This article shows what you can ask the Cinode Chat Agent, what it can change for you, and what it cannot do. Examples are written the way you would type them in Slack or Microsoft Teams. For an introduction, see Meet the Chat Agent.
Tip: You do not need special commands. Write the request as a sentence, include names, dates and teams, and the Chat Agent fills in sensible defaults for anything you leave out. If it needs one more detail, it asks for exactly that.
What every Cinode user can ask
Any active Cinode user whose email address matches their chat account can ask about their own information. The Chat Agent replies with a summary and a link into Cinode. Examples:
Your bookings: "What roles am I booked on?"
Your utilisation: "What is my utilisation for the next four weeks?" It returns utilisation percentage, preliminary utilisation and assigned hours per week. It never shows revenue.
Your profile: "Which skills do I have listed?" or "Show my latest work assignment." It reads your profile in sections, not as a complete CV dump.
Your CVs: "Which CVs do I have?" It lists them with links. It cannot export a PDF, so it points you to Cinode.
Your absences: "When is my next time off?"
Your tasks, notes and meetings: "Show my open tasks for this week." It lists up to 40 items, overdue first.
Colleagues: "Who is Ida Lund?" or "Who works from the Malmö office?" Anyone who is not a company manager sees a directory entry only: name, title, office city and a link. There is no email, availability or employment data.
Your own access: "What access level do I have in Cinode?"
What team managers can also ask
A team manager can ask about the teams they manage. A parent team includes its sub-teams. If you ask about a person or team outside your scope, the Chat Agent says it is outside what it can read. Examples:
Availability: "Who in my team is free from next month?"
Utilisation: "How booked is my team in week 46?"
Bench: "Which team members have no current role?"
Absences: "Who in my team is away next week?"
Certifications: "Which certifications expire in my team this quarter?"
Skills: "Who in my teams knows Kubernetes?" Searching people by skill covers the teams you manage.
Open roles: "Which open roles are on the projects of my teams?" Searching roles needs at least one filter, such as a status, pipeline, stage or project state.
Team members: "Show the roles and skills for the people in my team." A single question can look up at most 8 individual people. For more, ask a team-wide question.
What customer managers can also ask
A customer manager can ask about the customers they manage. A company manager can ask about all customers. Examples:
"What projects do we have at Northwind?"
"Who are our contacts at Northwind?"
"Show the open tasks on the Northwind account." It lists up to 30 items.
What company managers can also ask
A company manager, or anyone with a higher access level, can ask company-wide questions. Examples:
Roles across the company: "Which open roles in the Sales pipeline start in the next 30 days?" Searching roles needs at least one filter. A request for "all roles" is declined. Filters on role satisfaction are for company managers only.
Role matching: "Who fits this role best?" or "Which roles match Elin Berg?" Role matching works for up to 20 people at a time. It is for company managers only. Team managers and regular users do not get role matching, and the Chat Agent points them to Cinode's matching feature.
Availability and staffing: "Who becomes available in the next 30 days?" and "Give me a company staffing report."
What the Chat Agent can change for you
The Chat Agent can make the changes below. It always uses your own Cinode permissions, never a shared one. When you ask clearly, it acts straight away and then confirms what it did. For deletions and other changes that cannot be undone, it first states what it will remove and waits for a plain "yes".
Tasks, notes and meetings
You can create, update and delete tasks, notes and meetings on your own record. Managers can do the same on the customers they manage, and company managers on any customer. Examples:
"Add a note to the Northwind account: they want a follow-up in March."
"Book a follow-up meeting with Northwind next Tuesday at 15:00."
"Create a task on the Northwind account for Ida Lund to send the proposal by Friday."
On a customer you manage, you can set colleagues as responsible. On your own record you can mention a colleague, and Cinode emails them, but the item stays on your own record. Times use your timezone. The Chat Agent does not create Cinode tasks on its own. A reminder that you set in chat is not a Cinode task. See Chat Agent: Reminders and proactive messages.
Mark tasks done or snooze them
Task cards in chat have Done and Snooze buttons, and you can also ask in a sentence: "Snooze that task until tomorrow morning." Snooze options are in 1 hour, at lunch (12:00), this afternoon (15:00), this evening (18:00), tomorrow morning (09:00), this weekend, Monday morning (09:00) and in 2 weeks. Options that no longer make sense for the current time are hidden.
You can act on a task when it is assigned to you, sits on a customer you manage, or sits on your own employee record. Company managers can act on any task. Cinode checks this again on every click.
Your own profile
You can update your own profile, and only your own. It cannot edit a colleague's profile. It can:
Add or update work experience, and import one of your booked roles into your profile.
Add an education entry.
Add a skill, change a skill level, or remove a skill. Removing a skill asks for a "yes" first. A skill name with a typo can create a new keyword in your company's Cinode, so the Chat Agent confirms the spelling.
Add a language from your company's language list.
Rewrite your presentation text. It reads the current text first, so nothing you did not mention is lost.
After each change it shows what was saved, with the previous and new value for anything it changed. It cannot delete a language or a presentation, and it cannot rename a skill. To rename one, it adds the correct skill at the old level and then removes the wrong one.
Your own absences
You can add, change and cancel your own absences, for example "Book vacation from 14 to 18 July." The Chat Agent picks the absence type by name from your company's list, and asks you to choose when two types look alike, such as sick leave and sick child care. It refuses to add a second absence of the same type that starts on the same day. Cancelling an absence asks for a "yes", because it removes a real HR record.
Projects and pipeline stages
If your company also uses Pipeline Assistant, the Chat Agent can offer to move a project to a stage or to set its status. These actions come from Pipeline Assistant, and Pipeline Assistant decides who may use them. See Pipeline Assistant: Use it from chat.
What it will not show or do
The Chat Agent is built to refuse some requests. This protects people's data and keeps answers reliable.
Sensitive personal data is never returned: date of birth, phone number, home address, employment dates, LinkedIn and other web links, and the full CV. "Who lives in Malmö?" is answered as "who works from the Malmö office".
Revenue is not returned by utilisation questions. For revenue, win and loss, or funnel questions, it points you to the project reports in Cinode.
Large reports such as "count everything in the company" are declined. It offers a recurring alert instead.
Long lists in a conversational answer stop at about 8 rows with a note of how many more there are. A list posted as a table shows up to 50 rows per page with a link to Cinode.
Other people's data beyond the teams and customers you manage.
Candidates and subcontractors are not supported.
Email, other channels and attachments. It cannot send email, post in another channel from your direct message, or open attachments. To get a message in another channel, add the Chat Agent to that channel, mention it there and ask again.
Off-topic requests. It only helps with Cinode: people, roles, projects, your profile, tasks and alerts.
How a conversation works
A few practical rules help you get good answers:
Short bursts count as one question. If you send several messages within about 1.5 seconds in one thread, the Chat Agent answers the latest one and uses the earlier ones as context.
It remembers the thread. It reads up to 20 earlier messages and keeps a summary of the conversation, so follow-up questions work.
One reply per question. Answers are not streamed. You see a working indicator, then one complete reply.
Busy threads queue. If it is still working on your earlier question, up to 10 new messages wait in line, and if more than 10 are waiting, the oldest are dropped. If a waiting message is not picked up within 11 minutes, the Chat Agent tells you it missed it and asks you to send it again.
Large requests stop early. If a question needs too many lookups for one reply, it says so and asks you to narrow it down.
If something goes wrong, see Chat: Troubleshooting.