What the AI Assistant Does
The AI Assistant lets you work with your business data in plain language. Instead of opening a report and setting filters, you type a question — "What were my top 5 items yesterday?" — and the assistant looks up your live data and answers.
Answers aren't plain text. Each one is put together from labelled blocks: a line saying what was checked, cards showing the figures, and the assistant's written reading of them. See Asking a Question in Chat for what each block means.
You'll find it in the sidebar under Assistant → AI Assistant.
One box, two kinds of request
There are no modes to switch between — you type everything into the same message box, and the assistant works out what you meant:
- Questions — ask about your sales, inventory, customers, collections, purchase orders, and more. Answering is read-only: it looks things up and explains, but never changes your data.
- Instructions — say what you want done ("Create a customer named…", "Create an item called…", "Create a QuickPick from my catalog") and the AI drafts it as a proposal card right in the conversation. Nothing is saved until you review the fields and click the card's confirm button yourself.
It also answers "how do I…?" questions about the portal itself, using these Help guides — see Getting Answers from the Help Guides. Asking how to do something never starts a change; only telling it to do something does.
Ask-only and full assistant
The screen comes in two shapes, and which one you get depends on your plan and role:
- Ask-only. A single chat column: type a question, read the answer. There's no conversation panel, no attachments, and no way to make changes — the composer says "Your store only · read-only". This is the shape merchants get.
- Full assistant. Everything above, plus the Assistant panel on the left (recent conversations, Templates), attachments, and the ability to draft changes for you to confirm.
There's no switch between them — you simply have the one your access allows.
What you need
- AI features are part of your plan. If your plan or role doesn't include them, the AI Assistant entry won't appear in the sidebar at all.
- Creating and updating records needs the AI Agent on your plan. Without it you get the ask-only chat: questions are answered exactly as before, but attachments, action templates and the conversation panel are hidden, and an instruction is simply treated as a question.
- Everything else follows your normal permissions. The assistant can only reach the data and actions your role can already reach from the screens, so what it can answer and do differs from person to person — see What the Assistant Can and Can't Do.