Type a question and an Ask row appears beneath the search results. Take it and the answer streams inside the same panel rather than sending you to another screen.
That in-place behaviour is deliberate. An assistant that navigates you away to answer has interrupted whatever you were doing, which defeats the purpose of a box you opened with two keys.
What it can answer
The same things the assistant answers anywhere: your schedule, your pipeline and where deals are at risk, revenue and overdue invoices, who is on leave, your tasks, what is waiting on your approval.
The answers come from your live records rather than from a model's general knowledge, and where the data does not exist it says so rather than producing something plausible.
It also knows where you are. The same question asked from Sales HQ and from Finance HQ is read against different surroundings, so "how are we doing" does not need to be spelled out every time.
The important difference from Conversations
A conversation started here is not saved by default.
In the Conversations tab, everything is kept automatically. Here, a quiet offer to remember appears after the first answer, and nothing is stored unless you take it.
That split is the whole reason both surfaces exist. Most questions asked from a search box are throwaway: a number you needed for the sentence you were writing. Keeping all of them would bury the handful that mattered.
When something turns out to matter, take the offer, and it moves into Conversations with its history intact.
Picking up where you left off
The deck shows your two most recent conversations, and clicking one resumes it here with its messages loaded.
Worth knowing because it removes the main argument against asking from the box: that a follow-up thought half an hour later means starting again. It does not; the conversation is two keys and one click away, in the panel, over whatever you are now doing.
Getting out of the way
Escape steps back to the search results, not out of the box entirely. A second Escape closes it.
That two-stage exit exists because the common mistake is engaging the ask lane when you meant to search. Stepping back costs one key and your query survives.
Narrowing a question
The composer here takes the same scope tokens the assistant accepts anywhere. Typing @ opens a short menu.
| Token | Narrows to |
|---|---|
@org |
The whole organisation |
@team |
Your team or department |
@mine |
Only your own records |
@pipeline: |
One named pipeline |
@hub: |
One HQ |
@period: |
A range such as 30d, mtd or ytd |
These earn their place on exactly the questions where the default is ambiguous. "How are we doing" means different things to different people; @mine @period:mtd settles it before the answer is written rather than after you have read the wrong one.
Note that typing @ in the search box switches you to the create lane, because nobody searches with an at-sign. Inside the ask lane it does what it does everywhere else and opens the scope menu.
Questions that work well here
Short and factual. What is my next meeting. How many deals closed this month. Who is on leave on Thursday.
About one thing you can name. Where a deal stands, when you last spoke to somebody, what is outstanding on an account.
Follow-ups. The panel carries the conversation, so a second narrower question is both faster and more accurate than one long one.
Questions that want a table, a chart or a list of thirty rows are better asked elsewhere, and the assistant will frequently say so by building the thing and taking you to it.
When to use this and when not to
Use it for a question with a short answer that you want while doing something else. What is my next meeting. How many deals closed this month. Who is covering support today.
Go to Conversations for anything that will take more than two exchanges, anything you will want to find again, or anything where you want the four intent modes and the full history rail.
Do not use it for anything you want to look at repeatedly. Ask for the chart instead, and it will build one and take you to it, which is a better outcome than a number in a panel you are about to close.
Where the answer goes
The answer streams into the panel and stays there while you keep the box open. Closing the box ends the exchange.
Three things worth knowing about that.
Closing does not save. Unless you took the remember offer, the exchange is gone. That is intended for the throwaway majority and occasionally annoying for the one you should have kept.
Navigating does not close it. Where an answer produces a link, following it closes the box and takes you there, which is usually what you wanted.
An analytical question may take you elsewhere. Ask something that genuinely wants a chart and it builds one and navigates, rather than describing numbers in a panel you are about to close.
What it costs
Typing costs nothing. The lane classification that decides whether the Ask row leads is plain rules running on your own machine, with nothing sent anywhere.
Taking the Ask row costs credits, at roughly one credit per question, because that is the point at which a language model is actually engaged.
That separation is worth understanding, because it means the box can be opened, typed in and closed all day without spending anything. Only the deliberate act of asking has a cost.
Live voice from here
Where your organisation has enabled it, the box can be opened straight into a spoken conversation rather than a typed one, from the control in the search bar at the top of the screen.
It is the same assistant with the same access, and it answers out loud. The trade-offs of voice, including that it costs meaningfully more than typing, are covered in the Workspace piece on talking out loud.
Two habits
Ask the follow-up rather than restating. The panel carries the conversation, so narrowing across two short questions beats one long one and costs about the same.
Take the remember offer when you are surprised. A surprising answer is the one you will want to revisit, and it is considerably easier to keep it now than to reconstruct the question later.
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