You will practise removing sensitive details from a document while keeping enough for the assistant to be useful.
Hafiz has to reply to a long email thread with his firm's cleaning contractor about a disputed invoice. He wants an AI assistant to help him get the reply right, but the thread is full of details that should not leave the firm.
Many of the tasks you flagged in your audit in lesson 1.4 are like his: an awkward email to a supplier, a client complaint, a summary of a messy contract dispute. These are often the tasks where help would be most welcome. They are also full of names, numbers and details that should not be pasted anywhere without thinking. Redaction means removing or disguising details in a document so that what you share with an assistant no longer shows who or what it is about, while leaving enough for the assistant to do the task. It lets you get help with that work and keep the sensitive parts to yourself. It is a skill, and it gets faster with practice.
Hafiz's thread contains the contractor's company name, its account manager's name and mobile number, two invoice numbers, the amounts, the address of the client site where the cleaning was done, and a remark from his own director about another vendor. His task is a firm but polite reply setting out the firm's position.
He deletes the signatures, the phone number, the invoice numbers, the site address and the director's remark about the other vendor. He replaces the contractor with Supplier B, its account manager with Contact B1, his director with Director A and the client site with Site 1. The disputed amount is S$18,460, an example figure. He rounds it to about S$18,000 because the reply only needs to say the firm will pay the undisputed part and query the rest. He writes his key on a sticky note in his notebook.
He puts the redacted thread into the company's approved assistant, which policy allows for redacted supplier correspondence. The draft comes back in about a minute. He copies it into his email, replaces every placeholder using his key, and puts back the exact amount and the invoice numbers. Then he reads the whole reply once more with the real details in place. That last read catches one sentence where "Supplier B" had become "the supplier's team", and he changes it to the right name.
Before you touch the document, write down what you want the assistant to do. The task decides what can be removed. You might want a reply rewritten in a calmer tone, the main disagreements summarised, or a list of complaints turned into a structured response. A tone rewrite needs the words and the situation but not the names. A summary of a payment dispute needs the sequence of events and the rough size of the amounts, but probably not the exact figures or invoice numbers. Anything the task does not need is the easiest thing to protect, because you can simply delete it.
Go through the document three times, and give each pass a different job: remove, replace, then round or scale.
The first pass removes everything the task does not need at all. Items that usually go are:
email signatures phone numbers addresses bank details NRIC numbers reference numbers side remarks about other matters
Removing is safer than disguising. Someone can sometimes work out a disguised detail from the context around it, but they cannot work out a detail you have deleted.
The second pass deals with the names of people, companies, projects and places that the task does need. Replace each one with a placeholder, a stand-in label you use consistently. A simple convention is Client A, Supplier B, and the supplier's contact person as Contact B1. Use the same placeholder every time the same thing appears. If an assistant sees "Client A" in one paragraph and "the client" in another, it may treat them as two different parties.
The third pass deals with figures. If the task only needs the pattern of the figures, change them. You can round them, as Hafiz did with S$18,460, or multiply every amount by the same factor. Scaling keeps the proportions but hides the real numbers. If the exact figure is the point of the task, for example when you want a calculation checked, think about whether the task belongs in an assistant at all.
As you go, keep a short key that records what each placeholder stands for and notes that amounts were rounded or scaled. Keep it on your own work drive or in your notebook, and never put it in the chat. You need it at the end to restore the real details, and nobody else needs it.
Read the redacted version as if you were a stranger, and ask whether you could tell who it is about. In a small firm, a distinctive job title, an unusual project name or a date can identify a person as surely as their name. Remove anything that gives it away.
Then check the redacted document against what company policy allows in the tool you plan to use. Your notes from lesson 2.3 record what each tool permits. Once both checks pass, put the document into the approved assistant and ask for the help you wrote down at the start.
Restoring offline is the step people skip, and it is where mistakes get through. Move the assistant's output out of the chat and into your own document or email. Replace every placeholder using your key, and put back the exact figures and reference numbers. Before sending, search the final version for every placeholder. Then read the whole thing once with the real details in place. A reply that still says "Dear Contact B1" is embarrassing, and one that names the wrong client is worse.
When you finish, you should have one real document redacted with consistent placeholders, figures rounded or removed where the task allowed, a private key kept outside the chat, a note of your policy check, the help you needed, and a final version where you have restored the real details yourself.
Choose your document now, ideally one from the tasks you flagged in your audit, and work through the steps with it.
Redact one real work document using placeholders, check it against your company policy, get the help you needed, and restore the details offline.
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