Ask AI: What you can do vs. what requires Finalsite Support

Ask AI puts most day-to-day management in your hands through the admin platform, from customizing the widget's look to building your knowledge base and reviewing conversations. A smaller set of tasks, mostly account provisioning and the technical configuration that controls where the widget is deployed, is handled by Finalsite Support. This article breaks down which is which so you know when to log in and self-serve, and when to submit a request.

In this article

• What you can do on your own
  • Customize appearance and branding
  • Build and manage the knowledge base
  • Set up Fallback replies
  • Test, launch, and temporarily disable
  • Manage users and permissions
  • Monitor performance and review conversations
  • Manage your profile and interface language
  • First-line troubleshooting
• What requires Finalsite Support
  • How to contact Support
• Quick reference table

What you can do on your own

Anyone on your team with the appropriate Ask AI permissions can manage the following directly in the Ask AI admin platform. Changes you make here are reflected on your live widget automatically.

Customize appearance and branding

In the Appearance tab, you have full control over how Ask AI looks and feels, with a live preview as you work:

• Set the chatbot name, fonts, primary and secondary colors, chat colors, and avatar (choose one of ours or upload your own).
• Choose a tone of voice, write your welcome message, and add predefined questions.
• Adjust the widget bubble appearance, greeting messages, on-page position (left or right), bottom margin, and Z-Index (front-to-back layering).
• Turn on and customize the feedback form site visitors use to rate their experience.

See Ask AI Manage: Configure settings and knowledge base for step-by-step guidance.

Build and manage the knowledge base

In the Knowledge tab, you control everything Ask AI knows:

• Add sources by website scan, file import (.pdf, .csv, .docx, .txt), or Priority Q&A pairs.
• Choose indexing strategies, set re-scan frequency, and manually sync a source on demand when you publish new content.
• Exclude URLs to keep specific pages or sections out of AI responses.
• Edit or delete any source, and run Knowledge analysis to find and close content gaps.

See Ask AI Manage: Configure settings and knowledge base for step-by-step guidance.

Set up Fallback replies

Configure Fallback replies in the Knowledge tab so that when Ask AI can't answer a question, visitors are directed to the right staff member or department by category. You add, edit, and remove these contacts yourself.

Test, launch, and temporarily disable

The Test & Launch tab lets you:

• Preview the widget with Test Mode before going public.
• Temporarily disable the live widget while you make changes; simply toggle Test Mode on, then off again to relaunch.

Note: Copying the embed snippet is self-service, but the initial embedding of that code into your site and any page-level display rules are handled by Support (see below).

Manage users and permissions

Organization Admins can manage the full team in the User Management tab, adding users, assigning roles (Organization Admin, Admin, Viewer), granting or removing chatbot access, editing user details, and deleting users.

Monitor performance and review conversations

You have full access to all reporting:

• The Home dashboard shows sessions, questions asked, feedback scores, resolution rates, and estimated staff hours saved.
• Chat Logs let you read, search, filter, export (.csv), and delete transcripts.
• Analytics > Feedback and Analytics > Categories surface user sentiment and trending topics.

Manage your profile and interface language

Update your profile photo and name, switch the admin interface between English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese (Simplified), and toggle between multiple chatbot instances if your organization has more than one.

See Ask AI Home: Monitor performance and profile to learn more.

First-line troubleshooting

Before contacting Support, you can resolve many issues yourself:

• Widget not showing or hidden behind content? Confirm the instance is enabled and Test Mode is off, then adjust the Z-Index under Appearance > Widget Bubble.
• Ask AI not responding? Refresh the page and retry, then check status.finalsite.com for an active incident.
• Widget blocked by your cookie banner? Categorize the askai.finalsite.com script as Essential / Strictly Necessary in your consent manager. See Manage session data in Ask AI.

What requires Finalsite Support

The following tasks are handled by Finalsite Support rather than in the admin platform:

• Enabling Ask AI on your account. Ask AI is part of the Finalsite suite; contact your Client Success Manager or Support to add it or provision new instances.
• Initial configuration and deployment setup. The technical setup that connects and embeds the widget on your site.
• Changes to where or how the widget displays, including hiding the chatbot from specific website pages or restricting it to certain pages, sections, or subdomains. Because the embed code applies at the site level, page-level display rules are configured by Support.
• Locating your Ask AI access URL or identifier if you can't find it in your Welcome email.
• Widget still not appearing after you've confirmed Test Mode is off and checked the Z-Index.
• Ask AI still not responding after a page refresh when no incident is posted on the status page.
• Privacy or consent-configuration questions specific to your compliance setup.

How to contact Support

For anything in the "requires Support" list, submit a request to Finalsite Support. To help us resolve it quickly, include:

• The page URL where Ask AI is (or should be) embedded.
• Expected behavior vs. actual behavior, including any visible error text.
• The time and date you first noticed the issue.
• For display changes, the specific pages the widget should appear on or be hidden from.

Quick reference table