How to interact with the chat

The chat is where you do most of your work. You ask in plain language; your question, together with the passages the assistant finds in the project you have selected, goes to a language model, and the model writes the answer.

Your documents are what the assistant is set up to answer from, and they are the only thing it searches by default. They are not the only thing it knows: the model brings its own general knowledge, and your administrator can connect further tools to a project. So it is worth a glance at the labels above an answer, and at the sources it names, whenever the answer matters.

Start a conversation

1. Check the Project card at the top of Home shows the right project. It decides which documents the assistant will search.
2. Click New chat at the top of the list on the left.
3. Type your question in the Type your question... box.
4. Press Enter, or click the send button at the bottom right of the box.

Everything you ask after that stays in the same conversation, so you can ask follow-up questions without repeating yourself, "and what about last year?" will be understood in the context of what you just asked.

Tip Start a New chat when you move to a different subject. A long conversation that wanders across several topics gives the assistant more chances to misread what you meant.

Ask good questions

The assistant searches your documents for passages that match your question, so the words you choose matter more than how politely you phrase them.

What works well

• Ask one thing at a time. Two questions in one message usually get one and a half answers. Ask the second as a follow-up.
• Use the words your documents use. If your contracts say "termination notice", ask about the termination notice rather than "quitting early".
• Say which document or period you mean when you know it: "in the 2025 supplier agreement", "in the March report".
• Say what you want back. "List them as bullet points", "summarise in three sentences", "give me the exact wording" all change the shape of the answer.

What works less well

• Very broad questions, such as "tell me everything about our suppliers". Ask something specific first, then widen out.
• Questions about something that is not in the documents. If the project holds HR policies, it cannot tell you about last week's sales.
• One or two words on their own. Notice period finds passages; What is the notice period for a fixed-term contract? gets an answer.

Understand the answer

While the assistant works, a label appears for each step it takes: Searching files, Loading files, Time & date, and others. You will not see the same labels every time, they reflect the steps that particular question needed, out of the ones the project and prompt allow. Click any of them to open a panel showing exactly what was run and what came back. You do not need to read these to trust an answer, but they are the quickest way to see whether the assistant searched for what you had in mind.

A few things worth knowing as you read:

• Answers can name their source. Depending on how your administrator set the project up, the assistant will mention details of the documents it used, such as the title or the publication date. That is the trail back to the original, a clear document title makes this far more useful, which is why titles matter when you upload.
• If an answer looks thin, the search may have come up short. The passages the assistant is allowed to use have to pass a relevance bar set by your administrator. Rephrasing with the wording used in your documents is the fastest fix.
• If the answer says it cannot find something, take that seriously. It usually means the documents in this project do not cover it, rather than that the question was badly phrased. Check the Project card is on the right project before assuming the document is missing.
• Hover over an answer to copy it. A copy button appears at its bottom-right corner and puts the full text on your clipboard, formatting included.

Ask a single question instead

Switch the Mode card to Q&A v5 when you have one self-contained question and no interest in a conversation. You get one question, one answer, and a Was this answer useful? prompt with a thumbs up and thumbs down. That feedback goes to whoever tunes the project, so it is worth a click.

Chat v5 is the better choice whenever you expect to ask a follow-up.

Attach a document to one conversation

If you have a file you want to ask about right now, and it does not belong in the project permanently:

1. Click the paperclip at the bottom left of the question box.
2. Pick a PDF or Word (.docx) file, up to 50 MB.
3. Wait for the label next to the paperclip to change from Processing... to Ready.
4. Ask your question as usual.

A file attached this way belongs to that one conversation and nowhere else. The assistant can use it while you are in that chat, but it will not appear in the project's documents, your colleagues will not see it, and your own other chats will not find it either. If you want to ask about the same file tomorrow in a new chat, attach it again, or add it to the project properly: see How to upload documents.

What to expect Processing takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the size of the file. You can keep typing while you wait, but hold off on sending your question until the label says Ready. If it says Failed, the file could not be read, the notice explains why.

Narrow a search

The gear icon next to the Mode card opens Advanced Settings, where you can restrict a search to particular documents, to a date range, or to documents carrying a particular label. It is useful when a project holds a great many documents and you already know which corner of it you want. Everything there is optional, and you can leave it alone until you need it.

Tips for better results

• Keep one conversation per subject.
• Ask, read, then refine. The second question is usually the good one.
• Reuse the vocabulary of your documents rather than your own shorthand.
• When an answer matters, follow it back to the document it names and read the passage yourself.
• Use the thumbs up and thumbs down in Q&A v5. It is the main signal your administrator has for improving the project's wording.