Getting help in the app

Ask AI for help is a help panel on the right-hand side of the Performance Hub. Ask it how to do something, or ask about your own setup, and it answers from the Performance Hub documentation without you leaving the page you're on.

Quick reference

Where to find it: The Help button in the top bar, or profile menu (your initials, top right) → Help → Ask AI for help, or Ctrl+I (Command+I on a Mac)

Who can access: Every signed-in user

Purpose: Quick answers from the docs, about the screen you're on

Open Ask AI for help

There are three ways to open the panel:

• The Help button. In the top bar, click the question mark in a speech bubble, to the left of the notifications bell. Its tooltip reads Help. Click it again to close the panel.
• The profile menu. Click your initials, then Help. The Help submenu has two items:
  • Ask AI for help opens the panel. It shows the keyboard shortcut: ⌘I on a Mac, Ctrl+I on other computers.
  • Platform Documentation opens these docs in a new tab.
• The keyboard. Press Ctrl+I (Command+I on a Mac) to open or close the panel. The shortcut works even while you're typing in a field, but not in a rich-text editor, where it makes text italic.

On a phone, the profile dialog has Ask AI for help and Platform Documentation as two separate items.

Figure 1: The Help button in the top bar

Figure 2: The Help submenu in the profile menu

Ask a question

A new conversation starts with a greeting by your first name, for example "Hi Dana, how can I help?", and "Ask how to do something in Performance Hub, or about your own setup." Below that are four suggested questions. Click one to ask it straight away:

• "How do I add a duress button?"
• "How do I schedule content on display screens?"
• "What is the Model Router?"
• "How do I give someone door access?"

To ask your own question, type it in Ask a question about Performance Hub at the bottom of the panel, then press Enter or click Send (the arrow). Press Shift+Enter to start a new line. A question can be up to 4,000 characters long. While an answer is on its way, Send becomes Stop: click it to stop the answer.

To follow up, type your next question in the same conversation. The panel keeps the earlier questions and answers in mind, so you don't need to repeat yourself.

Figure 3: Ask AI for help, ready for a question, on the Display Screens schedule

The screen you're asking about

Above the question box, the Asking about chip shows the screen you're on, for example Asking about: Display Screens › Schedule. It includes the tab you have open, and any dialog or drawer. Your questions are answered with that screen in mind.

To leave the screen out, click the × on the chip (Remove page context). Your next questions are answered without it until you go to another page or open the panel again. Answers still take the selected facility into account.

Read the answer

Your question appears in a blue bubble. While the panel works on the answer, a status line shows what it's doing: Searching the docs…, Reading the sources… or Checking Performance Hub….

The answer then appears word by word:

• Sources are shown above the answer: up to five docs pages that best match your question, each with its page title and section. They're the top search results for your question, not a reference for each sentence, so some may be only loosely related. Click one to open it in a new tab.
• The answer is formatted text, with steps, bold labels, links and code blocks. Click Copy code to copy a code block.
• Links to pages in the Performance Hub open in the app. Links to the docs, and other links, open in a new tab. Docs links go straight to the right section, in your language where the page has been translated.
• Images from the docs can appear in the answer. Click one to enlarge it, then Close image, or Open image in a new tab. In dark mode you see the dark version of the image.

Under each answer, click Copy to copy it ("Copied" confirms it). Under the latest answer, Regenerate asks for a new answer to the same question.

If you scroll up while an answer is still arriving, click Latest to jump back to it.

At the bottom of the panel: "AI can make mistakes. Check important information." Before you change something important, such as who can open a door, check the answer against the Sources.

Figure 4: An answer, with its Sources above it and Copy and Regenerate below

What it can and can't do

Ask AI for help answers from the public Performance Hub documentation. It can also look at your own setup at the selected facility. While it looks, the status line reads Checking Performance Hub…. It only reads your setup: it doesn't change anything.

Good questions for Ask AI for help:

• "How do I schedule a café menu board for weekday mornings?"
• "What does an offline door controller mean?"
• "How do I give a new receptionist door access to the staff entrance?"

For anything that needs changes made for you, or a task with several steps, connected apps, files or reports, use the AI Agent. When a question needs it, the answer can end with a card, Try the Performance Hub Agent, which explains that "The Performance Hub Agent can make changes for you and take care of tasks with several steps, connected apps, files and reports." The card's button depends on your access:

Your conversations

Each conversation is saved as you go. Close the panel and open it again, and the conversation is still there.

Click More options (⋯) in the panel's header for:

• New conversation: start again with an empty panel. Your earlier conversation is kept in your history.
• Conversation history: open Recent conversations. Each conversation shows its first question as its title, and when you last used it, for example "now" or "5 min ago". Click its delete icon (Delete conversation) to remove it. New conversation is at the top, and Clear history is at the bottom.
• Clear history: delete all your conversations. You're asked "Clear all conversation history?": "This permanently deletes all of your saved conversations on this device. This action cannot be undone." Click Clear history to confirm, or Cancel.

Your last 20 conversations are kept in this browser on this device, for you only. They aren't synced to your other devices or browsers. Until you've had a conversation, Recent conversations reads "No past conversations yet. Conversations you start are saved on this device."

Figure 5: Recent conversations, from More options → Conversation history

Keep it open while you work

By default the panel opens over the page. It closes when you click outside it, press Escape, click Close (×) or click the Help button again.

To keep it open while you work, click Pin panel in the header. The panel then sits beside the page, which narrows to make room, and Escape no longer closes it. Click Unpin panel to go back.

To change the panel's width, drag its left edge. It can be from 360 px wide up to 80% of the window. The arrow keys also resize it while the edge has keyboard focus. Double-click the edge to reset the width.

The Performance Hub remembers the width and whether the panel is pinned. If a pinned panel was open when you reload the page, it opens again.

On a phone, the panel fills the screen, and pinning isn't available.

Figure 6: A pinned panel beside the page

Languages

Ask AI for help follows your Performance Hub language, the Preferred Language in User Preferences:

• The panel's own labels are translated into Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Korean, Italian, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Thai, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Indonesian and Malay. In other languages they're in English.
• You can ask in any language. Answers come in your language, and docs links go to the docs in your language where they've been translated.
• Answers in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu read right to left. The panel's layout stays the same.

If something goes wrong

Ask AI in these docs

These docs have their own Ask AI, which answers from the same documentation and suggests the same questions. Ask AI for help is a separate feature in the Performance Hub: use it while you work, because it knows the screen you're on and can check your own setup. The two don't share conversations, and the history in the app stays on your device.

Related pages

• Finding your way around: the top bar, the main menu and the settings menu
• Your account & security: the profile menu and your Preferred Language
• AI Agent: an AI agent that makes changes and takes care of tasks for you