Asking Questions

Ask answers your questions about the business data you can read, the applications and documentation in the workspace, and files you attach. It is for reading and explaining, not for making changes: it reads IBM i data with read-only queries, and it is instructed never to create, change or delete data, records, files or reports. Each question starts a private conversation that you can continue with follow-up questions.

This is Portal's own assistant. It is separate from Ask CoderFlow, the assistant in the CoderFlow Web UI, and from the Assistant beside an application.

Before you start

• You need data access in the workspace (the portal:data permission). Without it, the Ask section isn't shown.
• Ask uses the same AI setup as report creation, so it is available wherever an administrator has made report creation available. When it isn't, New question and the Home Ask bar are hidden. Your existing conversations stay listed so you can read them.
• Answers use your own access. IBM i data is read with your personal IBM i login (see Personal Settings), so you see only what that login can read. If you haven't saved a login, or a question needs a personal secret you haven't set, the assistant tells you what to add under Profile Settings.
• Where IT lets the assistant use outside services, it does so with the keys and tokens available to it, including your own secrets. Those calls aren't limited to reading, so where you can, save keys that can only read.

The assistant uses the AI agent and model IT chose for the workspace. If you have selected your own account for that agent under Profile Settings → AI Providers, it uses yours; otherwise it uses the server's. See Personal Settings.

Ask a question

Start in any of these places:

• the Ask bar at the top of Home (Ask about your data, reports or applications…, up to 2,000 characters), then Ask;
• New question (+) on the sidebar's Ask heading;
• Ask a question in the sidebar when you have no questions yet.

Type your question and press Ask, or Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on macOS). The first answer can take a few minutes while the assistant looks into your data. Meanwhile:

• The reply in progress shows what the assistant is doing, the time so far, and Steps so far. After 20 seconds without a new step it adds Still working. Some steps take a minute or two.
• You can go elsewhere in Portal. The sidebar marks the question while it is being answered and when a new answer arrives, and a notice with Open conversation appears.
• You can write your next message while you wait. It is sent when you press the send button once the answer is in.
• If you have scrolled up, New reply takes you to the newest answer.

Then ask follow-up questions in the same conversation with Send follow-up question. The assistant sees the earlier messages. It may also ask you a question back, with choices to pick from. See Interactive Replies.

Read an answer

Answers are formatted text and can include tables. Each answer also has:

• Sources (N), a list of where the answer came from. Each source has a title and a kind (Data, Document, Application, Web, Attachment or Source), sometimes a detail such as the filters or period used, and for data, when it was read. An answer lists at most 12 sources.
• Worked for with the time it took. Click it to see the steps the assistant took for that answer.
• Charts, when you ask for one or when a chart makes the answer clearer: a pie chart, or a bar or line chart. The numbers are also given in the text. Charts follow your light or dark theme.
• Up to four images the assistant made for the answer. Click one to open it full size in a new tab.

Use the copy button on a message to copy its text.

The assistant is told to say what the data doesn't show rather than guess, and to suggest Request for IT when something needs changing, or Create a report when you want to keep watching the information.

Attach files

Click Attach files (the paper clip), or paste or drop files onto the message box. Images you paste appear in the message. Capture screenshot (the camera) captures a screen or window through your browser's screen-sharing prompt.

Click Edit on an attached image to crop, annotate or draw on it before sending.

• At most 10 files per message, and 10 MB per file. Larger or extra files are skipped, and Portal says which.
• At most 30 files and 60 MB in one conversation, including images in the answers.
• Files with the same name are renamed.
• A file stored only in OneDrive, SharePoint or on a network drive must first be downloaded to your computer.

Files you sent appear under your message. PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP images open in the browser; other files download.

Stop or try again

Stop, in the reply in progress, ends the answer. Your question stays in the conversation marked Stopped. Nothing was changed.

When an answer didn't finish, was stopped or was interrupted, Try again beside your question asks it again, without repeating it in the conversation.

An answer is stopped if it takes longer than 15 minutes, unless your administrator changed that limit: This question was stopped because it ran longer than 15 minutes. Try again, or ask a narrower question.

Your conversations

The sidebar's Ask section lists your conversations, the most recently active first. It shows five; Show all shows the rest, and Load older questions loads older ones 100 at a time. Search… also finds older questions by name.

A conversation is named after the first line of your first question, up to 80 characters.

• Rename: click the pencil on the conversation's sidebar row, type the new name (up to 100 characters), then press Enter or click away. Escape cancels.
• Delete: open the conversation and click Delete, then Delete conversation to confirm. The conversation and its answers are removed from Portal, and this can't be undone. Delete is hidden while an answer is in progress: stop it first. The task behind the conversation stays in IT's task history for the usual time.

Your conversations are private: other Portal users can't see them. IT staff who can view every task in the workspace's environment can open the task behind a conversation, for example to help with a problem.

More from a conversation

Once a conversation has an answer, these buttons appear below it, when they are available to you:

• Schedule… opens New scheduled question with this conversation's name and first question filled in. See Scheduled Questions.
• Create a report starts a new report, with a request filled in from the conversation's recent questions, answers and sources. Nothing is sent until you send it. See Reports.
• Request for IT opens a request to IT that includes this conversation and its sources, for you to review first. See My Requests.

After you send a request, the conversation shows a line linking to it (Open request).

Limits

What	Limit
A message	About 8,000 characters (8 KB)
A conversation	Up to 100 of your questions and follow-ups, and about 128 KB of text in all, answers included. Long answers fill it sooner, sometimes after a dozen exchanges. When it is full, start a new question.
Answering time	15 minutes per answer by default
Attachments	10 files of up to 10 MB per message; 30 files and 60 MB per conversation

Only one answer runs at a time in a conversation.

Ask CoderFlow

Ask CoderFlow reads, in the Full edition, your private Portal conversations' names and times, never their messages. It can link you to a conversation, its rename button, its Delete or Request for IT button, or New question in Portal, where you use the control yourself. It doesn't ask Portal's assistant anything for you and doesn't change your conversations.