Troubleshooting - Documentation

Troubleshooting for owners

Keeping assistants running, making them better and helping the people who use them. If you're chatting with someone else's assistant, see troubleshooting for chatting.

Running out of credits

If assistants stop responding, look for the credit warning banner at the top of the app. Spend lists every credit movement, and on wider screens its Spend History chart shows your balance day by day. Low-credit warnings, the grace period, resets and ways to add credits are explained in what happens when credits run out.

Choosing Standard or Premium AI

Change the model from Settings in the assistant's menu. See choosing Premium or Standard AI for advice and premium models for availability and downgrade behaviour.

Editing assistants

Choose Edit from the assistant's menu, make the change in the Manual tab or describe it in the Chat tab, and select Update Assistant. See editing and iterating for guidance. Settings in the assistant's menu handles quick changes such as the name, model, capabilities and enabled state.

When conversations aren't going well

If an assistant is giving poor answers, missing the point or frustrating the people using it, find out what is happening first:

Open Activity from the assistant's menu to see how much it is used, how many answers people liked or disliked, and how many escalations it has raised and still has open
Choose View escalations from the same menu to read recent ones, with the conversation each came from
Try Test chat yourself with the kind of question that's been going wrong

A conversation that never escalated stays private to the person having it, so escalations and your own test chats are where the detail is.

Then:

Edit the assistant to add the missing information or correct the framing. This is usually the fix
Add a fact about how experienced the person is if the assistant is pitching at the wrong level, for example "absolute beginner with no technical background"
Switch to Premium if the topic is complex and Standard is missing the nuance
As a last resort, disable it and build a fresh one

If the problem looks like a Deputise bug rather than an assistant issue, raise a support ticket.

Disabling and enabling assistants

Turn Enabled off in Settings from the assistant's menu and save. See enabling and disabling assistants for the effect on chats and tier limits if you cannot enable it again.

Use Share from the assistant's menu to invite someone by name and email. See sharing with people for invitation expiry and access management.

If an invitation has not been accepted, check the address and whether it has expired, then resend it from Manage access. Chats that have not escalated remain private to the person chatting, so to understand early use, review escalations and ask the recipient for feedback.

Answering escalations

When the person chatting asks for a person, the assistant escalates the conversation to you.

The person asks for human help, such as "can you get the owner to help?" or "I want to talk to a person"
The assistant passes the question to you and tells the person someone will get back to them
You're told what was asked, why the assistant couldn't help and how urgent it is, by push where available and otherwise by email, subject to your notification preferences
The person's chat is paused until you respond, for up to 48 hours. After that the request lapses, the person is told it went unanswered and the assistant picks the conversation back up

Responding to escalations

Open the notification, or choose Escalations in the sidebar
Read the chat history for context
Send your response. The person reads it in the chat and is notified according to their own preferences
They can carry on the conversation, and the assistant picks things up again afterwards

Choose Mark as resolved once the person has what they need, including when a question resolved itself or turned out to be a misunderstanding. It can't be undone, and the chat stays open so they can keep talking to the assistant. End chat instead closes the conversation, so no more messages can be sent in it.

Saving an answer for next time

Once you've replied, the escalation page shows a Save this answer panel. It offers two places to keep the answer, and you can use either or both:

Remember for the person keeps a short note, up to 500 characters, that the assistant reads in every later chat with that person. Use it for things about them, such as their setup or what worked for them. It starts as your reply, so trim it to what matters
Add to facts puts the answer in the assistant's facts for everyone it's shared with. Pick a label it already has to add to that fact, or type a new label and choose the topic it belongs to, or Everywhere

Each part saves on its own, so a full memory doesn't stop the fact being added, and the panel says if one of them didn't save. A part that has saved locks and isn't sent again. The person can see, change and delete the notes in their memory. Reviewing what the assistant remembers covers how you see them.

Urgency levels

Escalations are tagged low, medium or high from what the person said. The tag can be wrong, so glance at the message itself:

Low: not time-sensitive
Medium: a standard request that needs attention
High: the person indicated it's urgent or important, and the email subject is flagged as urgent too

Using escalations to improve your assistants

If the same topics keep coming up:

Choose Edit from the assistant's menu
Add the information the assistant needs, as a fact or through the Chat tab
Select Update Assistant

Saving an answer to the facts from the escalation does the same in one step. Over time, your escalation rate should drop as you fold answers back into the assistant.

Raising support tickets

For help with Deputise itself, whether a technical issue, a billing question or something that doesn't seem right, raise a support ticket. Support is part of the paid plans, and Pro includes priority support; see the plan overview. You can also email support.

Open Support from the sidebar and choose Get Support
Describe the issue and send your message
You'll get an acknowledgement straight away, and someone from the team will review the ticket as soon as possible

Your recent tickets are listed on the Support page. Open one to see the conversation, send follow-up messages and check its status:

New: waiting for review
Active: someone from the team is working on it
Resolved: the issue has been addressed
Closed: the ticket is complete

If a resolved ticket hasn't fully answered your question, choose Reactivate from the menu beside Close Ticket to reopen it.

A good ticket says what you were trying to do, what happened and what you expected, names the assistant if one is involved, and covers one issue.