Content Based on Images actions allow using the AI to create or update content depending on existing images from your user's manual. You can also attach images in the Chat panel.

Batch Processing

The AI Positron Refactoring actions added to the Project and DITA Maps Manager views are a way to run actions on multiple files. For example, you could use the predefined Translate to action to translate multiple DITA topics into a certain language or apply the Correct Grammar or Improve Readability actions on multiple resources.

In addition, XML Refactoring actions based on XSLT or XQuery can use the XPath extension functions added by the add-on to perform batch changes in XML documents. Some examples can be found in the samples playground.

Small Clips Showcasing the Functionality

A list of small animated clips showcasing some interesting aspects of the functionality.

Generat a draft DITA XML topic from an image
Batch generating alternate text for DITA XML images
Generate a Mermaid diagram from a task
Add comments about grammar problems and then resolve them
Proof Read and Resolve Comments
Add Structured Content - Project based Retrieval Augmentation (RAG) (Oxygen 27 and newer)