Ask AI: Manage your Ask AI assistant

Ask AI is an intelligent conversational assistant built for K–12 school and district websites around the world. Unlike traditional rule-based systems, Ask AI delivers dynamic, thoughtful, and helpful interactions by being adaptive, context-aware, and user-focused. Designed to support families, it provides quick and accurate answers without the need to search, click, or sift through pages of information—making it far more than just your ordinary chatbot.

As you continue to utilize Ask AI to help you more effectively engage with your community, you'll want to make sure you know how to manage and configure any options available to you as you go. 

In this Article

• Dashboard
• Appearance tab
  • Appearance > General
  • Appearance > Visibility and position
  • Appearance > Conversation
• Knowledge tab
  • Important Note on Indexing Content
  • Add more knowledge > Web URL
  • Add more knowledge > File import
    • Supported file types
  • Check on newly-added content
  • Manage your knowledge
• Chat logs tab
  • Two options for exporting chat logs
• Integrations tab
  • Preview and push your Ask AI widget LIVE

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The Ask AI admin platform is where you will configure your settings and manage your feature on an ongoing basis. 

Any changes that you make in your admin platform will be reflected on your live widget that displays on your website for your visitors to engage and connect with anytime they have questions!

Dashboard

Here’s a quick walkthrough of the Ask AI Dashboard:

• Configuration Action buttons: These are the actions you’ll refer to most often, right at your fingertips!
  • Customize how Ask AI looks and feels: Be directed to the Appearance tab to update colors, fonts, avatars, and the chatbot name to align with your school's brand and communication style.
  • Manage what Ask AI knows: Curate the content AI uses to answer questions in the Knowledge tab. Add links and files that reflect your school's unique information.
• Insights: Review real-time analytics to evaluate Ask AI's performance, including session volume, number of questions submitted, and user feedback ratings.

Now, let's deep dive into each of the tabs in the left-navigation of your Ask AI platform. 

Appearance tab

Select from your options to customize how your Ask AI chatbot looks and behaves. Instantly view changes with a live dynamic preview, allowing you to fine-tune the widget’s design in real time.

Appearance > General

Make adjustments to the appearance of your Ask AI widget and preview your changes in real-time. Tailor the chatbot’s personality and appearance to align with your brand.

• Tone of voice: Select from Friendly & Warm, Professional & Polite, or Concise & Direct.
• Typography:
  • Font family: Select and preview which Font family your AskAI widget will display.
  • Reply font color: The Reply font color determines the color of your Ask AI chatbot's responses to visitors.
  • Header font color: Adjust the color of your Chatbot's name in the header of the widget.
• Color Customization: Set the colors of the widget to match your district and/or school branding and colors.
  • Primary color: This color choice defines the top bar of the widget, as well as the user input area and predefined questions.
  • Secondary color: Customize the chat icon in the widget's top bar and the call-to-action button that expands the widget on your website.

• Chatbot avatar:
  • Choose from our avatars or upload your own.
  • Change the avatar for each of your separate schools or organizations on their own separate admin panels.
• Avatar color theme: Choose your color theme
• Chatbot name: Give your Chatbot a name. Some may choose a name such as, "Ask ___" where you can insert the name of a mascot, school, person, or any other ideas that might add engagement.

Appearance > Visibility and position

Adjust where the widget will display on your website.

• Widget position: Set at Right by default. Choose either Left or Right.
• Bottom margin: Use px for precise, fixed sizing and rem for scalable, accessible design based on root font size.
• Z-Index (layer control): Controls the front-to-back stacking of elements when they overlap. Higher numbers bring the widget forward, ensuring it stays on top of other content. 

Appearance > Conversation 

Here is where you will configure how Ask AI initiates conversations with visitors.

• Welcome Text (required field): Set the "Hello!" message.
• Predefined Questions: Add predefined questions to appear as bubble-style call-to-action (CTA) prompts within the Ask AI widget, offering users a quick way to engage. These prompts represent commonly asked or encouraged questions, allowing users to input them with a single click rather than typing. The AI then generates a real-time response based on the most current knowledge base—ensuring relevance even as website content evolves.
  • Add up to six quick questions to customize the user experience.
  • You can reorder them, toggle their visibility, or remove any that are no longer needed.
  • When a user clicks a predefined question, Ask AI generates the answer in real time. This ensures responses stay aligned with the latest website content, even as that content evolves.

Knowledge tab

Here is where you'll connect all content to your Ask AI assistant’s personalized knowledge base—the central source that powers its conversations with site visitors. Your knowledge base will be populated by Web URL scans and File imports. 

Add source button

• Navigate to the Knowledge tab in left navigation.
• Click the Add Source button to add new content to your knowledge base.
• Add more knowledge: Select Web URL or File import to provide more content to your Ask AI personalized knowledge base. 

Add more knowledge > Web URL

Selecting this will open up the Add knowledge source window which will ask you to provide information to save this URL using some advanced strategies which will help to strengthen the efficiency of your new content. 

Here's some help filling out the fields in the Add knowledge source window: 

• Knowledge name: Name this knowledge so you can easily manage all of your content internally.
• Provide URL: Include the URL whose content you would like to be indexed.
• Exclude URLs by exact match: Checking this box allows you to exclude specific pages from being added to Ask AI by entering their exact web address. This feature ensures that content from those individual URLs won’t appear in your knowledge base and is useful for keeping internal, outdated, or irrelevant pages out of sight.
• Import Strategies: This section includes some options for indexing content. Choose the option that works best for what you'd like to do:
  • All subdomains: This option scans all subdomains under your website while skipping the main domain itself. This is ideal for scenarios where your content lives across separate sites, for example, with different schools within a district.
  • By Prefix (URL path): By Prefix (URL path): Selecting this will scan only the pages that start with a specific URL path. You can choose to scan your entire website or focus on a particular section. For example, capture all content under a directory (e.g. /staff) while excluding unrelated pages.
  • One Page: Indexes a single URL. Ideal for high-priority, frequently updated pages such as news or athletics. Recommended for targeted testing or when only one page’s content is needed.
• Schedule: Set the frequency with which you'd like for the tool to go in to this particular new content and search for newly-added material. 

Add more knowledge > File import 

• This option allows you to upload files into your personalized knowledge base.
• The Add knowledge source window will open.
• Provide a name.
• Click to browse for your file or drag into the upload area. 
• Supported file upload types: CSV, PDF, DOCX, TXT.

Manage your knowledge

Here are some ways you can manage your knowledge base content:

• Search bar: Quickly locate specific sources.
• Tag and Status Filters: Refine your view by content type or status of upload completion.
• Table columns:
  • Display details such as Source, Tag (Website or file), which Strategy was used, Frequency of re-indexing or re-scanning a particular source, number of Scanned pages, Last synced date, and Status.
  • Click columns with arrows to change the sort order.
• Delete icon: Remove sources as needed.

Chat logs tab

View and monitor all Ask AI interactions using searchable, filterable entries by date or keyword.

Here are all of the options available in the Chat logs tab:

• View and monitor all Ask AI interactions to track user engagement and chatbot performance.
• Search and filter entries by date or keyword for quick access to specific conversations.
• Read full conversation transcripts, including timestamps for each exchange.
• Review user query language to understand the exact phrasing of visitor questions.
• Analyze your chatbot’s responses to assess accuracy, relevance, and effectiveness.

Two options for exporting chat logs

In the Chat logs tab, you can export chat details so that you can better manage them externally. There are two different options for exporting your chat logs: 

• Option #1: Export all chat logs
• Option #2: Export only a selected chat log 

Once export has completed, you will find a .csv file wherever you receive downloads that you can then manage more easily. 

Integrations

This tab is where you can find the necessary code to embed the Ask AI widget onto your website.

Preview and push your Ask AI widget LIVE

• Step 1: Copy the code
  • Navigate to the section in the Integrations tab labeled JavaScript snippet and click Copy to clipboard to obtain the code you see in the box. 
• Step 2: Paste code into CMS > Themes > External Assets
  • Navigate to your CMS Admin site > Composer left navigation > Themes tab.
  
  • Click to open the theme your site is using.
  • Locate the External Assets field.
  • Paste the provided code snippet into the External Assets area. 

    Important Note

    There may already be html code between <> tags in the External Assets box. That's ok! Simply add the new code somewhere in the same field, making sure it is also separated by <> tags.

• Step 3: Enable test mode
  • Confirm that toggle next to Enable Test Mode is ON. This allows you to preview changes without affecting the live site.
• Step 4: Preview in test mode
  • Open a new tab to preview the widget and test functionality. Make any necessary adjustments.
• Step 5: Toggle off to GO LIVE on your public site

When ready to go live, navigate back to the Admin platform > Integrations tab and toggle off Enable Test Mode which will make your widget live. Your Ask AI widget is now live! It will function publicly according to its intended settings.