Ask the assistant
Where to find it
A round button with a sparkle icon sits in the bottom-right corner of every dashboard screen. Click it, or press ⌘J (Mac) / Ctrl+J (Windows), and a chat panel opens.
On a phone or narrow screen it opens as a panel sliding in from the side. On a desktop it opens as a small floating window you can drag anywhere and resize — pin it to one side of the screen if you would rather it stayed out of the way while you keep working underneath it.
Four modes, in plain terms
A small pill above the message box lets you tell the assistant what kind of question is coming — though in practice you rarely need to touch it, since Auto works out what you are asking for on its own. The modes only change what it expects from you next, never what it is capable of doing.
| Mode | What it is for | A question you might ask |
|---|---|---|
| Auto | The default. Figures out on its own whether you want a how-to answer, a data answer, or something built. | "How many districts have we not covered yet?" |
| Help | How-to guidance about using the platform itself. | "How do I make a question required only sometimes?" |
| Insights | Questions about your own organization’s forms and responses. | "Which form has the most drop-off after page one?" |
| Build | Describe a form or a multi-step program in plain English and get a draft. | "Set up an intake form for a scholarship program." |
Super admins additionally see a Platformmode for questions that span every organization on the platform at once — total usage, comparisons between organizations, that kind of thing. Nobody else sees this mode, and it cannot see one organization's private data through another's question.
Asking about your own data
Ask a plain-English question about your responses, and the reply comes back as an actual chart, table or set of numbers — not just a sentence describing them. Ask “compare submissions across our five district forms this quarter” and a small bar chart appears right in the chat, the same chart style used throughout the dashboard.
Having it draft something for you
Describe what you need in a sentence — “a monitoring visit form with a location and a list of issues found” — and instead of an explanation, you get back a proposed outline: a title, the questions, and (for a multi-step program) each step in order. You can Preview it in full before deciding anything.
- 1Read the proposed outline, and click Preview if you want to see every question before deciding.
- 2Click Create draft to have it actually built, or Discard to throw the idea away and keep chatting.
- 3Either way, nothing is published. A created form or app lands as a draft, exactly like one you built by hand — open it in the builder to adjust anything before anyone can respond to it.
It can also review a form you already built and suggest a specific validation or calculation rule, shown as a read-only preview of exactly the rule it would add — nothing changes on your form until you say so.
Putting what it builds in the right team and project
If your organization uses teams, tell the assistant where the new form or app belongs — for example “create it in the Training Module project” — and it files the draft there. If you do not say, and your organization has teams, it asks you first instead of guessing.
Picking up where you left off
The clock icon in the panel's header lists your recent conversations by when they were last active — click one to resume it exactly where it left off. The + icon starts a fresh conversation without losing the old one; it is simply parked in that same history list for later.
Who can see what it costs
Each answer has a small, real cost behind it. If you are an organization Admin, you will see that cost quietly noted under each reply and totalled for the conversation — everyone else just sees the answer. Super admins additionally have a platform-wide Assistant usage dashboard showing which organizations are asking the most and what it costs in total.
For the analysis this same AI reads to answer data questions turned into a standing, always-current view of one form's results, see Form insights next.