Cinode Chat is an AI colleague that lives inside your chat tool. You talk to it in plain language, the same way you would message a co-worker, and it answers using live data from your Cinode account.
It runs on Slack and Microsoft Teams from a single Cinode platform, so both work the same way and future chat platforms plug into the same assistant. There is nothing to learn beyond how to send a message.
Two ways to reach it:
@mention it in any channel to pull it into a conversation your team can see.
Direct message it for a private one-to-one chat.
It remembers the thread you are in, so you can keep asking follow-up questions without repeating yourself or mentioning it again.
What it does
Answers questions about your Cinode data
Ask about people, skills, availability, roles, teams, projects, customers, contacts, certifications, and profiles. The assistant looks it up live and replies with a clear summary and direct links back into Cinode, so you are one click from the record.
Examples of what people ask it:
"Who is on the bench and free from next month?"
"Which of my consultants have certifications expiring this quarter?"
"What roles are we staffing for Acme right now?"
"Show me my open tasks for this week."
Gets things done, not just found
Beyond looking things up, the assistant can create and update tasks, notes, and meetings on your own record and on the customers you manage. Tell it "add a note to the Acme account" or "book a follow-up meeting next Tuesday at 15:00" and it takes care of it, then confirms what it did.
Sets up alerts and reminders by chat
Instead of digging through settings, just ask. "Send me a weekly digest of roles expiring in the next 30 days" and the assistant creates a recurring subscription and posts it right in your conversation. You can list, pause, resume, or delete your alerts at any time by asking.
Alerts the assistant can schedule for you include:
Expiring roles, upcoming roles, and members without a current role
Expiring certifications and expiring tasks
Won and closing projects
New and untouched customer contacts
Profile updates and inactive profiles
You can also ask for one-off reminders in natural language, like "remind me about this thread in six weeks", and it will circle back to you when the time comes.
Reaches out before you miss things
The assistant is proactive, not just reactive:
Task assignments. When someone assigns you a task in Cinode, the assistant sends you a private message with the details and quick action buttons, so you can mark it done or snooze it without opening Cinode.
New roles and digests. Scheduled digests and real-time role alerts arrive in the channel or DM you chose, keeping the whole team aligned on what is changing.
Workflows and use cases you can set up
The Chat Assistant can run recurring digests and live pings for the routines your team would otherwise track by hand. To set one up, describe it in a message, for example "Post today's birthdays in this channel every morning". The assistant asks for anything it is missing, creates the alert, and confirms it in the conversation. Ask "What can you alert me about?" to see every alert type available to you.
Celebrate birthdays and work anniversaries
Birthday and work anniversary alerts greet the colleagues who celebrate on the day, so nobody is forgotten. Birthdays show only the day and month, never the birth year or age. Example messages you can send:
Daily birthday greeting. "Post today's birthdays in our team channel every morning." The assistant posts a card that names everyone with a birthday that day.
A heads-up before the day. "DM me the day before anyone in my team has a birthday." You can choose a heads-up of 0 to 7 days, and the message then reads as an upcoming birthday instead of a same-day greeting.
One office only. "Only post birthdays for the Stockholm office." The assistant finds the office in your Cinode account and filters on it.
Your own headline. "Use the headline 'Cake time for {names}!'" You can use {names} for the people celebrating and {count} for how many.
Work anniversaries and milestones. "Announce work anniversaries in our channel each morning, but only for 1, 5 and 10 years of service." Leave out the milestones to celebrate every completed year.
@-mention the celebrants. "Mention the people celebrating so they get notified." Where the chat platform cannot mention a person, the assistant links their profile instead.
Plan staffing before it becomes a problem
Staffing alerts show who is about to become available, who has spare capacity, and who is overbooked, so you can act before a gap appears. Example messages you can send:
Who is coming free. "Every Monday, tell me who becomes available in the next 30 days." The alert lists people whose current booking ends with nothing booked after it.
Spare capacity. "Every Friday, list the people in my team who are booked under 70% next week." Utilization covers future weeks only, and revenue is never shown.
Overbooked people. "Warn me when anyone in my team is booked at 100% or more next week." The alert stays silent in weeks when nobody is over the limit.
Team bench. "Every Monday morning, list the members of my team without a current role."
New roles as they appear. "Ping me in this channel the moment a new role is created for my teams."
Keep track of absences, joiners, and leavers
Absence and team-change alerts keep managers informed without asking around. Example messages you can send:
Who is away next week. "Every Friday, post who in my team is away next week." The absence type, such as sick leave or parental leave, is hidden by default. Ask for it explicitly if you want it shown.
Live absence pings. "Tell me the moment someone in my team books or cancels an absence." An alert without a schedule is delivered as soon as the change happens.
New joiners and leavers. "Every Monday, tell me who starts or leaves in the next 14 days." The alert also covers changes that happened in the past week if you ask for them.
Team membership changes. "Ping me when someone joins or leaves my team."
Stay close to customers and sales
Customer alerts make sure new accounts get attention and existing contacts do not go quiet. Example messages you can send:
New customers. "Tell me live whenever a new customer is added in Cinode." Ask for a weekly digest instead if you prefer one summary.
Contacts that have gone cold. "Every Monday, list the contacts at my customers that nobody has been in touch with for 60 days." You choose the number of days.
New customer contacts. "Tell me when someone adds a new contact at one of my customers."
Won projects. "Ping this channel the moment a project moves to Won."
For rules that check your pipeline against your own criteria, such as stale deals or missing values, see Pipeline Assistant: Common Use Cases.
Keep profiles, certifications, and tasks on track
Profile and task alerts catch lapsed information before it causes trouble in a proposal or an audit. Example messages you can send:
Expiring certifications. "On the first of each month, list consultants whose certifications expire in the next 90 days."
Stale profiles. "Every quarter, show me the profiles in my team that have not been updated in six months."
Tasks about to expire. "Remind me each morning about my tasks that are due within three days."
Note: The assistant only offers alert types that your Cinode access level allows. Most alerts about other people, such as birthdays, anniversaries, and utilization, are available to team managers for the teams they manage and to company managers for the whole company. Customer and new-role alerts are also limited to managers.
Why your team needs it
Cinode holds the data that runs your consultancy: who is available, which roles are closing, which certifications lapse next month, which contacts have gone quiet. The problem is never the data, it is getting to it at the moment you actually need it. Logging in, searching, and exporting all add friction, so questions go unasked and deadlines creep up.
The Chat Assistant removes that friction:
Zero login, instant answers. Ask in the tool you already have open all day and get a reply in seconds.
Nothing slips. Expiring roles, renewals, and untouched contacts come to you before they become a problem.
Everyone self-serves. Each person gets answers scoped to what they are allowed to see, so managers are not a bottleneck.
Less busywork. Fewer manual searches and exports means more time on staffing, sales, and delivery.
Where your team already talks. Insights land in the channels where decisions actually happen.
Put simply, it turns Cinode from a system you visit into an assistant that works alongside you.
Secure and private by design
Because the assistant can see real staffing and customer data, security is built into every reply:
You are only ever you. The assistant identifies you from your verified Slack or Teams account, never from anything typed in a message. Nobody can ask it to "act as" someone else.
Scoped to your permissions. Every answer respects your Cinode access level and managed teams and customers. If you cannot see something in Cinode, the assistant will not show it to you either.
Admin-only fields stay protected. Sensitive employment details are withheld from the assistant entirely.
Resistant to manipulation. Built-in guardrails ignore attempts to override its instructions, extract hidden data, or push it off-topic.
Setup, in brief
Setup lives in the Cinode configuration wizard, and the wizard walks the administrator through it step by step. You do not need to follow a manual, just connect the required accounts when prompted.
Activation. An administrator enables the add-on and connects Cinode in the config wizard through Cinode Flows.
Slack. Authorize the Cinode app in your workspace.
Microsoft Teams. Your Teams administrator uploads and pins the Cinode Teams app from the link in the wizard, then signs in with Microsoft to identify your tenant. The wizard has the exact steps.
Once that one-time setup is done, anyone in your workspace can start chatting with the assistant.
Frequently asked questions
Does it work in more than one channel?
Yes. Talk to the assistant in any channel by mentioning it, or privately by DM. Each conversation is handled on its own, and you choose where scheduled alerts are delivered.
When are notifications sent?
Whenever you set them to be. You define the schedule and thresholds per alert when you ask the assistant to create it, for example how many days before a role ends you want to hear about it.
Does it behave differently across platforms?
No. Both run on the same assistant, so the experience is the same on either platform.
Who can see what?
Every user only gets data their own Cinode permissions allow. Sharing a channel does not widen anyone's access.