Using the tools

Once you’re connected, you don’t call the tools directly — you ask your assistant a question, and it picks the right tool (and chains several when needed). Pinion ships a growing set of tools. Most read (they answer questions); several are actions that change state — submitting for approval, deciding one, creating a renewal or amendment, generating a PDF, logging a follow-up. Every tool runs as you, and every action asks you to confirm first, so a tool can only ever do what you could already do in Pinion yourself.

At a glance

The tools group into five areas. Each row’s Salesforce action label is the name an admin adds to the MCP server in setup; rows marked (action) change state.

Find & explore (read)

Pricing & rules (read + action)

Approvals (read + action)

Accounts, contracts & renewals (read + action)

Activities & documents (read + action)

Ask in plain language

The tools are built to be driven by natural questions — ask the way you’d ask a colleague:

“Why is the Enterprise License priced this way on the MCP Demo – Acme Corp opportunity?”

Behind that one question the assistant chains two tools: it finds the deal’s lines by name, matches “Enterprise License” to a specific line, then explains that line’s price.

The tools

Find & explore

Find deals — the conversation entry point: it finds the deals (Opportunities) a rep is working on without needing a record Id. Every filter is optional and composes — owner scope (mine / all / a rep), account, stage, close-date window, name, open-only, max results. With no filters it returns your open deals, soonest close first — each row with the deal name, account, stage, amount, close date, probability, owner, and a click-ready link. Then drill in (Get deal line items, Get approval status, the quote-PDF tool, or Brief me on an account).

Pipeline summary — the rollup behind Find deals: totals, not rows. Takes the same filters and returns total open amount, weighted pipeline (amount × probability), deal count, a by-stage breakdown, and the next close date. Answers “what’s my open pipeline?” / “how much is in Negotiation?”. Pair it with Find deals to go from the number to the deals behind it.

Get products — finds products and bundles in the catalog. List mode (blank reference) browses; Detail mode (a product name/Id) returns that product’s bundle features/options and configuration attributes. Ambiguous names return candidates.

Get deal line items — resolves a deal reference (Opportunity/Quote name or Id, or a saved configuration’s name) to that deal’s persisted line items — product/bundle name, role (bundle parent / child / segment / standalone), quantity, unit price, line total — with bundle children and MDQ segments nested. Totals reconcile to the Products tab to the cent. Ambiguous names return candidates.

Pricing & rules

Estimate a price — a what-if estimate: “what would this cost?” for one or more products without saving anything. Give it products (with a quantity and an optional per-line discount % or unit-price override) and it returns the full priced waterfall — list → uplifted → net unit price, per-line totals, bundle parent/child subtotals, and a grand total — computed by the same pricing engine a real save uses, so the estimate matches what a Save & Sync would persist to the cent. Use it to compare quantities or discounts before building a real quote. A bundle auto-includes its required and default options; to add others, name them as the bundle line’s options (each an option product, with an optional quantity and discount %). If a bundle has selectable options, none of them auto-include, and you named none, the tool returns the bundle’s selectable options with a note asking you to pick, rather than pricing an empty bundle. For a metered product, the estimate also attaches a usage projection — give it an estimated usage and it returns the projected overage above the entitlement (computed by the same rate-card kernel a Save & Sync uses), flagged display-only and non-contractual; omit the usage and it projects at the entitlement (a $0-overage baseline) so the agent knows to ask for a real number. MDQ / segmented products are priced segment by segment: give it a contract start date and a term in months (it defaults to today and 12 months) and it builds the same per-segment schedule, uplift included, that a save would. Block-priced products price at the block tier their quantity falls in. Two cases return a note instead of a number: a product with more than one time-based price dimension (the segment schedule would be a guess), and a product whose pricing method the estimate doesn’t model yet, such as Percent-of-Total. The companion to Explain a price: Estimate prices an unsaved what-if, Explain breaks down an already-saved line.

Explain a price — explains how one saved line was priced: the ordered waterfall from list price through each adjustment (contracted price, volume/term discount, additional/manual discount, promotion) to the net, reconciled to the cent. MDQ-aware (per segment, with compounding uplift), and honest by construction — an unattributable step surfaces as an honest residual rather than a wrong split. Works for Opportunity and Quote lines.

Simulate product & pricing rules — a dry run: simulates the active product & pricing rules against a deal and returns which rules fired and which didn’t, and why — the per-rule condition trace with both sides resolved. Actions are never executed. The partner to Explain a price: that explains the price, this explains the rules behind it.

Look up a contracted price — the negotiated price for one or more products at an account: per product, the contracted unit price (fixed, percent-off, or amount-off), the source record, and its effective dates — or a clear “no contracted price.”

Configure & price a deal (action) — the tool that actually commits a quote: it builds or edits a deal’s product configuration and Save & Syncs it onto the deal’s line items. It’s the natural finish to Estimate a price — hand it the exact config you just quoted (an “applied config” handle from Estimate) and the config you quoted is the config that saves, or give it a fresh list of lines. Use modify mode to edit an existing saved configuration (add/edit/remove lines; anything you don’t mention is preserved). It’s built to be safe on Pinion’s most important path:

• It reuses the exact Save & Sync the configurator UI uses — the same pricing engine, the same rules, the same limits. It doesn’t re-implement any pricing; the server recomputes the authoritative prices on save, so tampered inputs can’t persist a wrong number.
• It returns the final saved line items read back from the records (never your inputs), plus the authoritative grand total — reconciled to the cent, exactly what the Products tab shows.
• It respects approvals. If the configuration needs approval it’s saved as a Draft but not synced — the tool tells you to submit it (Submit for approval) and apply again once approved. It never auto-submits, and it never sneaks a deal past the approval gate.
• It never saves an empty bundle. Bundle lines take the same options as Estimate a price. If a bundle has selectable options, none auto-include, and you named none, the tool returns the selectable options with a note and saves nothing, so you can pick and try again.
• It won’t silently re-price a multi-year schedule. If the applied-config handle from Estimate a price carries an MDQ segment schedule built for a different contract window than the deal’s, the tool saves it as a Draft but not synced and tells you both windows. Ask it to re-align to the deal’s term and it rebuilds the segment schedule from the deal’s contract dates, then syncs. That’s lossless when the windows already matched, and a visible re-price when they didn’t. If the configuration carries per-segment price or discount adjustments a rep set by hand, re-aligning would reset them, so the tool leaves the configuration unchanged and tells you why. The check needs the deal’s contract start date and term; a deal without them skips it.
• Confirms first, like every action, and runs as you — so it can only save a deal you could save yourself in the configurator.

Approvals

Get my approvals — your own pending queue as a numbered list (deal, amount, requester, the rule that fired, submitted/due dates).

Get approval detail — the full context for one pending request: what’s being approved, why it tripped (firing rule + condition trace), who submitted it, the status, SLA, and prior comments. Use it after Get my approvals — “details for #3.”

Get approval status — a deal’s approval state: overall status, who still needs to approve, and which rule triggered each pending approval, per configuration. Each configuration’s status is the one the configurator shows, judged on its latest submission only: Pending, Approved, Rejected, Recalled, or Not Submitted (nothing waiting and no decision standing, so the rep needs to submit). A configuration that was recalled, resubmitted, and approved reads Approved. The deal’s overall status is Pending while any configuration is waiting, otherwise the one status its decided configurations share, or Mixed when they differ.

Submit for approval (action) — submits a deal’s submittable Draft configuration for approval. If a rule matches, it creates the request(s), marks the configuration Pending, and notifies the approver(s); if no rule matches, it returns an honest “no approval required — you can sync” (not an error); if already synced or pending, a clear guardrail message with no duplicate. Confirms with you first.

Decide approval (action) — approves or rejects a request assigned to you, with a comment. Records your decision, advances or terminates the chain, and notifies the deal owner. Tightly bounded: only your own requests (the server refuses someone else’s), you confirm first, and a comment is required to reject.

Accounts, contracts & renewals

Brief me on an account — a structured brief: TCV and ARR/MRR, active contracts, upcoming/in-flight renewals with forecast amounts, open amendments, and notable negotiated prices. A natural starting point for an account — then drill in.

Get contract lines — one contract’s line detail: its recurring subscription lines (product, quantity, unit price, total, term, bundle role + parent, MDQ segment label/index) and its account’s one-time assets (scoped to the account, which the tool flags). Accepts a Contract Id or Number.

Contract revenue metrics — MRR, ARR, and TCV for one contract or rolled up for an account across its active subscriptions and contracts.

Renewal forecast — one row per renewing contract (contract, renewal date, current recurring amount, forecast ARR, uplift) plus totals over a window. Leave dates blank for “next quarter.” Each row carries a status: Active, Renewal in flight (an open renewal opportunity exists), Renewed, Renewal lost, Cancelled, or Expired. By default the forecast leaves out contracts whose renewal is already closed (Renewed or Renewal lost, a decided outcome rather than pipeline) and says how many it left out; ask to include them and they come back. Contracts with an open renewal, or with no renewal yet, are always shown. A cancelled contract with no renewal is left out too. It never creates renewal opportunities — it forecasts.

Create renewal (action) — creates a renewal Opportunity from a contract’s active subscriptions, with renewal line items priced by the renewal engine (the same engine the Pinion UI uses). Pass a Contract Id or Number. Idempotent — if the contract already has a renewal, the existing one is returned (no duplicate). Confirms with you first.

Create amendment (action) — creates an amendment (mid-term change) Opportunity from a contract’s subscriptions and one-time products, with line items priced by the amendment engine. A contract can have several amendments over its life — each call creates a fresh one. Confirms with you first.

Activities & documents

Get activity timeline — the activity story of a deal, account, quote, or contract — the standard Tasks and Events logged against it — so you can answer “when did we last talk to them?”, “what’s the next step?”, “any overdue follow-ups?”. Returns a chronological timeline plus summary fields (last activity date, next activity/subject, open + overdue counts).

Log a follow-up (action) — creates a standard Task on a deal/quote/account/contact — “remind me to follow up on Acme Friday.” Give it a record, a subject, and optionally a due date and type. Assigned to you by default; created as you (so only on records you can see, and only if you can create tasks). Confirms first. A follow-up logged here shows up in the activity timeline.

Generate quote / proposal PDF (action) — renders and saves a quote/proposal PDF for a deal (a GeneratedQuote__c record plus a PDF file under Files on the deal). If the configuration isn’t synced, the PDF is a watermarked draft (this tool never removes the watermark). Optionally takes a template name; otherwise the routed/default template is used. Confirms first.

How they chain

The tools hand off to each other, so a broad question drills to a precise answer or a completed action:

• Discover → drill → explain. “What’s closing this month?” (Find deals) → open one deal’s lines (Get deal line items) → “why is this line priced this way?” (Explain a price).
• Quote → commit. “What would this cost?” (Estimate a price) → “save it to the deal” (Configure & price) — the quoted config is the saved config.
• Account → contract → renew. “Brief me on Acme” (Brief me on an account) → its contract lines (Get contract lines) → “create the renewal” (Create renewal).
• Approvals, end to end. Get my approvals → Get approval detail → Decide approval. And a rep’s own side: Submit for approval → track with Get approval status.
• Price and rules. Explain a price says what; Simulate rules says which rules shaped it.
• Follow through. Get activity timeline shows the next step; Log a follow-up creates one; Generate quote PDF produces the document.

You don’t orchestrate this — the assistant chains the tools from your question. When a step is an action, it pauses for your confirmation before it runs.

What they can and can’t do

More tools coming

The set is growing quickly — from a couple of read tools to a full span of read and action tools across the deal, approval, contract, and activity lifecycle. New tools follow the same pattern: run as you, do only what you could do in Pinion, and confirm before acting. As more ship, they’ll appear here.

Related

• Overview — what MCP is and the security model.
• Setting up the MCP server — publish these tools and connect a client.
• Pricing Methods ▸ MDQ — the per-segment uplift the Explain-a-price tool narrates.
• Approvals ▸ My Approvals — the queue the approval tools read and act on.