Before you let Elise work on real client data
Turn on AI safely: set a cap, hide data, keep control
Cap what AI can cost. Hide private data from the AI provider. Pick what Elise may do alone.
Browse
On this page
How to do it
Find the master switch.
Open Settings > AI Assistant > Actions & Automation. Enable AI Assistant is the big switch. Turn it off and chat, actions, device Troubleshoot and client Health Narratives all stop. Nothing reaches the AI provider. It is on by default. Only the owner tier can see it. Enable Elise Actions is a smaller switch below it. It decides if Elise may run actions at all, such as ticket replies, quotes and time entries. You can leave chat on and Elise Actions off while you build trust.
Set the cap first in Settings > AI Assistant > AI Budget.
Monthly AI Budget is a hard cap on AI spend for the current month. A new instance starts at $300 a month, so it is never wide open. When the cap is reached, AI calls stop with a clear message until the month rolls over or you raise the cap. Setting $0 means unlimited, so only do that on purpose. Look at your own use first: Elise, then Dashboard, shows this month's calls, tokens and cost.
Limit one client if you need to.
Open the client's edit form and fill in AI Budget Override (cents). Use whole cents: 5000 is $50. Leave it blank and that client uses the whole-portal cap. A client's own number wins for that client. The whole-portal cap still applies to everyone together.
Leave AI Budget Override off.
On the same AI Budget page, AI Budget Override is off by default. Turned on, every AI call skips the monthly cap, with no ceiling at all. It is for an emergency, such as a real spike in work. Only the owner tier can change it. Turn it back off when the spike is over.
Turn on AI PII Redaction if a client is regulated.
Find it in Settings > AI Assistant > Privacy & Redaction. When it is on, emails, phone numbers, SSNs, EINs and credit-card numbers become a marker such as [redacted-email] before text goes to the AI provider. That covers your messages and the results of tools Elise runs. It is off by default. The page says it is Required for HIPAA / PCI clients. A second switch, AI PII Redaction - IPs, also hides IPv4 addresses. It starts off, because IT tickets often need the IP.
Know what redaction does not hide.
Redaction looks for set shapes. These are emails, phone numbers, SSNs, EINs and card numbers. You can add IPs. It does not hide names, so a name you can see in a list can reach the AI provider. It is also careful on purpose, so it can miss an odd format. A number with no spaces or dashes is one example. If a client's contract needs more, add a data-loss tool. Do not promise more than the page says. Redaction can also make Elise less right on a ticket where the email address is the problem.
Add an exclusion for a data type Elise should never read.
On Privacy & Redaction, select + Add exclusion. Pick a Data type. Add a Reason (optional) so the next admin knows why. Then Save. Elise stops reading that data type until you remove the row. By default she can read all data that is not sensitive. She can only read what the person asking could read. User accounts, secrets, audit logs and role setup are never readable. That fence is built in. An exclusion can only narrow what is allowed.
Tell your team: Elise never shows a vault password.
Ask her about a vault entry and she names it and links to it on the vault page, and that is all. She does not return a password, for any role. She says it is sensitive data and points to the vault page. To read the password, open the entry in the vault and select Show there. The same fence applies to the client vault sharing you set up in the client vault guide.
Pick how much confirming each action needs.
Open Settings > AI Assistant > Actions & Automation and expand the Action Catalog card. It lists more than 200 actions. Each has a tier: Read, Draft, Safe Write, Sensitive Write or Destructive. Open an action. Choose Inherit (default), None - fire silently, Preview - show before, Optional - user can confirm, Required - must confirm or Explicit - typed confirmation. You can tighten any action. You can loosen most. A Destructive action stays at Explicit. Every change is logged in the audit list at the bottom of the page. A safe start is to set Required on the money and client-change actions.
Teach your team what the Confirm step looks like.
When Elise wants to change something that needs approval, a card appears in the chat. It says Elise wants to, then it describes the change, and it has two buttons: Cancel and Confirm. Nothing is changed until someone selects Confirm. Read the card before you click, the same way you read an email before you send it. If someone else edited that record after the card was shown, Elise does not make the change. She says the record changed and asks you to ask again, so you see the current version.
Know what needs a second person.
A Destructive action never runs from the card. Elise files it in Review, then Gated Actions, and someone else who holds that permission releases it. You cannot release your own request unless you are the Owner. If nobody releases it in time, it expires. The window is 24 hours by default and you can set it from 1 to 168 hours under Engine Guardrails. Then ask again and a fresh request is filed.
At first, do not let Elise close or dispatch alone.
Both live in Settings > AI Assistant > Actions & Automation. Elise Auto-Close is off by default. When on, Elise closes high-confidence Resolved tickets with no human review. Elise Auto-Close Minimum Score is the lowest score she will close, 4 by default. Elise Dispatch Mode is Off by default. Preview records what she would dispatch so your team can grade it. It makes no calendar changes. Pick On (live) only after the grades look right.
Check her work every week.
Open Elise, then Action History, to see what she did and for whom. A ticket's History card tags her rows "elise" and names the person who asked, so every change has an owner. Check Elise, then Dashboard for this month's cost against your cap. If AI calls stop with no other reason, check Monthly AI Budget first.
The pages behind each click
What you will have
- Know who can switch the whole AI assistant on or off.
- Put a monthly dollar cap on AI spend, for the whole portal and for one client.
- Hide emails, phone numbers and card numbers from the AI provider.
- Know what redaction does not hide, so you promise your clients only what is true.
- Know that Elise never shows a vault password.
- Choose which actions need a Confirm click, and which need a second person.
- Do not let Elise close or dispatch tickets alone yet.
Why it works this way: Turn on AI safely: set a cap, hide data, keep control
Three separate controls keep AI safe, and each one answers a different question. The budget answers how much it can cost. Redaction and the data fence answer what it can see. Confirmation answers what it can change.
Elise works as the person who asks. She can only read and change what that person could read and change on their own. So her reach is set by your staff roles, and these settings narrow it further.
You do not have to turn it all on at once. Start with the cap and the privacy switch. Let your team use Elise to read first. Then loosen the confirm rules as trust grows.
Other ways to do this: Turn on AI safely: set a cap, hide data, keep control
Let the Set up Elise wizard go first
Go to Settings > System > Setup Wizards > Set up Elise. It adds the provider key, the name, the voice and your business context in five short lessons. Then come back here for the cap, privacy and confirm choices.
Ask Elise what a setting is
With view access to Settings, ask "What is the monthly AI spend cap set to?" or "Is AI PII redaction on?" She tells you the value and where to change it. With edit access, she can propose turning redaction on, and she waits for your approval. She will not change the budget in chat. She sends you to the AI Budget page.
If it did not work: Turn on AI safely: set a cap, hide data, keep control
- You cannot see Enable AI Assistant. Only the owner tier can see it.
- Elise says the assistant is off. Someone in the owner tier must turn it back on.
- If AI calls stop and nothing else changed, the monthly cap is likely reached. Raise it on the AI Budget page or wait for the next month.
- You cannot change AI Budget Override. Only the owner tier can.
- An action says it is gated: ask Elise to file it. Someone else who holds that permission frees it in Review > Gated Actions.
- Elise cannot read something. Check your own access. Then check if it was excluded on Privacy & Redaction.
Was this helpful?