An SOP assistant with no server
An interior design and build group in Singapore, 120 people, where every project passes from sales through design, quotation, site, procurement and finance.
/work/living-sopsCame in new build
- System
- SOP portal and an assistant inside Microsoft Teams
- Ask
- Every procedure written, kept current and answerable where staff work
- Region
- Singapore
The piece A rotary file of 103 cards in eight departments, turning on one hot axle: the assistant that reads them all.
- 103SOPsone markdown file each
- 4outputsfrom every file
- 770phrasingsre-tested before the fix went live
- No serverthe assistant runs in the browser
The ask
A complete set of SOPs, strict enough to enforce, reachable where staff already work and correct after every change.
The real problem
The group worked in Teams but had no Copilot licence, wanted no paid plan and wanted its procedures kept in its tenant.
Staff ask in their own words, so the assistant had to find the right section from a question sharing almost none of them.
Where a question lands
- Idle
- Live
- Strain
- Fail
Before the fix"Who approves office budget" missed the purchasing SOP's triggers and fell to the full-text index, where an office-tour entry outscored the SOP.
After the fixStaff phrasings and word stems catch the question. A guard ranks the hand-written SOP answer above a link.
What we built
We built the portal on a plain static host. Each SOP is one markdown file in the same twelve sections and three build scripts turn the set into the portal, the Word copies and the assistant's FAQ pack.
The assistant quotes the section with a link to the full SOP. It retrieves and never generates, so nothing leaves the tenant. Uploading the changed files is the refresh.
How we made it hold
On 22 July, "who approves office budget" came back with the office-tour card. We added staff phrasings, stemming and a ranking guard. The fix went live that day.
Backstage The decisions behind the build, and the hardest problem
Decisions
One markdown file per SOP, three builders.
The portal page, the Word copy and the assistant's answers all come from the same file, so one edit changes every copy.
An assistant that retrieves and quotes.
With no generative model there is no licence, no cost per question and nothing leaving the tenant.
Fix the cause, then sweep everything.
Staff phrasings, stemming and a ranking guard, then all 770 triggers re-run before the push.
Ruled out
Copilot Studio as the engine.
The group had no Copilot licence and wanted no paid plan.
The hardest problem
Questions that share almost no words with their answer. The purchasing SOP was missed because staff said "approves" and "office budget" and the SOP said neither. Staff phrasings, word stems and a ranking guard closed the gap.
The difference
- 103 SOPs live across eight departments, every one in the same twelve sections.
- A Teams assistant that recognises 770 phrasings and links every answer to its SOP.
- Change an SOP once and the portal, Word copy, PDF and Teams answer follow.
