⏳️ AVAILABILITY: This feature is not yet available in all Vanilla communities. It is currently in a beta state and limited to beta testers. This note will be removed and the title updated when the feature is globally available.
While every organization wants their community's members to be at the forefront of engagement, there may be times when questions will not be answered as quickly as those asking them may need, resulting in users without the help they're looking for.
To help fill this occasional engagement gap, Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) created an AI to function as a content-contributing assistant, dynamically jumping in to provide helpful information in these scenarios. While not a replacement for member engagement, it is a helpful tool that can offer near real-time assistance to those who need it.
Before we begin…
When it comes to AI, our community philosophy focuses on elevating human interaction and not replacing genuine human connection with AI; in that spirit, this feature is designed to work with questions that do not have any human-generated answers. It will not work with other discussion types or with questions that have been answered by a human.
Is this feature right for your community?
Whether or not the AI assistant will be a positive, successful addition to your community depends on one primary factor: content. When a question is asked, the AI assistant scans your content to craft an answer. Because of this, a broad spectrum of quality content is recommended to give the AI assistant enough knowledge to work with; in other words, the deeper the well of information, the better its suggestions will be.
This content can come from a variety of sources, such as your Vanilla community's discussions or knowledge base, or even from an external, integrated source like Zendesk.
📝 NOTE: Learn more about managing which sources the AI assistant can use in the Manage your suggested answer sources section below.
If the repository of information your organization can offer the AI assistant is extensive and pertinent to the types of questions your users will be asking, the AI content assistant can be a dynamic and integral helper in keeping the engagement flowing in your Vanilla community.
How does the AI assistant work?
First and foremost, this feature is not on by default; each organization can choose to enable it or not. When enabled, administrators can customize various aspects of the AI assistant on a dedicated Dashboard page, which you'll learn about in the Customize your AI assistant's persona section below.
If enabled, the AI will provide near real-time assistance to users who ask a question in your community (it only works with questions and no other post type).
Here's how it works:
- When a user asks a question, the AI assistant will scan through the sources of content you've given it access to, searching for answers based on the question's keywords.
- If the AI assistant found relevant information from the scan, it will provide up to 3 suggested answers to the user's question after only a few seconds. The suggestions display in a dedicated section on the page and are clearly labeled as AI-generated content, making it easy for users to understand what is AI vs. human answers. 📝 These suggestions are only visible to the user asking the question; only when accepted do they display for everyone.
- At this point, the user has a few options: if the AI assistant answered their question, click Accept Answer; if the suggestions aren't useful, click the X to remove them (if more suggestions are possible, it will produce more to replace those removed); or take no immediate action and wait to see if another user provides a better answer. 📝 Each suggested answer includes a link the user can click to review the source the AI used to provide it; it is always recommended to verify the source before accepting an answer.
Enable AI Suggested Answers
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Discussions > AI Suggested Answers.
- Check the Use AI Suggestions in Q&A box.
- Click Save at the top right of the page.
Several groups of options are now available, allowing you to configure many aspects of your AI content assistant. Refer to the sections below to learn more.
⚠️ IMPORTANT: Keep the following in mind when enabling AI Suggested Answers:
- This feature is only available with Vanilla's new Discussion Thread layout.
- AI Suggested Answers was released in 2024.019; any custom discussion layouts created prior to this date will not include this feature. To leverage this feature in your community, make a new copy of the Discussion Thread layout.
Customize your AI assistant's persona
In this section, you can personalize the AI's persona to match your community's aesthetic and theme:
- Give the AI assistant an appropriate name.
- Upload an image to represent the AI assistant. 📝 4:3 ratio is recommended for images (400 x 300px); larger images will be resized.
Your chosen name and image help define its persona, and will display alongside its suggestions in the community (refer to the image above).
Define your AI assistant's language style
To further solidify your AI assistant's personality, you can define its language style, both in its tone of voice and level of language complexity.
Tone of voice
The tone of voice defines how the AI assistant phrases its suggestions (i.e., how it "speaks"). You can choose:
- Friendly and Personal
- Professional
- Technical
An example of how each tone changes the way the assistant speaks is presented below. We recommend reviewing the difference and making a selection that aligns with your community's aesthetic. This selection goes a long way in making the AI assistant writes in a way that better connects with your users.
Tone of voice examples
In this example, the same paragraph is presented by the AI assistant in each tone of voice:
- Friendly and Personal: "Hello there! I am your AI Suggestion Assistant, here to help you find the best articles and posts to answer your questions. Feel free to ask anything, I am here to make your search fun and informative!"
- Professional: "Greetings. I am your AI Suggestion Assistant, here to assist you in finding relevant articles and posts to answer your queries. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have."
- Technical: "Welcome. I am your AI Suggestion Assistant, a machine learning-based tool designed to locate and suggest relevant articles and posts in response to your queries. Please input your questions and I will provide the most suitable information."
Level of technical language
In addition to the assistant's overall tone, you can also set the level of complexity afforded the AI in terms of technical language usage. For example, do you want it to explain complex concepts in a way a layperson could understand or are the members of your community experts in their field and so more advanced jargon is preferred?
To control this, Vanilla provides several options to suit your community's needs:
- Layman's Terms: Uses simple, everyday language that anyone can understand, regardless of their background or expertise.
- Intermediate: Uses more complex language and may introduce some industry-specific terms, but will still write in a way that is understandable to most people.
- Balanced: Uses industry-specific terms where necessary, but also provides explanations of definitions to ensure clarity.
- Advanced: Uses more technical language and industry-specific terms and assumes a higher level of technical understanding/familiarity with the subject matter.
- Technical Jargon: Uses highly technical language and industry-specific terms intended for those with a deep understanding of the subject matter.
✅ TIP: Check the Use British English Spelling box at the top of the page if your audience prefers the British English spelling of words over American English (e.g., cheque vs. check).
Manage your suggested answer sources
Does your organization have a broad spectrum of quality content the AI can leverage to provide insightful answers? This content can come from a variety of sources:
- your Vanilla Community's discussions (user-generated content),
- your Vanilla Community's Knowledge Base (staff-produced documentation),
- and even external sources like an integrated Zendesk knowledge base via Federated Search.
The options in this section enable you to control which sources the AI assistant will use to provide its suggestions. This gives you the flexibility to give the AI assistant access to as much or as little of your organization's content as you want.
- Do you want the AI assistant to leverage all of your community's discussion content? If so, check the Community Discussion Categories box. 📝 If needed, you can exclude specific discussion categories, if there's content you don't want used.
- Does your Vanilla Community include a Vanilla Knowledge Base? Does it contain information that would be beneficial for the AI assistant to leverage? If so, check the Knowledge Bases box. 📝 As with discussion categories, if you have more than one Vanilla Knowledge Base, you can choose to exclude specific ones that may not offer pertinent information.
- Do you have external sources of content that would prove useful, such as an integration with your Zendesk knowledge base? You can enable any external sources that have been integrated with your Vanilla Community via Federated Search.
You can mix and match these sources or limit the AI to only one. Choose a solution that works best for your organization.
For users: decide whether to use this feature
Each user can decide whether to leverage the AI Suggested Answers feature or not from their Profile > Account & Privacy Settings page:
- In the Community Preferences section at the bottom of the page, check or uncheck the Suggest [AI name] Answers on my Q&A Posts box to set your personal preference.
