Aboard AI’s Assistant helps you with questions about time off, colleagues, company information, and more. Depending on your company’s settings and your permissions, it can also help with meetings, tasks, skills, onboarding, and performance reviews.
About AI-powered features: AI-generated answers may contain mistakes or misinterpret information. Verify important details in Aboard or the original policy document, and contact HR or your manager for official guidance.
Getting started
Once your administrator has enabled the Assistant, look for Ask Aboard AI in the Employee Portal or the assistant button in the bottom-right corner. You can also open it with ⌘ + J on Mac or Ctrl + J on Windows. The Assistant is also available in the admin area when enabled.
Choose a suggested question or type your own, then press Enter or select the send button. Each message can contain up to 500 characters.
What can I ask?
Time off and holidays
Ask about your own time-off balances, policy rules, and upcoming holidays, or find out which colleagues are away.
For example:
“How many vacation days do I have left?”
“How much vacation can I carry over?”
“Who in Marketing is out next week?”
“What holidays are coming up for my office?”
Your balance depends on your assigned policy. The Assistant can explain the difference between the balance available now and the expected balance at the end of your cycle.
Colleagues and company information
Find people and explore your company’s structure.
Try:
“Who is my manager?”
“Who works in the Berlin office?”
“Find colleagues with the job title Product Designer.”
“Are there any work anniversaries coming up?”
Available details depend on your company’s settings and the information recorded in Aboard.
Meetings, tasks, and development
Where the expanded Assistant capabilities are available, you can also ask about information you’re allowed to access, such as:
Your upcoming 1:1s and meeting details.
Your tasks.
Your skills, ratings, and career path.
Your performance reviews.
Onboarding information, if your role allows access.
Managers can use supported capabilities for their own team, subject to the relevant permissions. What’s available depends on your role, company features, and Assistant settings.
Company policies and documents
With the Documents add-on enabled, the Assistant can search company documents made available to it and use them to answer questions.
For example:
“What’s our remote work policy?”
“Where can I find the employee handbook?”
“What does our travel policy say about meal expenses?”
Document-based answers include a source citation so you can open the original document. Existing document permissions still apply.
Workforce analytics
With the Analytics add-on enabled, authorized administrators can ask questions about workforce numbers and trends, such as headcount by department or changes over time. This capability is not available to regular employees or managers.
Can the Assistant do things for me?
Yes, where Actions are available and your administrator has enabled them.
Supported actions include requesting time off, creating or updating 1:1s, managing agenda templates, creating or completing tasks, and rating skills. The actions available to you depend on your permissions. 3 5 11
The Assistant presents a proposal for you to review. The proposed change is only carried out after you confirm it. You can decline the proposal instead.
Requesting time off
For example, you could ask:
“Request vacation from Monday to Friday next week.”
Review the proposed dates and leave type before confirming.
Confirming submits the request; it does not bypass your company’s approval process. Requests are sent to your approvers unless the policy allows automatic approval.
The Assistant supports full-day and half-day requests. For hourly requests or requests requiring attachments, use the normal time-off request form in Aboard.
Making conversations more useful
Ask follow-up questions
Continue in the same conversation when you want to refine an answer:
“Who is out next week?”
“What about just the Engineering team?”
Include dates, departments, locations, or names to make your request more specific.
Mention a colleague
Type @ and select a colleague from the suggestions to make it clear who you mean.
Return to an earlier conversation
Use the conversation title dropdown at the top of the Assistant to reopen a previous conversation.
Select New conversation to start a separate thread. This does not delete your earlier conversations.
Personalize your assistant
Select Personalize your Aboard AI to choose an assistant character and its associated tone.
For administrators: enabling the Assistant
In the current interface:
Go to Settings → Aboard AI and enable Aboard AI.
Open Assistant under the add-ons and enable it.
Where available, enable Let the assistant take actions if you want users to perform supported actions after confirmation.
Enable additional capabilities, such as Documents or Analytics, as needed.
Troubleshooting
I don’t see the Assistant
Ask your administrator to check that both Aboard AI and the Assistant add-on are enabled.
The Assistant can answer questions but cannot make changes
Actions may not be available or enabled for your company, or your role may not allow the requested action.
It can’t find information in a company document
Check that the Documents add-on and the relevant document category are enabled, that you have access to the category, and that the document has finished indexing.
An answer looks incorrect
Check the relevant record or source document before acting on it. Try a more specific question, or contact HR or your administrator for help.