Managing Assistants

Create, configure, and manage Knowledge Assistants, including their instructions, appearance, and settings.

Every Joy account comes with a Knowledge Assistant ready to use. As your organization grows, you can create additional Assistants tailored to specific teams or topics. For example, you might have one Assistant for HR policy questions, another for product knowledge, and another for sales enablement.

The Assistants page

The Assistants page is where you manage all of your account's Knowledge Assistants. To get there:

Open the Management Center.

Click Assistants.

All of your account's Assistants are listed here.

On this page, each Assistant appears as a card showing its name and status. You can:

Viewing an Assistant in the Management Center

To view an Assistant's details and activity in the Management Center:

Go to the Assistants page in the Management Center.

Click the Assistant's card.

This opens the Assistant Admin panel.

At the top of the panel, you'll see the Assistant's name, status, and total chat count (all time). There's also a  More Actions icon that lets you edit the Assistant's details or deactivate it.

Below that, the Assistant Admin panel has three tabs: Overview, Details, and Commands.

Overview tab

The Overview tab includes a description of the Assistant and engagement stats, such as total chats, chats in the last 30 days, and average messages per session. A chart shows how chat activity has trended over the last 90 days.

Details tab

The Details tab contains the Assistant's fields and settings.

Commands tab

The Commands tab lists the commands associated with the Assistant. Commands are reusable prompts that anyone with access to the Assistant can run on demand.

Global instructions

Global instructions apply to every Assistant in your account. They are prepended to each Assistant's individual instructions, making them useful for organization-wide rules like tone of voice, formatting preferences, or topics to avoid.

To set global instructions:

Go to the Assistants page in the Management Center.

Click Options in the page header and select Global Instructions.

This opens the Global Instructions window.

Enter your instructions.

These instructions apply to every Assistant in your account.

Click Save.

The global instructions take effect immediately for all Assistants.

Creating an Assistant

To create a new Assistant:

Go to the Assistants page in the Management Center.

Click + Assistant.

This opens the Assistant Admin panel.

Enter the Assistant's information.

You can find descriptions of the Assistant fields and settings below.

Click Save.

The new Assistant is created and available to be assigned to users.

Editing an Assistant

To edit an Assistant:

Go to the Assistants page in the Management Center.

Locate the Assistant on the Assistants page.

To search for an Assistant, type its name into the search bar.

Click the Assistant's card.

This opens the Assistant Admin panel, where you can manage the Assistant.

Go to the Details tab.

A majority of the Assistant's information and settings live here.

Click the  Edit icon.

The fields become editable.

Edit the Assistant's fields and settings.

You can find descriptions of the Assistant fields and settings below.

Click Save.

Your updates take effect immediately.

Deactivating an Assistant

To hide an Assistant without permanently deleting it:

Go to the Assistants page in the Management Center.

Steps 1–3 in the editing an Assistant section show you how.

Click the  More Actions icon on the Assistant and select Deactivate.

Confirm the action when prompted. The Assistant is hidden but can be reactivated at any time.

Before you can deactivate an Assistant, you need to remove all users assigned to it. Your account must also have at least one active Assistant at all times.

To reactivate a deactivated Assistant, follow the same steps but click Activate instead of Deactivate.

Assistant fields and settings

The Assistant Admin panel features three tabs: Overview, Details, and Commands.

Details tab

The Details tab contains the Assistant's fields and settings, organized into six sections.

Basic information

  • Assistant Name: The name of the Assistant. Each Assistant must have a unique name.
  • Enabled: Whether the Assistant is active. Turn this toggle off to deactivate the Assistant.
  • Title: An optional job title for the Assistant. For example, "Admin Assistant" or "HR Specialist."
  • Email (view only): An email address that Joy generates from the Assistant's name. People can use this address to communicate with the Assistant by email.
  • About: A description of the Assistant. For example, this description may explain the Assistant's purpose, area of expertise, or who it is designed to help.

Instructions

  • Custom Instructions: Custom instructions that guide how the Assistant responds. Use this to define the Assistant's focus area, tone, and any specific rules it should follow.

To set instructions that apply to every Assistant in your account, use global instructions.

  • Initial Greeting: Whether the Assistant greets people when they open a new chat.
  • Custom Greeting: The message people see when they start a new chat with the Assistant. Leave blank to use the default in-app greeting. This field appears when you turn on Initial Greeting.

Appearance

  • Assistant Avatar: A picture for the Assistant. This image appears beside messages the Assistant sends in the chat (JPG, PNG, GIF, or WebP, up to 5 MB).
  • Disclaimer Message: Text that is always visible while someone is chatting with the Assistant. It appears below where users type in the chat. For example, "Please verify the information provided for accuracy."
  • Additional Disclaimer Modal: Whether to show a Learn more link next to the disclaimer message. When someone clicks Learn more, a disclaimer window appears with additional information, for example, a longer message about verifying AI answers or using AI-generated content. The following fields appear when you turn on this setting:
    • Button Text: The text on the button that is used to close the disclaimer window.
    • Title: The heading that appears at the top of the disclaimer window.
    • Disclaimer Message: The text you want to display in the disclaimer window.

Tips

  • Default Tips: Whether to show general tips while the Assistant is thinking. These tips help people learn about the Assistant's capabilities.
  • Command Tips: Whether to show tips about commands while the Assistant is thinking. These tips teach people about the different types of commands they can use.
  • Custom Tips: Whether to show your own tips while the Assistant is thinking.
  • Custom Tip Text: The tips you want to display, one per line. Press Enter to start a new line. This field appears when you turn on Custom Tips.

Sources (coming soon)

This section will let you manage the content sources that the Assistant references when answering questions.

Advanced

  • API ID (view only): The ID you can use to reference the Assistant if you're using the Joy API.

Commands tab

The Commands tab shows all commands associated with the Assistant, organized into two sections:

  • Custom Commands: Commands you create for the Assistant, grouped by category. To learn more, see Managing custom commands.
  • System Commands: Packs of pre-built commands that you can add to the Assistant. To browse every pack and command, see Assistant Commands.

Use the search bar to find a specific command by name.