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Synology, AI and self-hosting 6 min read

AI in Synology Office with Synology AI Console

Writing, summarising, proofreading and translating in Synology Document, and getting formulas and analyses in Synology Spreadsheet once AI Console is configured.

Synology keeps bringing AI into its ecosystem and has now added it to Synology Office. That requires the new Synology AI Console tool. Here is how it works.

What Synology AI Console is, and which AI services it can work with, is covered in the package overview; how it behaves on the mail side is covered in the guide about AI in Synology MailPlus. This article focuses on Synology Office.

To use AI in Synology Office you need version 3.7 or later. At the time of writing, those versions are still in beta. You then need to install Synology AI Console. Everything installs straight from Package Center, without any particular difficulty.

Synology Document

Synology Document is the equivalent of a classic word processor: you work on text. The AI assistant can compose a new document from your prompt. You can even ask it to respect a given length. It can also analyse a document and produce either a short summary or a detailed synthesis. It can check spelling and translate into another language — that last function is clearly useful to me.

The AI Assistant panel open on a blank Synology Office document
On opening, the assistant offers four standard prompts: write, structure, suggest, list.
A document written by the AI assistant in Synology Office
From a one-line prompt, the assistant produces structured text and inserts it into the document.
A three to five sentence summary of a document by the AI assistant
A summary comes out of a calibrated prompt: number of sentences, angle, level of detail.
Five key conclusions extracted from a contract by the AI assistant
On a contract, the assistant extracts the main commitments as a numbered list.
Five key conclusions extracted from an anonymised contract in Synology Office
The assistant can also extract the essential obligations of a contract whose sensitive data stays masked.

Synology Spreadsheet

Synology Spreadsheet is the equivalent of a spreadsheet application. Here I did not quite grasp how the interaction unfolds, but you can apparently ask it to compose a formula and state which cells take part. That is interesting, but a little harder to get used to. Perhaps that is only my impression.

The AI assistant suggesting formula examples in Synology Spreadsheet
In the spreadsheet, the assistant suggests formula examples and explains the ones already in place.
A methodological answer from the AI assistant on a cost comparison table
Asked about a cost comparison, the assistant describes the method rather than filling the cells for you.

And presentations

For presentations, the AI is limited, as far as I know, to translating or answering in text about how to proceed. That is fine, but one would like more. Other functions may appear in the future; no information about that is available for now.

The update noticeably widens what Synology Office can do thanks to AI. AI Console gives administrators control over the AI resources, which keeps the whole thing secure and transparent.

References

About the author

Jeremy Kraft runs the infrastructure and the self-hosted services of the IBCSC. These guides describe configurations that were actually deployed and re-checked before publication.

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