Overview

ZIN Advisor is the side of Vendor Pulse that helps you answer questionnaires rather than send them, and that turns a regulation into questions you can reuse. It has three tabs, and they do three different jobs:

Prerequisites

• Access to ZIN Advisor — zin:view or zin:add
• zin:add or questionnaire:add to add, import, edit or delete Knowledge Base entries
• zin:add to upload a document on the Checklist tab, and zin:delete to delete one
• master:add to add generated checklist questions to a template
• Your existing security documentation or past questionnaire responses, if you want to bulk import

Finding ZIN Advisor

Navigation: Sidebar → ZIN Advisor

Click ZIN Advisor in the sidebar. The page header reads ZIN Advisor and carries the three tabs — Checklist, Knowledge Base and Questionnaire. The Checklist tab opens first.

If your sidebar shows two ZIN Advisor entries, the one at the very top is the ZIN AI chat assistant. The one you want here is lower down, below Master Data, and opens the three tabs.

Part 1: Build Your Knowledge Base

Navigation: Sidebar → ZIN Advisor → Knowledge Base tab

The Knowledge Base holds question-and-answer pairs that ZIN uses as reference material when it drafts answers. The richer and more current it is, the better the drafts.

The Knowledge Base table

You can search the table by keyword and show or hide columns.

Option A: Add entries one at a time

1. Click Add. The Add Knowledge Base Entry dialog opens.
2. Enter the Question — the security questionnaire question as it would typically be worded, for example "Does your organization have a formal information security policy?" Required, at least 2 characters.
3. Enter the Answer — your organisation's standard response. This is what ZIN Advisor uses to generate replies. Required, at least 2 characters.
4. Optionally enter Tags — comma-separated, for example policy, encryption, incident.
5. Click Add Entry. You see "Knowledge Base entry added successfully."

Two entries cannot have exactly the same question text. If the question already exists, the entry is refused — edit the existing one instead.

Tip: Start with the questions that appear in nearly every security questionnaire — access control, encryption, incident response, business continuity and data protection.

Option B: Bulk import from a file

1. Click Import. The Import Knowledge Base dialog opens.
2. Click Download Template to get the spreadsheet template (VendorPulse_KB_Template.xlsx).
3. Fill in the question-and-answer sheet, one row per pair. Delete the example rows first so they are not imported.
4. Drag the completed file onto the upload area, or click it to choose the file.
5. Click Import Files.

A message tells you how many entries were imported and how many duplicates were skipped.

For spreadsheets and CSV files, the column headers must be:

Rows with an empty question or answer are skipped. A row whose question text exactly matches an existing entry is skipped as a duplicate — importing never overwrites an existing answer.

Editing and deleting entries

Open the ⋮ menu on a row:

• Edit opens Edit Knowledge Base Entry. Change the question, answer or tags and click Save Changes.
• Delete removes the entry immediately — there is no confirmation step and no undo. A deleted entry is no longer used for answers.

Keep the Knowledge Base current. ZIN will faithfully reuse an outdated answer if that is what it finds.

The Chrome extension banner

The Knowledge Base tab carries a banner for the Vendor Pulse · AI Questionnaire Assistant Chrome extension, with an Add to Chrome link that opens the Chrome Web Store listing in a new tab. See How to Install and Use the Chrome Extension.

What the Knowledge Base does not do

• There is no export of Knowledge Base entries.
• There is no version history for an entry and no approval step.
• Entries are shared by everyone in your organisation who can open ZIN Advisor; there are no private entries.

Part 2: Generate a Checklist from Guidelines

Navigation: Sidebar → ZIN Advisor → Checklist tab

You give the Checklist tab a guideline, regulation or mandate, and it gives you back a list of questions drawn from that document. This is how you turn a standard you have to comply with into assessment content.

Upload a document

1. Open the Checklist tab.
2. Click Upload File. If nothing has been uploaded yet, the page shows an introduction with an Upload Document button instead. The Upload ZIN dialog opens.
3. Drag your document onto the upload area, or click it to choose the file. Only PDF files are accepted.
4. Click Upload.

The dialog shows "ZIN is meticulously crafting your tailored checklist" while it works. Keep the dialog open until it finishes.

Limits to be aware of:

• PDF only. Word, Excel and image files are not accepted on this tab.
• Only the beginning of a long document is read — roughly the first 10,000 characters of text, which is a few pages. Questions are generated from that part only. For a long regulation, split the PDF into sections and upload each one separately.
• The PDF must contain selectable text. A blank, empty, incomplete or corrupted PDF is rejected.

The Uploaded Documents table

Click a row to open its generated questions. A row opens only once its processing has completed.

To remove a document, open the ⋮ menu on its row and choose Delete. The menu appears only if you hold zin:delete.

Review the generated questions

Clicking a document opens its results page:

• A header with the document name, Question Count, Uploaded On, Uploaded By, Last Updated and Updated By
• A View button that opens the original PDF in the viewer
• A table headed Result from Document listing every generated question, with a tick box on each row

Read the questions critically. They are AI-generated from the opening part of your document, and they are suggestions, not an authoritative reading of the regulation.

Add the questions to a template

1. Tick the questions you want. A chip shows how many are selected; use it to clear the selection.
2. Click Assign Template. The button is shown only if you hold master:add.
3. Choose the Template Name.
4. Choose the Category Name within that template.
5. Click Assign Template.

The selected questions are added to that category in Master Data, each as:

Open the template under Master Data afterwards and edit each question if you want it to be mandatory, to need evidence, to be rated by your reviewers, or to be a single-choice question. See How to Create Assessment Templates (MasterVault).

If you click Assign Template with nothing ticked, you are asked to select at least one question first.

Part 3: Answer a Questionnaire with ZIN

Navigation: Sidebar → ZIN Advisor → Questionnaire tab

Upload a questionnaire you have received, let ZIN draft the answers from your Knowledge Base, then review, approve and export. The full walkthrough — statuses, confidence colours, editing and export — is in How to Use the AI Questionnaire Assistant.

The Cycle

1. Build your Knowledge Base by adding entries or bulk importing.
2. Upload a questionnaire and let ZIN draft answers from the Knowledge Base.
3. Review, edit, approve and export.
4. Add the answers you had to write yourself back to the Knowledge Base.
5. The next questionnaire is faster.

Troubleshooting

ZIN Advisor shows an "Unauthorized" screen → The section opens with zin:view or zin:add. Ask your administrator to grant one of them.

Add and Import are missing on the Knowledge Base tab → Changing the Knowledge Base requires zin:add or questionnaire:add.

"A question with exactly the same text already exists." → That question is already in the Knowledge Base. Edit the existing entry.

The import says no valid entries were found → For spreadsheets and CSV files the header row must contain a question column and an answer column using the accepted headers above. For Word and PDF files, the document must contain clearly paired questions and answers near the start.

The import skipped some rows → Rows whose question already exists are skipped as duplicates, and rows with an empty question or answer are ignored.

The import was rejected as an invalid file → Only .xlsx, .csv, .docx and .pdf are accepted.

"Knowledge Base is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." → The service could not be reached. Wait and try again; contact support if it persists.

My file was not accepted on the Checklist tab → The Checklist tab accepts PDF only. Convert Word or Excel documents to PDF first.

My PDF was rejected as empty, blank or corrupted → The file has no readable content. Scanned image-only PDFs and damaged files are rejected; export the document again as a text PDF.

The checklist only covers the first part of my document → Only the opening part of a document is read. Split the PDF and upload the sections separately.

The generated questions look generic and unrelated to my document → ZIN could not generate questions from that document's text. Delete the document, check that the PDF's opening pages contain the actual requirements rather than a cover page or table of contents, and upload again.

A checklist row will not open when I click it → Its processing did not complete. Delete it and upload the document again.

I can't see Assign Template → Adding questions to a template requires master:add.

I can't delete a checklist document → Deleting requires the zin:delete permission.

Need more help? Contact support@zeron.one