Connect an AI Provider

Before anyone can chat with an assistant, the site needs to reach an AI service, such as OpenAI or Azure OpenAI. An administrator does this once in three steps: add a connection with the service's address and key, add a deployment for each model you want to use, and choose the site's default models.

Menu	Artificial Intelligence > Provider Connections; Artificial Intelligence > Deployments; Settings > Artificial Intelligence
Permission	Manage AI Provider Connections; Manage AI deployments; Manage AI profiles (for the settings)
Feature	AI Services and AI Connection Management, plus a provider feature: OpenAI Chat, Azure OpenAI Chat, Azure AI Inference Chat or Ollama AI Chat

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.

Your technical team can also set up connections and deployments in the site's configuration files. Those show in the lists under Configuration-based connections or Configuration-based deployments with a Read-only badge, and can only be changed there. See the Technical Manual provider pages.

Add a connection

A connection holds the address and the key the site uses to reach one AI service account.

1. Open Artificial Intelligence > Provider Connections and click Add Connection.
2. In Available Providers, click Add on your provider.
3. Fill in the fields below and click Save.

Field	What it does
Title	The name shown for the connection. Required.
Technical name	A unique name, filled in from the title. It cannot be changed later.
Endpoint	The service's web address, from your provider's portal. OpenAI, Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Inference only.
Authentication type	Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Inference only. Default authentication, Managed identity or API key. Your technical team tells you which to use.
API key	The secret key from your provider. It is stored securely and never shown again. To keep a stored key, leave the field blank when you edit the connection.
Identity client ID	Managed identity only, and only when your team gives you one.

Other AI services

Many AI services, such as DeepSeek, Google Gemini or Together AI, work like OpenAI. Choose OpenAI and enter that service's endpoint and key.

The site checks the fields when you click Save; it does not contact the provider. If the key or the address is wrong, you find out the first time someone chats. A change to a connection can make the site reload its settings for a moment.

Ollama connections only have a Title and a Technical name in the admin; the address of the Ollama server is set in the site's configuration by your technical team.

Add a deployment

A deployment is one model you use through a connection, such as gpt-4.1-mini for chat or text-embedding-3-small for search. Add one for every model the site needs.

1. Open Artificial Intelligence > Deployments and click Add Deployment.
2. In Available Providers, click Add on the provider of the model.
3. Fill in the fields below and click Save.

Field	What it does
Model name	The model or deployment name exactly as your provider knows it, for example gpt-4.1-mini. Required.
Technical name	A unique name used by profiles and settings, filled in from the model name. It cannot be changed later.
Connection name	The connection the model is used through. Picked for you when the provider has only one.
Model capabilities	What the model can do. See below. At least one is required.

Model capabilities

Tick, under Trained features, only what the model really supports. The site uses these ticks to decide where the model is offered: an embedding model shows up only where an embedding model is needed, and a feature you leave unticked is never asked of the model.

Capability	Tick it for
Text conversation	Models that answer chat messages. Ticked by default.
Tool calling	Chat models that can use tools. Ticked by default.
Streaming	Chat models that write the answer as it comes. Ticked by default.
Structured outputs	Chat models that can answer in a fixed format.
Reasoning	Models that think before answering. Ticking it shows Reasoning effort.
Text embedding	Embedding models used to search documents and knowledge bases. Never for a chat model.
Image input (vision)	Models that can read pictures.
Image output	Models that create pictures.
Speech to text (transcription)	Models that turn speech into text, such as Whisper.
Text to speech (synthesis)	Models that read text aloud.
Realtime (speech-to-speech)	Live voice models that hold spoken conversations.
Audio input, Audio output, Video input, Video output	Models that accept or produce audio or video directly.

Reasoning effort lets profiles choose how hard a reasoning model thinks: Minimal, Low, Medium, High or Extra high. Tick it, then optionally narrow the Supported values to those your model accepts, and pick a Default value (it starts on Medium). Higher effort gives more careful answers but is slower and costs more.

Special deployments

• Azure AI Services deployments carry their own Endpoint, Authentication type and API key instead of a connection. Use one for Azure speech-to-text.
• A Cascaded Realtime deployment gives you spoken conversations when your provider has no live voice model. It chains three deployments you already have: a Speech-to-text deployment that hears the user, a Chat deployment that writes the reply, and a Text-to-speech deployment that speaks it. The speech-to-text deployment must also have Realtime (speech-to-speech) ticked, because it has to transcribe continuously. The three can come from different providers. Expect a little more delay before the assistant starts speaking than with a live voice model.

Choose the default models

Open Settings > Artificial Intelligence and fill in the Default Deployments section. A profile or chat left on Default uses these. Each list only shows deployments with the right capability.

Field	What it is used for
Default chat deployment	Chats and chat interactions that do not pick a model. Set this one first.
Default utility deployment	Small side jobs, such as planning and working out what the user wants.
Default embedding deployment	Searching documents and knowledge bases.
Default image deployment	Creating pictures.
Default vision deployment	Reading pictures that users attach.
Default speech-to-text deployment	Dictation and spoken conversations.
Default text-to-speech deployment	Reading answers aloud and spoken conversations.
Default text-to-speech voice	The voice used when a profile does not pick one. The list loads after you pick a text-to-speech deployment.

Click Save.

Other site-wide AI settings

The same page has these sections, each explained on its own page:

Section	Where it is explained
General	Enable AI usage tracking turns on the data for the usage report. Enable preemptive memory retrieval lets the assistant read a user's memory before it answers. The other options are technical; see the Technical Manual.
Default Orchestrator	Enable preemptive retrieval-augmented generation (RAG): search your knowledge before every answer. See Knowledge.
Prompt Security and Visitor Identity	Protections for public chat. See Chat widgets.
Data Sources and Documents	Defaults for Knowledge.
Chat Interactions	Voice and read-aloud for chat interactions.
Memory	Memory.
Admin Widget	The admin chat widget.
Copilot and Claude	Sign-in for the GitHub Copilot and Claude engines, set up by your technical team. See the Technical Manual pages for Copilot and Claude.
MCP Server	Which tools outside AI apps may use. See Tools and agents.

Where each model is used

You want	You need a deployment with
Chat, chat widgets, AI workflow tasks	Text conversation
Answers from documents, data sources, file sources or web crawlers	Text embedding (for the search index) plus a chat model
Attach pictures in a chat, or describe figures in documents	Image input (vision)
Create pictures	Image output
Dictate messages	Speech to text (transcription)
Read answers aloud	Text to speech (synthesis)
Spoken conversations	Realtime (speech-to-speech), or a Cascaded Realtime deployment, or both a speech-to-text and a text-to-speech default