Chat in Ahoy
Chat is the place to work things through with Ahoy in a back-and-forth – asking questions, drafting emails, researching people and companies, and updating your CRM. It can reach your CRM records, calendar, and email, and search the web. Anything that would change your CRM data or send an email is shown to you as a proposal to approve first, so nothing is written or sent on your behalf without you seeing it.
This guide covers:
- What you can do in Chat
- How Chat proposes changes for your approval
- Finding proposals in Materials
- Your conversation history
- Sharing a conversation, and what that exposes
- Attachments, voice, and Show Reasoning
Before you begin
- Connect your email and calendar. Chat's ability to read your inbox, check availability, and draft emails depends on a connected account. Ahoy works with both Google and Microsoft. See Connecting your integrations.
- Style-matched drafts improve over time. Ahoy learns your writing style from the emails you’ve sent, so drafts sound more like you once there’s enough history to learn from. Until then, they use a neutral, professional tone.
What you can do in Chat
Chat connects to your CRM, calendar, and email, and can search the web. In a single conversation you can:
- Look up records and run analytics – “Which deals slipped this month?”
- Draft and send emails, matched to your writing style
- Schedule meetings, with availability and conflict checking
- Create or update contacts, companies, and deals
- Research people and companies on the web
- Search your email
How Chat proposes changes
Reading, researching, and drafting happen immediately. Anything that changes your CRM data or sends an email is different: Chat prepares it, shows it to you first, and it only goes through once you approve.
- CRM changes – creating or updating a contact, company, or deal – appear as a proposal. Nothing is written to your CRM until you approve it.
- Emails are drafted for you to review. Drafting and sending are separate steps: the draft waits as a proposal, and the email is sent, from your own connected mailbox, only when you approve it.
One thing behaves differently: scheduling a meeting. When you ask Chat to set up a meeting, it can add the event to your calendar directly rather than waiting for approval. If you’d rather check it first, ask Chat to draft the invite so you can review it before it lands on your calendar.
Materials
As you talk, the things Chat prepares are collected in the Materials tab at the top right of the conversation, giving you one place to review everything it’s proposed. Materials holds:
- Email drafts
- Calendar invites
- CRM updates
- Any data views Chat builds – tables, dashboards, etc
Materials is specific to that conversation – each chat has its own. Items stay in Materials after you act on them, showing whether you approved or rejected them, so you keep a record of what happened rather than a list that empties itself.
Your conversation history
Every conversation is saved automatically and titled from its content – there’s nothing you need to do to keep it. Your history sits in the sidebar, grouped by time, and “View all chats” lets you search across past conversations.
Sharing a conversation
You can share a conversation from the share option. There are three levels, and only the person who started the conversation can change them:
- Private – only you can access it. This is the default.
- Organization members only – anyone in your organization can open it.
- Anyone with the link – no login required.
Anyone with the link” makes the conversation public: anyone who has the URL can open it, whether or not they’re logged in or belong to your organization. It’s kept out of search results, but the link itself is the only barrier.
It’s also worth knowing what a shared conversation shows. A recipient sees the conversation’s messages and Ahoy’s replies, along with any data views built during the chat – and those can contain CRM details or email content that came up. Raw file attachments aren’t included, but if the chat pulled up account information or quoted an email, that’s visible to anyone you’ve shared it with.
Attachments, voice, and Show Reasoning
- Attachments. You can attach files from your computer or from Google Drive. Chat reads the file so it can work with the contents, and can include it on an email draft. Supported types include images, PDFs, Word and Excel files, CSV and text files, and archives. Files from Google Drive are limited to 10 MB. Attachments are kept with the conversation; they aren’t automatically added to a CRM record.
- Voice. The microphone lets you dictate instead of type – it transcribes what you say into the message box. It’s only for input, so you still send the message and approve any proposals as usual.
- Show Reasoning. Below any response, Show Reasoning opens a panel showing how Ahoy worked through your request, what it looked at and how it reached its answer. It’s useful for understanding a suggestion you didn’t expect, and for building confidence in Chat early on.
FAQs
Does Chat change anything without asking me?
Not to your CRM or your outbound email – those always wait for your approval. Reading, research, and drafting happen immediately, and scheduling a meeting can go straight to your calendar. If you want to review a meeting first, ask Chat to draft the invite.
Does Chat only work with Gmail?
No. Email and calendar work with both Google and Microsoft accounts.
When it drafts an email, will it sound like me?
Increasingly, yes. Ahoy learns your style from the emails you’ve sent, so drafts get closer to your voice as it has more to learn from. With no history yet, it uses a neutral, professional tone.
Who can see a conversation I share?
It depends on the level you choose. Private is just you; Organization members only is your org; Anyone with the link is public to anyone holding the URL. Remember that a shared conversation includes its messages and any data views, which can contain CRM or email details.
Can I get back to old conversations?
Yes. Everything’s saved and titled automatically, and you can search across past conversations from “View all chats.”
Need help?
We’re hands-on. Reach out anytime:
- Email – help@ahoy.ai