AI Assistant FAQ

Enabling and configuring the AI Assistant

How do I enable the AI Assistant for the first time?

Here's the recommended setup order:

1. Go to Admin Panel → Integrations → AI Assistant
2. Leave the main toggle OFF while you complete setup
3. In the Settings tab: set a custom name, avatar, and welcome message (optional)
4. Add your organization's name(s) and any internal acronyms your team frequently uses under Organization Terms
5. In the Permissions tab: choose which users or groups should have access to ask the AI Assistant questions
6. In the Topics tab: add your first content sources (see below)
7. Once setup is complete, toggle the assistant ON

💡 Tip: Canadian and Oceanian customers must sign the AI Addendum before the toggle will become available. If you haven't received it, contact your CSM.

Where do AI Create and AI Enhance live? 

AI Create and AI Enhance are editor-level tools that appear inside the page editing experience. They have their own settings page in the Admin Panel, independent of the AI Assistant. You can enable or disable each of the three tools individually, and access can be set per user or per group for each.

Can I control which users have access to the AI Assistant?

Yes, with full granularity. In the Permissions tab of the AI Assistant admin page, you can grant access to all registered users, specific groups, departments, or individual users. This makes it straightforward to run a controlled pilot before a full rollout. Start with your intranet team or a single team, review the logs, then expand.

Can all AI features be disabled completely?

Yes. All AI features are disabled by default. There's no automatic opt-in. Admins choose to enable each feature deliberately. You can leave any or all of them off indefinitely if needed for compliance or policy reasons.

Topics and content indexing

How do I add content to the AI Assistant?

Content is organized into "topics" in the AI Assistant admin page:

1. Click "Add Topic" and give it a name, such as ‘HR Policies’
2. In the source field, search for the intranet section you want to add
3. Check "Include subpages"—this pulls in the full hierarchy, not just the top-level page
4. Click Save. It will be indexed immediately
5. Repeat for up to 20 topics

💡 Tip: always click "Include subpages" unless you intentionally want only the top-level page. It's a common step to miss.

What are the topic and page limits?

You can create up to 20 topics with a combined total of 1,000 pages. Pages include file attachments; each attachment (Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint) counts as one page, so a page with five PDFs attached counts as six pages total. The text content of those file types is all available to the assistant.

What happens if we go over the 1,000-page limit?

It's a soft limit, not a hard cutoff. If a new subpage gets added to an indexed section and pushes you over, it will still be indexed. You'll see a warning in the admin logs. To bring the count down, archiving pages is the cleanest option. Archived content is automatically excluded from indexing. If you need a higher limit, contact support or your Customer Success Manager.

Do new pages added to an indexed section get picked up automatically?

Yes. If a new page is created inside a section that's part of a topic, it gets indexed automatically. Deleting or archiving a page removes it from the index right away. There's no manual re-sync needed.

How can I check whether a specific page is indexed?

Navigate to the page and open the Page Information panel. Under "AI Assistant Topics," you'll see whether the page is indexed and which topic it belongs to. If it's not indexed, it will show "Not indexed by AI Assistant."

Can I add individual pages to a topic, rather than a whole section?

Yes. Topics aren't limited to a single section source—you can add multiple individual pages from anywhere on the intranet to the same topic. This gives you precise control over exactly what content the assistant can draw from.

Permissions and data security

Does the AI Assistant respect existing page permissions?

Yes, fully. The assistant enforces permissions at the AI layer. It will only include content from pages the requesting user already has access to. A user can't surface restricted content by asking the assistant, even if that content is indexed in a topic. Before launching, it's worth auditing your page permissions to make sure sensitive content is appropriately restricted.

Is customer data used to train AI models?

No. ThoughtFarmer does not perform any training or reinforcement learning with customer data. Your intranet content is never used to improve or fine-tune AI models.

Does AWS log our data when the AI processes requests?

No. Requests to AI models via AWS Bedrock are processed in memory only and are not logged by AWS. ThoughtFarmer does log user requests and chatbot responses, but those logs are stored within your own customer environment.

Can AI requests be intercepted in transit?

No. All requests run across private AWS subnets and are encrypted in transit. There is no public internet exposure.

Is our data stored separately from other customers?

Yes. Every customer has a separate database instance and a separate Elasticsearch index. There is no commingling of customer data at any level.

Where is data processed and stored? What's the regional breakdown?

ThoughtFarmer operates data centres in the US, Canada, and EU. Data is stored at rest in your region, and core ThoughtFarmer processing happens in your region. For AI processing: US and EU customers use AWS cross-region inferencing within their geography. Canadian customers currently use the AWS global model (most likely routed to the US), as AWS does not yet offer a Canada-specific AI region. This is an AWS infrastructure limitation that applies to all vendors with Canadian data centres.

Logs, monitoring, and troubleshooting

How do I review AI Assistant interactions and user feedback?

In the AI Assistant admin page, open the Logs tab. Every interaction is listed with the question asked, the answer given, and any thumbs up/down feedback. Click into any entry to see the full transcript including the user's written comment (if they left one on a thumbs down). Sort by feedback to quickly spot where the assistant is underperforming.

What should I do when I see a thumbs-down on a question the assistant couldn't answer?

Check whether the relevant content is indexed. If the content exists on the intranet but wasn't in a topic, add it. Indexing is immediate and you can re-test right away. If the content doesn't exist on the intranet at all, it's a signal to create it. Logs are handy for identifying content gaps.

The AI Assistant said it doesn't know the answer, but the content definitely exists. What should I check?

A few things to investigate:

1. Is the page inside a topic? Check Page Information → AI Assistant Topics.
2. Was "Include subpages" checked when the topic was set up? If not, only the top-level page is indexed.
3. Is the page archived? Archived content is excluded from indexing.
4. Is the content in a file attachment? Make sure it's a supported format (Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint).
5. Does the user have permission to view that page? The assistant won't surface content the user can't access.

Can the AI Assistant make up answers (hallucinate)?

It's designed not to. The assistant uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). It retrieves relevant intranet content first and grounds its answer in that, rather than drawing from general knowledge. In our testing we haven't been able to reproduce hallucinations. That said, no AI system is infallible, and we always recommend prompting users to verify via the cited sources.

Does the assistant always show sources?

Yes. Every answer includes clickable links to the source pages it drew from. Users can click through to the original page to verify the content. This is a non-negotiable part of how we've built the assistant — transparency matters.

Multilingual and edge cases

Does the AI Assistant support non-English content?

The beta is officially English only. However, in practice, if your intranet content is in another language and a user asks a question in that language, the assistant often handles it correctly. One customer with French-only content in Quebec tested this and got good results. Formal multilingual support with full admin controls is on the roadmap.

What happens if a non-admin adds a subpage that pushes us over the 1,000-page limit?

The page will still be indexed as it's a soft limit. You'll see a warning in the Logs tab. To reduce the count, archive pages you no longer need the assistant to reference. You can also contact support if you'd like to discuss raising the limit.

If a page is cross-linked into a section, will the content it points to be included?

Only the link page itself gets indexed. The assistant doesn't follow the link to the destination content. If you want the destination content available, add that section as its own topic source.

Pricing and beta

How is the AI Assistant priced, and what's included right now?

AI Create and AI Enhance are included in your ThoughtFarmer subscription at no extra cost. The AI Assistant is in beta and includes 1,000 pages of indexed content at no additional charge. Pricing for pages beyond 1,000 is being finalized and will be announced when the beta ends. If you need more than 1,000 pages now, reach out to our Support team or your Customer Success Manager.

When does the beta end?

We're aiming to wrap up within the next six months, though we don't have a fixed date. We'll communicate clearly before any pricing or feature changes take effect.

Still have questions?

Reach out to your Customer Success Manager, submit a support ticket, or visit the ThoughtFarmer Community. We're always happy to help.