- Overview
- Reference Guide
- Setup & Architecture
- Release Notes
- Workflow
- API Reference
- Integration Guide
- Discovery Agent Setup Guide
AI Assistant
The AI Assistant lets users ask questions about their certificate estate in plain language — expiry, risk, composition and compliance — and answers them from live CertSecure data rather than from a static export or a general model's knowledge. It is reached from the AI Assistant entry in the left-hand navigation, which holds two screens:
- Chat – where a user asks questions and reads answers. Conversations are stored on the server, so a chat can be reopened later.
- Configuration – where a global administrator turns the assistant on or off for the organization, connects model providers and their API keys, chooses which models users can select, and sets how long conversation history is kept.
A third, related screen sits outside this menu: the AI Assistant tab on the Logging screen (Misc › Logging) reports per-user assistant usage. It is described at the end of this chapter.
Access and Permissions
Chat and Configuration are gated independently, and neither implies the other. A user may be able to use the assistant without being able to configure it, and an administrator may be able to configure it without having been granted the right to chat with it.
| Screen | Who can see it | How access is granted |
|---|---|---|
| AI Assistant › Chat | Any user whose role carries the Use AI Assistant permission. | Granted per role under Administration › Roles & Permissions. No seeded role carries it, so on a new installation only the Admin user type has it until it is added to a role. |
| AI Assistant › Configuration | Global administrators only (the Admin user type, and the Admin / PKI Admin roles). | Not a grantable permission. The screen holds organization-wide model providers and their API keys, so it follows the same rule as other global-administrator screens. |
| Misc › Logging › AI Assistant | The Admin user type only. | Stricter than Configuration: the usage report is not offered to PKI Admins. |
Note: A user who has not been granted Use AI Assistant does not see the AI Assistant menu entry at all, and the Chat route refuses them. This is deliberately different from the assistant being switched off: users who hold the permission but whose organization has turned the assistant off do see the menu and are told inside the panel that an administrator has turned it off.
Note: If the permission is removed while a user has Chat open, the assistant stops answering, the menu entry disappears and the user is returned to the Dashboard on their next action. Nothing is lost — stored conversations remain on the server and become readable again if the permission is restored.