The assistant

What this is for

There’s a small cat button in the bottom-right corner of nearly every
screen. Click it and you can just ask — in plain English — instead of
hunting through pages. Who’s on the roster for next weekend? What’s our
sound tech’s phone number? What did we net last season?

It answers from your own records. It is not a search engine and it is not
guessing: it looks things up in your company’s data and tells you what it
found.

Where it lives

The round button with the cat sits at the bottom-right of the screen. Click
it and a panel opens beside your work — the page behind stays live, so you
can keep clicking around while it’s open.

Keyboard shortcuts, if you like them:

Along the top of the panel: a back arrow, Previous chats, New chat,
a pin (Pin open / Unpin), and Close. Pinning keeps it on screen
while you work.

It’s available across the main admin screens, the staff portal, and the
driver portal. Studios don’t have it — the studio side has no assistant.

There’s a second way in. When you search and don’t find what you wanted,
the search results offer a row reading Ask the assistant about “…” —
because, as it says there, it reaches places a name match doesn’t.

What it can look up

All of these are read-only. It’s just fetching and telling you.

Your events

• List your company’s events, soonest first
• One event’s dates, venue, hotel, load-in and load-out times, on-site
  contact, and status
• An event’s active staff roster — names, roles, who’s a trainee, how
  they’re travelling
• What an uploaded hotel or venue contract actually says

Your people

• Find a staff member by name and get their contact details, roles, and
  home airport
• Explain why somebody was picked — or not picked — for a role on an event

Your money (Finance add-on, and only if you’re allowed to see money
pages)

• The season roll-up: revenue, expenses, net, margin, and the per-event rows
• One event’s full financial report, line by line

Your own work

• Your open tasks, most urgent first
• Anything saved in your company knowledge base — policies, processes,
  contacts, how-tos

If your plan doesn’t include an area, or your account isn’t allowed to see
it, the assistant simply doesn’t have that ability. It won’t tease you with
something it can’t do.

What it can do — and why it always asks first

The assistant can also change things. It never does so on its own.

When you ask for a change, it doesn’t make it. It writes down exactly what
it proposes and shows you a card, right there in the conversation, with two
buttons: Approve and Dismiss. Nothing happens until you click
Approve.

The four changes it can propose:

• Change one detail on an event — venue, hotel, contacts, times,
  logistics
• Send a message to named staff members
• Save something to your knowledge base — a policy, a process, a
  contact, a how-to
• Assign a task to one staff member, with a due date if you like

A proposal only stays good for 15 minutes. After that the card reads
Expired — ask the assistant again, which is exactly what you should do.

Good questions to start with

The panel offers you a few of these as buttons when you open a fresh
conversation, and they change depending on who you are and where you are.

If you’re an admin or coordinator, on an event page:

• Who’s on the roster for this event?
• What are this event’s key details?
• Look up a staff member’s phone number

If you’re an admin or coordinator, anywhere else:

• Get the details for an upcoming event
• Who’s on the roster for an event?
• Look up a staff member’s contact info

If you’re staff, on an event page:

• What’s my flight confirmation number?
• Who am I meeting at the airport?
• Who am I rooming with?
• What time is load-in?

If you’re staff, anywhere else:

• How do I change my home airport?
• When do I get paid?
• How do I submit expenses?
• Can I talk to an admin?

If you drive the truck:

• Where do I pick up the freight?
• What time is load-in?
• I’m running late
• Truck broke down

Coordinators and admins on an event page also get an amber button reading
Something changed? That one isn’t a question — it opens the tool for
reporting a disruption and building a plan. See
When plans change.

When it hands you to a person

The assistant knows what it doesn’t know. If you ask a staff-side question
it can’t answer from your records, or you ask for a human, or something is
genuinely urgent — an illness, an accident, a cancelled flight, a truck
that won’t start — it flags the conversation for a coordinator instead of
guessing.

When that happens you’ll see a line saying A coordinator has this
conversation and will reply here, and the reply box changes to
A coordinator will reply here…. Keep typing in the same place; a person
takes it from there.

It also won’t invent things. It will not make up a pay amount, a flight
number, a confirmation code, a hotel name, a policy, or a phone number. If
the detail isn’t in your records, it says so.

Small print worth knowing

• It can be wrong. There’s a reminder under the box that says exactly
  that. Double-check anything that matters.
• It remembers the current conversation, roughly the last thirty
  messages. Start a New chat for a clean slate; find old ones under
  Previous chats.
• There’s a speed limit of 20 messages a minute, so a stuck key can’t
  run away with itself. If you hit it, wait a moment and carry on.
• Each message can be up to 4,000 characters.
• There’s a monthly allowance on your plan. As you get close you’ll see
  a small note saying so, and if you pass it you’ll see another — but your
  replies keep working either way. It never cuts you off mid-weekend.