About This Feature
AskAI is Disco’s member-facing AI tool that transforms how Members interact with content and community knowledge. By leveraging AI to answer questions, Members can access personalized, community-specific responses that enhance understanding and retention. AskAI empowers Members to explore content at their own pace while reducing the burden on Community Admins to address individual queries.
How It Works
Members can ask questions about community knowledge from the For You page and a dedicated AskAI page in the sidebar. To produce a response, DiscoAI leverages information in the community’s shared knowledge, including products, resources, and other accessible content, to provide context-specific responses that respect the Member’s access permissions. Each response includes source references to maintain transparency. Members can ask multiple questions in a conversation thread, view their question history, and rate responses with thumbs up/down to provide feedback.
Admins control the AskAI experience through the Admin dashboard, where they can enable or disable the feature. They can also customize suggested prompts to guide member interactions and access reports that track engagement metrics, such as the number of questions asked and feedback received.
How To Configure & Preview AskAI
By default, AskAI is hidden from Members so Admins can configure its settings before making it available for members to ask questions. To configure & preview AskAI, follow these steps.
- Go to Admin > Disco AI.
- Click “Edit” to open the AskAI settings.
- Customize the AskAI settings for your community:
- Specify the name of the AskAI in your community. The name in the sidebar will be based on this.
- Add suggested prompts to the prompt list to customize them. Members will see suggested prompts directly under the box where they enter their questions.
- Specify which sources AskAI should reference to answer questions.
- Specify if AskAI should search the web when responding. If AskAI should only use content from within the community to respond, turn web search OFF.
- Click Preview at the top right of the AskAI Settings modal. Note that the Preview button will only appear if AskAI is turned off for Members.
- Test AskAI by asking questions and testing any suggested prompts.
How To Turn on AskAI for Members
Once satisfied with the settings and the preview, it’s time to turn on AskAI for Members.
- Go to Admin > Disco AI.
- Turn on the toggle for AskAI.
- Click “Yes, Enable AskAI”.
- Decide whether to turn on AskAI on the For You page. If yes, members can ask a question from the Hero block on 'For You'. If not, Members will be able to access AskAI from the sidebar.
- AskAI can also be enabled by going to Admin > Appearance > Sidebar and enabling AskAI.
How Members Ask Questions
- Go to the AskAI page in the sidebar (or access AskAI on For You, if enabled in step 4 above).
- Enter a question in the “Ask a question” box, and press Enter.
- View the response, including linked sources for further exploration.
- Ask additional questions in the same conversation to explore the topic further.
- Optional: Use the thumbs up/down to provide feedback on the response quality.
How To Add AskAI to 'For You'
- Add a Hero block to the For You page, if one does not exist. If the Hero block exists, click the … to edit its settings.
- In the Hero block settings, enable AskAI.
- Save changes. Members will now see an AskAI input on the For You page.
How To Access Reports
- Go to Admin > Disco AI.
- View key metrics, including the number of Members asking questions, total questions asked, volume of thumbs up/down ratings, and trends in engagement with AskAI.
Important Considerations
- The answer provided by AskAI only includes content and information that each Member has access to within the community. Unpublished content or content in Apps or Products that the Member does not have access to will not be shown.
- If web search is disabled, AskAI will not pull information from the web. Be aware that if the community has insufficient content and web search is OFF, Members may see less complete answers.
- Admins can customize suggested prompts to guide learners effectively.
- Coming Soon: Additional reports, including a summary of questions asked, and where members rated responses with thumbs up/down.
FAQs
Q: Can AskAI answer questions using unpublished content?
A: No, AskAI only includes content that is accessible to the Member asking the question.
Q: Are responses in real-time?
A: Yes, responses are generated in real-time based on the most current community content.
Q: Does AskAI support multiple languages?
A: AskAI will respond appropriately in the languages supported by OpenAI and other foundation model providers that AskAI accesses under the hood.
Q: Can learners use AskAI on mobile devices?
A: AskAI is currently only available on the web. AskAI is coming soon to the Disco mobile app.
Q: Can I customize the responses generated by AskAI?
A: No, responses are automatically generated based on available community content. Admins can influence responses by adjusting content visibility and adding suggested prompts.
Q: Can I disable AskAI for specific Member groups?
A: Currently, AskAI can be enabled or disabled for the entire community, but not restricted by Member group.
Q: Can Members see questions asked by others?
A: No, AskAI interactions are private to each Member; they can only view their own question history.
Q: Can Admins see who asked specific questions?
A: No, the reporting anonymizes individual users who asked questions.
Q: Can I export AskAI usage data?
A: Not at this time. Reporting is available through the Admin dashboard, currently there is no export option.