Using the AI Assistants Screen
The AI assistants screen is where the system administrator decides whether people at your company may connect their own ChatGPT or Claude to ABM Service, and sees every assistant that is connected. Open the menu and, under Administration, select AI assistants. Only ABM user number 1 has this screen.
What is the AI assistants screen for?
The AI assistants screen in ABM Service lets the system administrator allow or stop people connecting their own AI assistant, such as ChatGPT or Claude, to your company's ABM Service, and lists every connection so you can end any of them. Open it from the menu: under Administration, select AI assistants.
Once a person has connected their assistant, they can ask it about calls, customers and engineers in their own words: which calls are due today, what a customer's last call was about, which engineer has been to a site before. If they allowed it when connecting, the assistant can also log a call, change one, schedule an engineer or attach a file, asking the person before each change. The assistant acts as that person: what it does in ABM Service is done under their name.
Each person connects their own assistant, with their own ChatGPT or Claude account. ABM Service does not supply an assistant. Nobody can connect one until you switch it on, and every site starts with it switched off.
The line under the heading reads People connecting their own ChatGPT or Claude to followed by your company's name. The switch, the address and the connections belong to that company: on a site with two ABM companies, each has its own AI assistants screen, and switching assistants on for one leaves the other as it was.
If anybody other than user 1 reaches the AI assistants screen, they see only Whether people may connect their own AI assistant is set by the system administrator, and this entry is only in their menu.
What do Off and On mean on the AI assistants screen?
The two choices in the Connecting assistants card at the top of the AI assistants screen decide whether anybody at your company may connect an assistant:
- Off — Nobody can connect an assistant. This is where every site starts.
- On — Anybody who signs in to ABM may connect their own. Every ABM user who can sign in to your company over the web may connect one, user 1 included. There is no way to allow some people and not others. Customers signing in to the Customer portal can never connect an assistant.
Above the two choices, the card explains in one line what connecting means: A person adds ABM to their own ChatGPT or Claude, signs in here once, and asks it about calls in their own words. It acts as them and sees what they see. Web only.
Choosing On saves nothing by itself. It opens the address box underneath, and assistants are switched on only when you select Check and switch on and the address passes its check. Choosing Off while assistants are on asks you first, because switching off ends everybody's connection.
While the AI assistants screen opens it shows Reading whether people may connect assistants…. If the setting cannot be read, the reason is shown in its place.
What appears on the AI assistants screen once assistants are switched on?
With assistants switched on, the AI assistants screen shows, under the Off and On choices:
- The address assistants use — your company's public web address, with Check and save beside it. Changing it and saving checks the new address and ends every connection.
- A line that begins People paste and ends into their assistant. Between the two is the exact address to give people.
- Calls assistants log start as — the call status a call starts at when an assistant logs it, Open until you choose another.
- What leaves the company — a reminder of what the assistants' companies receive.
- Connected — the list of every assistant connected right now, with the person it acts for and a Disconnect button on each line, and Disconnect everybody under the list. Until somebody connects, it says Nobody has connected an assistant yet.
While assistants are on, everybody signed in over the web also finds Your account in their menu, beside Sign out. Their Your account page lists the assistants they have connected, lets them disconnect their own, and shows the address to use when they have none yet. The entry appears in your own menu straight away, and in other people's the next time they open ABM Service in their browser or reload the page they are on.
What information leaves the company when somebody connects an assistant?
When somebody uses a connected assistant, what they ask about, and what ABM Service answers, goes to the company that runs their assistant and stays in their assistant's history. The AI assistants screen says so in its What leaves the company note: When somebody connects, what they ask about — call details, customer names and addresses, contact names and numbers — goes to their assistant's company (OpenAI, Anthropic …) and stays in their assistant history. Switch this on only if the company is content with that.
This is the decision the switch is really about. ABM Service hands over only what the assistant asks for while it works on the person's questions, but whatever it hands over leaves your company: it is held by OpenAI, Anthropic or whichever company runs that person's assistant, under that person's own account and its rules. Disconnecting an assistant, or switching assistants off, stops any further access at once, but nothing in ABM Service can remove what was already sent from the person's assistant history.
Some things are never handed to an assistant, whatever it is asked: a customer's balances, bank details and direct debit details, and the contents of attached files. An assistant is told which files a call has (their names and sizes) but cannot open them. It also never sees the Administration screens, even when user 1 connects one.
Tip: If your company has rules about personal data and outside services, check them before you choose On. The setting can be switched Off again at any moment.
What does "Web only" mean on the AI assistants screen?
"Web only" on the AI assistants screen means assistants reach ABM Service through its web server, over the internet, at your company's public address, and that people connect and manage their assistants in a browser. The ABM Service desktop app plays no part in it.
In practice:
- Switching on needs the web version. Assistants can be switched on only from ABM Service in a browser, signed in as user 1. Selecting Check and switch on in the desktop app is refused with Assistants connect to the web server, so switch this on from the web version of ABM, signed in as the administrator.
- Switching off and disconnecting work anywhere. You can choose Off, Disconnect one person or Disconnect everybody from the desktop app as well as from a browser.
- People connect in a browser. Connecting sends the person to the ABM Service web sign-in page, and the Your account entry is in the menu only when ABM Service is open in a browser, never in the desktop app's menu.
A site that is reached only from inside the office network cannot use assistants: ChatGPT and Claude run on their companies' own servers, so they need an address they can reach from the internet. The address check on the AI assistants screen refuses an address that leads only to a computer inside your network.
How are connected assistants kept secure?
Connected assistants in ABM Service are tied to a person, a sign-in and your company's own address, and you can end any of them from the AI assistants screen at any time.
- The person signs in to connect. Connecting takes them to ABM Service's Connect an assistant page, which names the assistant and asks them to allow it, through ABM Service's own sign-in page if they are not signed in. If they last signed in more than ten minutes earlier, they are asked to sign in again first, with their password and their authenticator code if they use one. Nobody types their ABM password into the assistant.
- The person chooses what it may do. Reading calls, customers and engineers comes with every connection. Making changes is a separate tick, Make changes in ABM, which starts ticked and which they may clear for an assistant that only reads.
- Access is renewed, not handed over for good. The access an assistant holds lasts an hour at a time and is renewed by the assistant while it is in use. An assistant left unused for 90 days stops working, and the person connects it again.
- Leavers are cut off. When a person is removed from ABM's list of users, their assistant stops working within the hour.
- A replayed renewal is cut off. If an assistant's access is renewed with a renewal ABM Service has already accepted, a sign that the connection may have been copied, ABM Service ends that connection. Using one assistant from two computers does not, by itself, set this off.
- The address is proved. Assistants connect only through the address you checked on the AI assistants screen; changing it ends every connection.