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Ask Overdesk ​

Ask Overdesk answers plain-English questions about your support operations, right in Slack. Ask "what bugs came in this week?" or "how much did we spend on AI today?" and it replies in a few sentences, drawn from your own workspace's data.

Before you start ​

  • Ask Overdesk is part of the Pro and Scale plans, and of the free trial. On Assist, turning it on gets each question a reply saying it is available on Pro and Scale. See Plans and pricing.
  • Slack must be connected, and the setting only appears once it is. See Connecting Slack.
  • It runs on your own Anthropic API key, the one saved in Settings → AI, so Anthropic bills each answer to your account. Without a key, the bot asks you to add one.

Turn it on ​

Ask Overdesk stays off until an admin turns it on.

  1. Open Settings → AI.
  2. Under Ask Overdesk in Slack, choose Enabled.
  3. Click Save.

To turn it off again, choose Disabled and save.

Ask a question ​

@mention the bot in a channel, or type your question after /overdesk. A question that starts with a command word (report, draft, stats, status or help) runs that command instead, so begin with something else, such as "how many" or "what".

After an @mention, the bot posts "Thinking…" in a thread under your message and replaces it with the answer. After /overdesk, the answer is posted in the channel for everyone in it.

What it can answer ​

It reads a fixed set of your workspace's data:

  • drafts: how many were written and what they cost
  • AI spend over a period, broken down by job type
  • bugs and issues that triage found
  • ticket volume, read live from your connected help desks
  • background jobs and how they ran
  • recent alerts
  • your latest reports

Each answer is written to lead with the number you asked for and to name the dates it covers. Ask about anything outside these topics and it is instructed to say that these are all it can answer.

What it never does ​

Ask Overdesk only reads. It takes no actions, changes nothing in your help desk or in Overdesk, and never messages a customer. It answers from your own workspace's data only, and it is instructed to say so plainly when that data has nothing, rather than estimate.

Limits ​

Each workspace can ask 6 questions a minute. Past that, the bot asks you to try again in a few seconds. If the workspace's trial has ended or the workspace is suspended, the bot replies that it cannot answer.

Rate an answer ​

Every answer carries 👍 Helpful and 👎 Not helpful buttons, under a line that reads "Overdesk assistant · read-only · answered from your workspace data". A rating is saved against a fingerprint of the question, not the question's text.