---
title: "What the assistant can do"
url: https://flexie.io/resources/ai/what-it-can-do
description: "The assistant's abilities in plain language, from finding and understanding your data to taking action, building automations, managing your setup, and reaching beyond Flexie. Every ability can be switched off or set to ask first."
---

# What the assistant can do

Last updated 6 June 2026

![The Flexie AI ability set shown as a list; find your data, take action, build automations, manage your setup, and reach beyond Flexie, each one able to be turned on or off](https://flexie.io/image/resources/ai-what-it-can-do.png)

The assistant works through a set of **abilities**, each one a concrete thing it knows how to do inside Flexie. Every ability can be turned on or off for your account, and any of them can be set to ask for your approval before it runs. Whatever is switched on, the assistant only ever acts within the permissions of the person using it.

## Finding and understanding your data

* **Search your records.** Find and filter customers, leads, deals, invoices, cases, or any record type, and get a straight answer with no filters to build by hand. It can also save a search as a reusable report. See [Reports](https://flexie.io/resources/reports/overview).
* **Understand how your data is organised.** It knows the shape of your account, which record types and fields exist, so it can answer questions about your own setup and build accurate searches.
* **Read your deal pipelines.** It understands your stages and can reason about what is where in the pipeline.
* **Use your categories.** It can read and work with the category labels you use to organise records.

## Managing your setup

* **Work with custom fields.** It can see your existing fields and create new ones, so you can say "add a 'contract end date' field to all my customers" and it is done.
* **Work with custom record types.** It can see and create your own record types, shaping Flexie around how your business actually works.

The assistant discovers what already exists before it changes anything, so it adds to your setup rather than duplicating it.

## Taking action on records

* **Send email.** It can prepare and send messages on your behalf, after approval.
* **Prepare documents.** It can produce a PDF, such as a quote or a letter, from your templates and data.
* **Act on the page you are on.** Where appropriate, it can carry out an action on the screen in front of you.
* **Clean up duplicates.** It can find duplicate records and help you merge them. See [Data Quality](https://flexie.io/resources/data-quality/overview).

## Building automations

* **Build a workflow.** Describe a process in plain words and the assistant designs the whole automation, ready for you to review and switch on.
* **Explore what automations can do.** It can look up the full range of triggers, actions, and decisions available, so the automations it builds use the right pieces.

See [Workflow automation](https://flexie.io/resources/workflows/overview).

## Using your own knowledge

* **Search and maintain your knowledge bases.** The assistant can look things up in the libraries of facts you have given it, follow links between related entries, and, where you allow it, add and update entries. See [Knowledge bases](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/knowledge-bases).

## Reaching beyond Flexie

* **Look things up on the web.** It can browse the web to research a company, verify a detail, or gather context.
* **Call another system.** It can send a request to an outside service you use, to fetch or push information.
* **Collect a structured choice.** It can present a small form when it needs you to pick from options or fill specific fields, rather than guessing.

## Quality checks

* **Check its own logic.** When it writes an expression or a rule, it can validate that the logic is sound before relying on it, so the automations it builds are correct.

## Behind the scenes

* **Bring in a specialist.** For big, focused jobs, the assistant hands the work to a specialist helper built for that task. You still only talk to one assistant. See [Specialists](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/specialists).
* **Learn its own abilities.** It can look up detailed guidance on how to use a given ability well, so it uses each one correctly.

## How abilities are controlled

| Control              | What it does                                                              | Where                                                    |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| **On / off**         | Decide which abilities the assistant has at all.                          | [Settings](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/settings-and-models)            |
| **Require approval** | Make a given ability pause for your go-ahead before it acts.              | [Settings](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/settings-and-models)            |
| **Permissions**      | The assistant can only ever do what the person using it could do by hand. | [Approvals & safety](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/approvals-and-safety) |
| **Per workflow**     | An AI step in a workflow gets its own selected set of abilities.          | [AI in workflows](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/ai-in-workflows)         |

## Closely related

* [Approvals & safety](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/approvals-and-safety): what needs your go-ahead, and the permission rules.
* [Knowledge bases](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/knowledge-bases): give the assistant your own facts.
* [AI in workflows](https://flexie.io/resources/ai/ai-in-workflows): pick the abilities an unattended AI step may use.