Ask questions in chat

Use chat to ask questions, understand a document, or investigate information in Tale. The assistant can search accessible knowledge and read public pages. Start with a specific question, then use follow-up messages to narrow the answer.

Send your first message

Open Home. On a computer, a new chat opens, and the Home panel beside it lists your earlier chats; on a phone, choose Chats, then New chat. To begin another subject later, choose New chat or, on a computer, Home again. Type in the message field. Press Enter to send or Shift+Enter for a new line. A starter prompt fills the same role as your own first question; edit your request to include the source, subject, and kind of answer you need.

For example: “Find the onboarding feedback and summarize the three most common problems. Cite the documents and separate reported problems from your suggestions.”

If your organization turned on a confidentiality notice, it appears under the message field as a reminder of what not to share in chat.

While the reply streams, the send control becomes a stop control. Stopping keeps the text already received, which may end mid-sentence. Use a follow-up message to clarify the question or ask for missing detail.

Choose a model when the choice matters

The model picker starts on Auto when several usable models are available. Auto selects a model for each message from your organization’s available models; organization rules can set a default or restrict the choices. The details under a reply identify the model that actually answered.

Pick a named model when you need consistent comparisons or know which model the work requires. Your choice stays selected until you change it, including which provider serves the model when two providers offer the same one. If that model supports adjustable reasoning, the picker also offers an effort setting. More reasoning can take longer; it is not a substitute for checking the answer.

If no models are available, ask an admin to check active provider credentials and model access. Chat offers only models that an API key or environment-variable credential serves: a subscription runs only in tasks and automations, and the model list names any it leaves out. Models explains how the catalog is built.

Give the assistant the right sources

Choose the conversation’s location before asking about files:

Project chat also receives the project’s standing instructions. File access is enforced by Tale, so asking a project chat to read a different project does not grant access. Trashed or expired files are not searchable.

Use attachments for material needed in this conversation, project files for recurring project work, and Knowledge for shared reference material. The assistant retrieves content when it needs it; uploading a document does not mean every answer has read it.

Questions about Tale itself need no upload: the assistant looks up the public documentation at docs.tale.dev before explaining how a screen or setting works. If the server cannot reach docs.tale.dev, for example on a self-hosted installation without internet access, the timeline shows a failed reading step and the answer is not grounded in the documentation. The documentation describes the latest release, so the assistant points out when your workspace may differ.

Check what the assistant used

Above the reply, the timeline shows search and reading steps. A failed step explains what could not be read; it is useful evidence when an answer is incomplete. Expand the thinking section when one is available, but judge factual claims against sources rather than the fluency of that explanation.

Sources below the answer lists documents and pages the assistant loaded. Open a source and check that it supports the relevant claim. A citation establishes which material was used, not that every conclusion is correct. A reply without a retrieval step may rely on the model’s prior knowledge.

The assistant can search workspace information such as documents, knowledge entries, websites, contacts, products, accessible tasks, and the Inbox conversations you can see, including the text of the emails they received and of their attachments. A task can be named by its key, such as DOCS-12, as the board shows it. It can fetch the details behind a result and read a public web page. It can also make files, such as a spreadsheet, a Word document or a chart, create images when your organization allows them, and follow skills from your library; Make files and use skills in chat shows how. Chat does not change connected systems, and work on a repository, in a browser session or lasting hours belongs in a project task. Any member can create one in a project they can open and hand it to one of the project's agents; Turn a chat into a task shows how to start it from the conversation.

See how a reply was produced

Select Show info under a reply to open Message information. It names the model that answered and its Provider, shows how long the reply took and how many tokens it used, and says where it ran when that is known.

• Time to first token is how long the reply took to produce the first words of its answer, Output speed how fast the model wrote in tokens per second, and Total time how long the whole reply took. The bar beneath divides that time into preparing, waiting for the model, thinking, and writing. When the reply used tools, such as a document search, the time to first token includes the time of any tool that ran before the first words: the bar then shows the model's work and the tools as one share, model and tools, followed by writing only when the first words came after the last tool, and Output speed is left out, because these measurements cannot separate the model's writing from the tools. The server measures from when it began the reply, so the wait until the first words reached your screen, shown below the bar, can be longer.
• Served by names the company that ran the model when your provider passes requests on. OpenRouter, for example, can serve the same Claude model through Anthropic, Amazon Bedrock, or Google Vertex.
• Region says where the reply was processed, but only when the provider reported it, as Azure OpenAI does (for example, Switzerland North), or when the request went to a regional endpoint whose provider commits to processing in one region, such as eu.openrouter.ai or eu.api.openai.com. Otherwise it reads Not reported: Tale does not infer a location from a provider's name or headquarters. On Azure, a Global deployment can process a request in any region, whatever region the response names; a Data Zone deployment processes within its data zone, such as the EU, and a Regional deployment within its geography.
• Model version appears when the provider reports a more specific model than the one requested, such as a dated release behind an alias or the model behind an Azure deployment name.

Turn a chat into a task

When a conversation ends in work that needs a file, such as a presentation, a report, or a spreadsheet, hand it to a project agent. Select Create task in the conversation's header; on a narrow screen, choose Create task from chat in the ⋯ menu. A chat filed in a project creates the task there. Otherwise, choose the project first: With an agent lists the projects you can open that have agents, with how many. A project without agents of its own appears there with Standard agent: its task goes to the organization's standard agent. When the standard agent can't run for you, for example because an admin has turned it off, such projects are listed under No agent yet instead, each saying who can add one.

The task dialog opens with your last request as the description, a link back to the chat, and the files you attached in the conversation. When the project has a single agent, or uses the standard agent, it's already the Assignee; otherwise, choose one. Edit anything you like, then select Create and start agent: the task is created, and the agent starts on it at once. Create only creates it without starting the agent; Start agent on the task starts it later.

The task then shows above the chat's message box with what it's doing: The agent is working, Waiting for a worker (or another state that says what the run waits for), Trying again…, Ready for review with the number of files it delivered, or The agent couldn't finish. Open takes you to the task. You're also notified when it's ready for review and when the agent can't finish; When the agent can't finish explains what to do next.

Ask the assistant for such a file, and it answers what fits in a reply, then walks you through these steps for your own projects, naming the buttons as you see them.

No project you can open offers an agent? Then the standard agent can't run for you: an admin may have turned it off under Governance > Models, or no model you may use can run it. Ask an Admin about it, or ask an Editor or Admin to add an agent on the project's Agents tab. As an Editor, you can also add one from the task: under Assignee, choose Create an agent….

Files come along only from your own conversation. A task takes only its creator's uploads, so a task created from a chat someone shared into a project starts without them.

Continue, copy, or keep the conversation

Use the reply toolbar to copy an answer, give feedback, inspect its details, or fork a conversation at that point. A fork lets you try another direction while preserving the earlier exchange.

Your own messages sit on the right. A long one shows its beginning, with Read more to open the rest in place and Show less to fold it again. Point at one of your messages, or move the keyboard focus into it, to see when you sent it and to use Edit message, which changes the text in a new version of the conversation; on a touch screen, both are always shown. Under a message you edited, or one whose reply you asked for again with Try again, Previous branch and Next branch switch between the versions, and the number between them, such as 2/3, says which one is on screen.

Find earlier chats in Home; Chats above the list hides your tasks and inbox conversations. Pin frequently used chats, give a chat a recognizable title, or move it into a project when the topic becomes ongoing work: drag it onto the project or choose Move to project… in its menu. Shared chats explains how to publish a read-only snapshot for colleagues.

Very long conversations may exceed the model’s context window. Tale displays a notice when older messages are omitted. Restate an important requirement or start a new chat with the relevant sources instead of assuming the assistant still sees the entire history.

Improve an incomplete answer

For a guided example with source checking, follow Chat effectively.