AI Assistant (standalone chat)

Omni’s AI Assistant provides a standalone, conversational interface for exploring your data. Powered by the same AI (Blobby) found throughout Omni, the AI Assistant allows you to ask questions, generate queries, and visualize results without needing to work directly in a workbook.

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Requirements

To use the AI Assistant, you’ll need Restricted Querier, Querier, Modeler, or Connection Admin permissions.

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Accessing AI Assistant

To access the AI Assistant, click AI Assistant in Omni’s main navigation. The chat interface opens in a dedicated page where you can begin asking questions about your data.

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Capabilities

The AI Assistant can:

• Allow you to ask questions about your data using natural language
• Generate queries based on your prompts, routed through topics in your model
• Create visualizations, including KPI tiles, directly from your prompts
• Create dashboards based on the queries and visualizations in the session
• Summarize and analyze results to identify trends, anomalies, and insights
• Attach images by pasting from your clipboard to provide visual context for your questions
• Upload files including text and Markdown files to provide additional context alongside your queries

Responses leverage your topics and respect user permissions. Refer to Scoping responses for details on how to control which data the AI can access.

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Uploading files

You can upload text (.txt), Markdown (.md), and images to the AI Assistant to provide additional context for your questions. This is useful when you need to reference additional information alongside your data queries. To upload a file:

1. Click the attachment icon in the AI Assistant chat input
2. Select a file from your computer
3. The file appears as a file chip in the chat input, indicating it’s ready to be sent with your message

The AI Assistant can then read and reference the contents of the uploaded files when generating responses, allowing you to ask questions that combine your data with external context or documentation.

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Attaching images

You can paste images directly from your clipboard into the AI Assistant chat to provide visual context alongside your questions. This works with screenshots, images copied from web pages, or any image data on your clipboard. To attach an image:

1. Copy an image to your clipboard (for example, take a screenshot or copy an image from a web page)
2. Click into the AI Assistant chat input
3. Paste the image using your system’s paste command (Cmd+V on Mac, Ctrl+V on Windows/Linux)

The image appears as a file chip in the chat input, indicating it’s ready to be sent with your message. You can attach multiple images to a single message by pasting them one after another.

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Viewing query field details

When the AI Assistant generates a query, you can view details about the fields used in the results. This helps you understand what data the AI selected and how each field is defined. To view field details, click the icon near the top-right corner of the query results, next to the icon. A panel displays information for each field in the query, including:

• Field name - The field’s label and identifier in the model
• Definition - The SQL or calculation that defines the field
• Description - Additional context about the field, if defined in the model

This feature provides transparency into AI-generated queries, helping you verify the AI selected appropriate fields and understand the underlying data structure. To improve the quality of field definitions displayed here, refer to Optimizing your models for AI.

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Refreshing query results

When you revisit a previous chat session, query results may be stale. To update the results with the latest data, click the Re-run all queries icon located at the bottom left corner of the chat box, next to the Model selector. Clicking this icon re-runs all queries in the conversation, updating visualizations and results with current data. To optimize performance, only the most recent queries are re-run.

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Creating dashboards

The AI Assistant can create dashboards using the history from a chat session:

1. Click the icon in the left navigation.
2. In the dialog that displays, you’ll be prompted to:
   • Add a name for the new dashboard
   • Select the charts to include in the new dashboard
3. When finished, click Create.

You’ll be automaticaly redirected to the new dashboard, which the AI will create in your My documents folder.

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Renaming chat sessions

The AI Assistant automatically generates a name for each chat session based on your conversation. You can customize these names to make it easier to identify and return to specific conversations. To rename a chat session, double-click on the active session name in the AI Assistant sidebar. An inline text field appears where you can enter a new name. Press Enter to save the new name, or press Escape to revert to the original name. Session names persist and display whenever you return to the AI Assistant. You can only rename chat sessions that you own.

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Scoping responses

The AI Assistant uses pickers to scope responses to specific connections, models, and topics: Up to three pickers can display in the chat interface:

• Connections - Lists the connections you have access to. Only displays if more than one connection is available.
• Models - Lists the available models in the selected connection. Only displays if:
  • The connection has more than one model, and
  • At least one topic in the model is accessible. This could mean that the model’s ai_chat_topics is unset, making all topics accessible, or that it specifies at least one topic:
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    Ask AI

    ai_chat_topics: [ Products ]
    
• Topics - Lists the available topics in the model. Only displays if at least two topics in the model are accessible. This could mean that the model’s ai_chat_topics is unset, or that it specifies at least two topics:
  Copy

  Ask AI

  ai_chat_topics: [ Products, Orders ]
  

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Topic selection

If a prompt is entered and a topic isn’t selected - meaning that Auto-select a topic is selected in the topic picker - the AI will attempt to select the most relevant topic. To scope the AI’s response to a specific dataset, use the pickers to select a specific topic. The AI will remain “locked” to the selected topic until the selection is changed. Additionally, the picker menus won’t display when a model only has one AI-accessible topic. If a connection has one model with a single AI-accessible topic - determined by the value of the model’s ai_chat_topics parameter - the AI will be scoped only to that topic and the pickers will not display.

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Getting help

If you’re stuck and can’t remember how to do something in Omni, just ask Blobby. Questions like “How do I do [thing]?” will prompt Blobby to search the official Omni docs and provide you with an answer, all without leaving your Omni workflow. You can also directly tell Blobby to search the docs when researching the answer to your question.

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Customizing the AI Assistant

Organization Admins can customize the appearance of the AI chat interface, including the assistant’s name, icon, and greeting messages. Refer to the AI settings guide for more information.

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Embedding the AI Assistant

The AI Assistant can also be embedded into external applications. Refer to the embedding the AI Assistant guide for setup instructions.

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Next steps

• Optimize your models for AI to improve the quality of AI-generated responses
• Configure topics to organize and scope the data the AI Assistant can access
• Customize the AI Assistant appearance with your own branding