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Morning meeting

The morning meeting is the most-repeated workflow in supply chain operations: a 15-minute standup at the start of the day where the team aligns on what changed overnight, what's at risk today, and what needs attention this week. Done badly, it's a slideshow built at 6am from stale exports. Done well, it's an interactive read of live data — Storyboard on the screen, Athena one question away, every team member walking out knowing what to do next.

This use case shows the well-done version: a Business Analyst stands up a Storyboard once, schedules it to themselves and the team, runs the meeting off it every morning, and lets AI Insights surface the items that need attention rather than hunting for them.

Cast​

RoleFeaturePersona
The hostStoryboards, AI AssistantBusiness Analyst
The signal-surfaceAI Insights(runs autonomously)
The audienceWhatever team meets — S&OP, ops, executive groupMultiple personas

Prereqs​

  • A configured subject area covering the data the team cares about (sales, inventory, fulfillment, finance — depends on team).
  • A Storyboard already built (Create a Storyboard) with the live charts the team uses.
  • A scheduled distribution: Storyboard sent to the team daily at the meeting time minus 5 minutes (so it's fresh when the meeting starts).

Walkthrough​

1. Pre-meeting (3 minutes before)​

The Storyboard arrives in everyone's inbox / Slack at 7:55am (configured per org). Athena's commentary on each card has already auto-generated overnight from the freshest data. The Business Analyst opens the Storyboard, scans Athena's commentary, and notes which items have flagged in AI Insights overnight.

2. Open the meeting with the headline​

The top card of the Storyboard is the punchline — "what's different today vs. yesterday?" The host reads Athena's commentary aloud, points to the chart, and the team is oriented in 30 seconds.

3. Drill into the items that need attention​

Each subsequent card covers one area (orders, inventory, suppliers, etc.). For anything where the chart raises a question, the host asks Athena directly from the card: "why did this drop?" or "which customers drove this?" Athena responds with a data-grounded answer the team can react to immediately.

4. Assign actions​

The team walks out knowing what they're doing today. The Storyboard itself becomes the record of the meeting — interactive, shared, refreshable when someone wants to revisit a card later.

5. After the meeting​

The host pins any new questions that surfaced as draft cards for next week's iteration. The Storyboard gets a little better every cycle.

What "done" looks like​

  • The meeting consistently finishes in 15 minutes or less.
  • Decisions in the meeting cite Athena's data, not someone's pre-built slide.
  • New team members can join, open the Storyboard, and follow along without a separate briefing.
  • The Storyboard URL is the canonical answer to "what did we decide on Monday?"

Variations​

  • S&OP review. Same shape, weekly cadence, deeper Storyboard with forecast vs. actuals. The host pre-runs Co-Pilot variance investigations and pins the findings.
  • Executive readout. Same shape, monthly cadence, narrative-heavy Storyboard. Athena's commentary does more of the lifting because the audience wants the story, not the chart.
  • Ops standup with autonomous-agent escalations. When the team includes a Business Analyst supervising Employee-mode agents, the Storyboard also pulls in the overnight audit log from Supply Assurance so the team knows what Athena handled before they arrived.

Troubleshooting​

SymptomLikely causeFix
Storyboard charts are blank in the morningRefresh failed overnightCheck Data Sync for failed runs
Athena's commentary feels off-toneDefault prompt doesn't match the audienceCustomize the commentary prompt at the Storyboard or card level
Recipients see different numbersRLS scopes the data differently per roleDecide whether the Storyboard should run with a service-account scope for consistent reads
The meeting is creeping back to 30 minutesCards are too dense; team is reading instead of discussingReduce cards; make Athena's commentary do more of the summary work
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