The in-app AI Assistant and its permissions

The AI Assistant is a chat panel inside Dispatch Bros that answers questions from your own business data — "How many open jobs do I have?", "Any overdue invoices?" — for your team, not your customers. Owners always have access; an admin decides which other roles can use it and which data areas it may read, on the AI Assistant tab of Settings. Access and scopes are enforced on the server, so a toggle applies instantly to everyone.

Before you start

• Changing AI permissions requires an owner or admin login (the tab only appears for admins).
• The assistant answers within the data scopes you enable — it never reads areas you've switched off.

Step 1 — Open the assistant

Click the AI Assistant button in the top bar. The panel opens with the header AI Assistant ("Ask about your jobs, customers, calls & more"), a draggable window, and an input reading "Ask me anything...". First-time users see suggested prompts like "How many open jobs do I have?" and "Any overdue invoices?". Press Enter to send; the trash icon (Clear chat) wipes your saved conversation.

Step 2 — Choose who can use it

In Settings → AI Assistant, the first section is Who Can Use AI Chat:

• Owner — marked Always on; owners can never be locked out.
• Admin, Dispatcher, Technician — individual toggles.

Turning a role off blocks the panel for those users immediately — they see the "Not enabled for your role" screen.

Step 3 — Choose what data it can access

The second section, What AI Can Access, scopes the assistant's knowledge with per-area toggles:

• Jobs & Scheduling
• Customer Details
• Finance & Revenue
• Invoices & Estimates
• Messages & Calls
• Projects & P&L
• Technicians

A scope that's off is invisible to the assistant for the entire company — a dispatcher can't coax revenue numbers out of it while Finance & Revenue is disabled. This is separate from roles and permissions, which govern the app's pages themselves.

Troubleshooting

• "AI Assistant is turned off" — the feature isn't enabled for the workspace. The account owner (or platform admin) needs to enable it.
• "Not enabled for your role" — the panel says: "An admin can grant your role access in Settings → AI Assistant → Who Can Use AI Chat." Ask an admin to flip your role's toggle.
• "Sign in required" — "Your session expired. Sign in again to use AI Assistant."
• "AI Assistant unavailable" — access couldn't be verified right now; try again in a moment.
• History won't load — the panel shows a retry option; you can still send new messages while history is unavailable.
• The clear button turned red — the wipe didn't stick ("Clear failed — try again"); your messages are restored so nothing is silently lost. Try again.