AI Assistant
AI Assistant
Your intelligent document analysis companion. Ask questions, get cited answers, and explore your documents through natural conversation.
Overview
The AI Assistant is the primary way to interact with your documents in Alloovium. It provides a conversational interface that lets you ask questions in plain language and receive accurate, cited answers drawn directly from the documents in your project.
Unlike a general-purpose chatbot, the AI Assistant is always grounded in your project documents. Every answer links back to the specific passage it was derived from, so you can verify the source and navigate directly to the relevant section of the original file.
The chat interface supports multi-turn conversations, so you can ask follow-up questions, request clarifications, or explore a topic in depth across multiple messages — all within the same context window.
Asking Questions
You can ask the AI Assistant anything related to the documents in your project. Questions can be broad ("What are the key deliverables in this contract?") or highly specific ("What is the liquidated damages clause in section 12?"). The assistant handles both.
The assistant is context-aware throughout a conversation. If you ask "What does it say about payment terms?" followed by "And what are the penalties for late payment?", it understands that the second question continues the same thread.
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Open a project
Navigate to a project with uploaded and processed documents in the Document Hub.
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Open the AI Assistant
Click the chat icon in the sidebar or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+K to open the assistant panel.
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Type your question
Enter your question in the text field at the bottom of the chat panel and press Enter or click Send.
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Review the answer and citations
The assistant responds with an answer and numbered citations. Click any citation to jump to the source passage.
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Ask follow-up questions
Continue the conversation by asking follow-ups — the assistant retains context from the entire thread.
Query tip
Phrasing your question as you would ask a colleague often produces the best results. For example: "Does this contract include a warranty period, and if so, how long is it?" works better than "warranty period duration".Citations
Every answer generated by the AI Assistant includes numbered citations that link directly to the source passages in your documents. Citations appear as superscript numbers within the answer text, and a full reference list appears below the response showing the document name, page number, and a short excerpt.
Clicking a citation opens the referenced document in the document viewer and highlights the exact passage that the assistant used to construct its answer.
Multiple sources
When an answer draws from more than one document, each citation is numbered separately so you can see exactly which portion of the answer came from which source. This is especially useful when comparing information across contracts or specifications.File Attachments
In addition to querying documents already in your project, you can attach files directly to a chat message. This is useful when you want to ask a one-off question about a file without adding it permanently to the project.
Supported formats for direct chat attachments include PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, CSV, TXT, PNG, JPG, and TIFF. Files attached in chat are processed immediately for the duration of the conversation and are not stored in the project unless you explicitly choose to add them.
File size limit
Individual files attached directly in chat are limited to 20 MB. For larger documents, upload them to the Document Hub first and then query them through the assistant.Voice Input
The AI Assistant supports voice dictation, allowing you to speak your questions instead of typing them. This is particularly useful during site visits or when you want to quickly dictate a longer question.
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Click the microphone icon
The microphone icon is located on the right side of the message input field. Click it to begin recording.
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Speak your question
Speak clearly into your microphone. Your words appear as text in the input field in real time.
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Stop recording
Click the microphone icon again to stop. Edit the transcription if needed.
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Send the message
Press Enter or click Send to submit your question to the assistant.
Sharing Conversations
Chat threads in the AI Assistant can be shared with other members of your team. When you share a conversation, recipients can view the full exchange — questions, answers, and citations — without needing to re-run the queries themselves.
To share a conversation, open the conversation menu (the three-dot icon at the top right of the chat panel) and select "Share". Shared conversations are read-only.
Permissions
Sharing a conversation does not automatically share the underlying documents. Recipients who are not already members of the project will see the answers and citations, but may not be able to click through to view the source document.Background Mode
For complex queries that may take longer to complete — for example, queries that synthesise information across a large number of documents — you can run them in background mode. You don't have to stay on the chat: submit your question and go work on other things (or close the browser tab) while the assistant processes the request.
You'll get a notification within the application when the chat completes, and optionally via email (configurable in your notification settings), so you can pick up right where you left off.
When to use background mode
Background mode is best for queries across 20 or more documents, or for complex multi-step questions that require synthesising a large amount of information. For quick factual lookups, standard mode is faster.