Chat Interactions

A chat interaction is a free-form chat where you set everything up yourself, right beside the conversation: which model to use, the instructions, files to ask about, and the tools the AI may use. Nothing has to be prepared by an administrator first. Use it to try a model, to draft text, to ask questions about a file, or to test instructions before you put them in an AI profile.

Menu	Artificial Intelligence > Chat Interactions
Permission	List chat interactions; Edit own chat interactions; Delete own chat interaction
Feature	AI Chat Interactions; AI Documents for Chat Interactions to attach files

Can't find it?

What you see depends on your role. If the menu, a button or a setting on this page is missing, ask your administrator to give you the permission listed above or to turn on the feature. Only administrators can turn features on and change site settings.

Start a chat interaction

1. Open Artificial Intelligence > Chat Interactions and click New Chat. A new interaction opens and is saved straight away.
2. In the settings panel on the left, give it a Title and pick a Chat deployment (or leave Default).
3. Type your question in the message box and press Enter.

Your settings are saved as you change them; there is no Save button. Click the collapse button to hide the settings panel, and Configurations to show it again.

The chat area works like the chat page of an assistant: answers appear as they are written, show their sources, and can have copy and read-aloud buttons. See Chat with an AI assistant.

Find, copy and delete interactions

• The list shows your interactions with their titles. Click Chat to reopen one and continue. Use Search and Go to find one.
• In an open interaction, New Chat offers Empty Chat (start fresh) or Chat with Preset Settings (a new interaction with the same model, instructions, files and tools).
• Clear History removes the messages but keeps your files, settings and tools. It cannot be undone.
• To delete an interaction, open its Actions menu in the list and choose Delete. To delete several, tick them and use Actions > Delete above the list. Deleting an interaction also deletes its files.

You see only your own interactions, unless you have the List chat interactions for others permission.

Settings tab

Field	What it does
Title	A name to find the interaction again later.
Orchestrator	The engine that plans the answer and decides which tools to use. Shown only when your site has more than one.
Chat deployment	The model to chat with. Default uses the site's default chat deployment. The list is grouped by connection.
Model parameters	Options the chosen model supports, such as reasoning effort.
Conversation deployment / Voice	For spoken conversations: the voice model and the voice. Leave empty to use the site defaults. See Talk instead of type.
Utility deployment	A smaller model for side jobs. Leave it on Default.
System instructions	Optional instructions that tell the AI who it is and how to answer, for example "You are a copy editor. Answer in British English."
Prompt templates	Reusable pieces of instructions to add, when your site has any. See Templates.
Max response tokens, Temperature, Top P, Frequency penalty, Presence penalty, Past messages	Fine-tuning. Leave on Default unless you know what you want. They mean the same as on a profile.

When your site uses the GitHub Copilot or Claude engine, its model and Effort level settings appear here too; for Copilot you may be asked to Sign in with GitHub.

Knowledge tab

Ask questions about your own files or knowledge base.

1. Open the Knowledge tab.
2. Drag files onto Drag and drop files here, or click Browse files. Supported formats lists the file types you can use.
3. Wait until the file is processed, then ask your question in the chat.

The answer cites your file as a numbered source. Files you attach belong to this interaction only.

Field	What it does
Data source	A knowledge base to answer from. No data source for none.
Filter, Restrict answers to retrieved data only, Strictness, Retrieved documents	How the data source is searched. See Knowledge.
Document retrieval mode	Chunk (only matching passages of your files) or Hierarchical (whole files). Use site default keeps the site's choice.
Attached files	Your uploaded files. Use Download file or Remove file on each.

If the Knowledge tab has no upload area, your administrator has not set up document storage or has turned off uploads for chat interactions.

Capabilities tab

Let the AI use tools in this interaction. Tick what you need:

Section	What it does
Connections	External MCP tool servers.
A2A Connections	Remote AI agents.
Agents	Agent profiles on this site.
Tools	Built-in actions, grouped by category.
Tool Instances	Tools your team set up, such as a call to your order system.

You can only use tools your role is allowed to use. See Tools and agents.

Talk instead of type

Voice in chat interactions is set for the whole site by an administrator (see below). Depending on the setting:

• Audio input adds a microphone (Voice input) to dictate your message.
• Conversation adds a Start Conversation button for spoken back-and-forth. Click End Conversation to go back to typing.
• With read-aloud turned on, each answer has a Read aloud button.

How these buttons work is described in Chat with an AI assistant.

Site settings for chat interactions (administrators)

Open Settings > Artificial Intelligence:

Section	Field	What it does
Chat Interactions	Chat mode	Text input, Audio input (needs a default speech-to-text deployment) or Conversation (needs speech-to-text and text-to-speech). Applies to every chat interaction.
Chat Interactions	Enable text-to-speech playback	Adds a Read aloud button to every answer. Needs a default text-to-speech deployment.
Documents	Index profile, Document retrieval mode	Where attached files are stored and how they are searched. See Knowledge.
Documents	Allow document uploads in chat interactions / Allow image uploads in chat interactions	Which kinds of files people can attach. Pictures also need a default vision deployment.
Documents	Largest document that can be indexed / Describe figures in uploaded documents	Limits for attached files.
Memory	Enable user memory	Lets the AI remember signed-in users' preferences across interactions. See Memory.

Changing these sections needs the Manage chat interaction settings or Edit any chat interactions permission.