What Can a Connected AI Assistant Do in ABM Service?
Once you have connected your own AI assistant, such as ChatGPT or Claude, to ABM Service, it works in ABM Service as you. It can always read calls, customers and engineers, and when you left Make changes in ABM ticked on the Connect an assistant page it can also log and change calls, schedule engineers and attach files, asking you before each change. This page explains what that covers, whose name goes on it, and how long a connection lasts.
What can my AI assistant read in ABM Service?
A connected assistant can read what you could see on your own ABM Service screens, and nothing more: the Allow page puts it as Read calls, customers and engineers. Every connection can read, whether or not it may make changes.
- Calls: lists of calls by the date their visits are due or the date they were logged, for a day, a week or a month, with one line per scheduled visit; calls you follow up, calls you logged, calls nobody has been scheduled for yet, and one customer's calls. It can search calls for words in their reference, Comment, details or resolution, among the calls logged in the last twelve months unless you give it other dates, and it is given at most ten at a time, so for an older call give it the number or the dates. It can open one call: its customer, contact, status, visits, and the text of its details and resolution, up to the first 6,000 characters of each.
- Customers: finding a customer by name, code, address, phone number or postcode, and opening one as the customer screen shows it: addresses, phone and e-mail, notes, holds, where it is on the map, contacts, your company's custom fields, and the engineers who have been on site in the last twelve months. It does not read a customer's balances or bank details.
- Engineers, call types and call statuses: their names, as your company has them.
When you ask for "my calls", the assistant is told that means the calls you follow up, because ABM does not link an office user to an engineer. To see an engineer's visits, name the engineer.
ABM Service gives the assistant a link with every call and customer it reads, which opens that call or customer in ABM Service, so you can ask for the link and check it on the real screen.
What the assistant reads for you goes to the company that runs your assistant and stays in your history with it, as the Connect an assistant page says.
What changes can my AI assistant make in ABM Service?
When you left Make changes in ABM ticked as you connected it, your assistant can change things in ABM Service, and is asked to read each change back to you and get your agreement before it makes it. The Allow page lists them as Log and change calls, book engineers and attach files.
- Log a new call for a customer, the way the New call screen does: the call type, the one-line Comment, a contact, and the details, which can come from a saved e-mail.
- Change a call: its status, its Comment, contact details, reference, purchase order (PO) number and custom fields, and add text to the end of its details or resolution. It never removes text from a call's documents.
- Schedule an engineer on a call. It can suggest who could do the job and when, from each engineer's free time and their visits to that customer, and then book the visit once you agree. It says if the engineer already has something at that time.
- Attach a file to a customer or a call, or log a call from a saved e-mail. Files are sent from your computer to a one-time address, so this needs an assistant that can send files from your computer; an assistant that only chats may not be able to. Each address takes one file, of up to 50 MB, and lasts ten minutes; ask the assistant for a new one if it runs out. To log a call from an e-mail, save the e-mail as an Outlook message (.msg) or as .eml first.
When you cleared Make changes in ABM, the connection reads only, and the assistant is refused every change with This connection may read ABM but not make changes: "make changes in ABM" was left unticked when it was connected. Connect the assistant again and leave it ticked to allow it. Connecting it again replaces the read-only connection with one that may make changes.
Anything the call screen would refuse, such as a new call with no contact name, is refused to the assistant in the call screen's own words, so it can tell you what is missing and put it right.
Which name goes on what my AI assistant does in ABM Service?
Everything your assistant does in ABM Service is done as you, the ABM user who allowed it, and appears in ABM Service under your name, exactly as if you had done it on the screen.
- A call your assistant logs is logged in your name, now, with the call type's own settings, exactly as the New call screen would log it. It starts at the call status your system administrator chose for calls that assistants log, which is Open unless they chose another, such as a status the office uses to review calls before work starts.
- Text your assistant adds to the end of a call's details or resolution is headed Added by with your name, through an AI assistant, and the date and time, so anyone reading the call can tell where it came from.
- A change to a call is saved through the call screen's own save, on the call as it is at that moment, so it is the same as you saving those fields yourself.
- An engineer your assistant schedules is booked the same way Schedule engineer books one on the call screen, and appears on the Scheduler.
So check what your assistant proposes before you agree to it: a call it logs is a real call, which the assistant cannot delete. Open the call from its link to see it as everybody else will.
Your colleagues see these calls, changes and visits like any others. Nothing you do through the assistant is private to you in ABM Service.
How long does a connection to my AI assistant last?
A connection to your assistant keeps working until it is ended, whatever you do in your browser. Signing out of ABM Service, closing the browser, or ABM Service being updated on your company's server does not end it, and neither does changing your ABM password or turning off your authenticator app.
A connection ends when:
- you select Disconnect beside it under Connected assistants on your Your account page;
- you connect the same assistant again, which replaces the old connection with the new one;
- it is not used for ninety days; every time the assistant uses it, the ninety days start again;
- your system administrator disconnects it, disconnects everybody, switches assistants off for the company, or changes the address assistants use;
- your user is removed from ABM's user list, which ends it within the hour.
Once a connection has ended, the assistant can no longer reach ABM Service. A connection that you or your system administrator ended disappears from Connected assistants at once; one that ran out after ninety days without use can still be listed there, with a used date more than ninety days ago, although it no longer works. To use the assistant with ABM Service again, connect it again from the assistant, which replaces any line it left behind.
The connection belongs to the assistant, not to the browser you connected it from. Check it, and disconnect it, from the Your account page in a web browser; the ABM Service desktop app has no Your account page.