Talking to Aino

The chat is where you do almost everything. You don't fill in forms. You tell Aino, the assistant built into ainocrm, what happened, the way you would tell a colleague, and Aino updates the CRM for you. You can type or talk.

Start a chat

There are four ways to start talking:

• Click New chat at the top of the left sidebar.
• Type into the box at the top of your dashboard ("Tell me what happened, or ask about your pipeline…").
• Open an opportunity and type into the box at the top of its page. That chat is about that opportunity from the start. Account and contact pages have the same box, and your message says who it's about.
• Click the small + next to an opportunity in the sidebar ("New chat about this opportunity").

Press Enter to send. Press Shift+Enter for a new line. A message can be up to 4,000 characters long.

Tell it what happened

After a call, a meeting or an email, write it down in plain words. Names, numbers and dates are all useful. You don't have to say which opportunity it is if the company name makes it obvious.

From one message like that, Aino:

1. Works out the company, the people and the opportunity. If they are new, it creates them and tells you ("I created a new opportunity… just say 'undo that'").
2. Saves the call, meeting or email on the opportunity's timeline, with a short summary.
3. Turns promises into follow-up tasks ("send the revised proposal by Friday" becomes a task due Friday).
4. Saves an agreed next meeting and what you want to cover in it.
5. Closes earlier follow-ups that your message shows are done ("sent the proposal yesterday" ticks off that task).
6. Moves the opportunity to the next stage if what you said means it is ready, and tells you it did. If the move is wrong, say so and it moves it back.
7. Asks for the deal value, products or close date in one question if they are still missing.

Under Aino's reply you see what it did: Logged interaction, and buttons such as View deal. These open a panel on the right with the latest information. Buttons at the top of the chat (View deal, View account) take you to the full pages. On a phone, both cover the chat: press Back to chat at the bottom right to return to it.

When it isn't sure, it asks

If a name could mean two opportunities, or a company it doesn't know, Aino asks a short question and shows the choices as buttons right under it. Click one, press its number on your keyboard, or type your own answer. Nothing is saved until you answer.

A word or two is enough

You don't need to spell things out. A short reply like "update", "yes", "add", "the first one", a date or a name continues what Aino just said. Whenever Aino offers choices or proposes a change, they appear as buttons under its message, so you can answer with one tap.

Fixing something you told it

One conversation is one logged meeting or call, however many messages it takes to tell it. Correct a name, a detail or who was there, and Aino changes what it logged rather than logging it again. If attempts at a name differ, it checks the name with you first. Report something on the same opportunity a moment later and it asks whether that's a new conversation. A meeting you've only planned becomes the opportunity's next meeting, not a logged one. If something did get logged twice, say so and Aino removes the extra one once you've confirmed.

Ask it things

The same chat answers questions. Some answers open a panel on the right with numbers or a chart, next to the explanation.

A salesperson's answers are always about their own opportunities. Leaders, executives and admins can ask about the whole company or any one person. A leader changes only their own team's opportunities, and an executive changes nothing (Aino answers but doesn't update anything for them). See Who can see what.

The built-in guide

Click the ? button at the top of a chat ("What can I ask?"), or type help or ? as a message, to open a list of example questions.

Your language

Aino writes and speaks the language you chose under Settings › Profile (English, Finnish or Swedish), from the first reply in a new chat, whatever language you use yourself. To change your language, just ask: "switch to Finnish", "byt språk till svenska", "vaihda kieli englanniksi". The app's own labels switch at the same moment, exactly as if you had picked the language in Settings, and it follows you to every device. This works on a voice call too. If you keep writing in a language that isn't the one you chose, Aino may offer once to make it your language. Text you ask for in another language, like an email to a customer, comes in that language.

One chat per opportunity

When a chat is about an opportunity, Aino remembers that. You don't have to repeat the name: "closed it", "add a task", "update the price" all apply to that opportunity. In the sidebar, the chat moves under its opportunity. A chat you start with the + next to an opportunity stays there. Start a new chat when you want to talk about something else.

A chat that changes several opportunities at once ("move both Acme deals to November and Globex to December") stays under Chats. If the conversation then sticks to one opportunity for two requests in a row, the chat moves under that one.

Aino names each chat after what it's about. Under an opportunity, the name doesn't repeat the opportunity or the company. Next to each chat you see how long ago it was last used (5m, 2d, 1w), and each message shows its time, with a heading for each day. A new chat shows up in the sidebar once you've sent it something.

The sidebar has two parts:

• Opportunities, grouped by company. A dot means something new happened. Click the arrow to see the chats about it.
• Chats, for conversations that are not about one opportunity.

Archiving and deleting chats

Hover over any chat in the sidebar (or use the icons next to the title of an open chat):

• Archive (the box icon) moves it to Archived at the bottom of the sidebar. Nothing is lost.
• Delete (the bin icon) asks first, then removes it for good — it no longer shows up anywhere, not even in search.

Chats are also archived on their own when:

• The opportunity they are about is won, lost or archived.
• You only asked to see your tasks ("what's on my list?") and nothing changed. Other questions stay in the sidebar until you archive them.

Open Archived at the bottom of the sidebar to see your archived chats (after your archived opportunities); hover one to Unarchive or delete it. Search finds them too: press ⌘K and type part of the title or something said in the chat; they're marked Archived. An open archived chat has Unarchive at the top, or just send a new message in it.

Chats the system starts for you

• New AI insights — Company: when new research arrives on one of your accounts. Ask follow-up questions about it, or add the people it found as contacts. See Accounts & contacts.
• Log email: subject: when an email you sent to the log address needs an answer (for example, which customer it is about). Pick an option and the email is filed.
• Which company is …?: when Aino can't tell which company a new account is (with New account lookup on). Pick an answer or type one, and the account is updated.
• Why was … lost?: when an email closed one of your opportunities as lost without saying why. Answer in a sentence and the reason is filed. See Your opportunities.

Talk instead of type

With voice chat you talk to Aino out loud, which is handy in the car or between meetings. It does everything the typed chat does and answers out loud.

• Start it with the microphone button in the message box (shown while the box is empty), New voice chat in the sidebar, the Or just talk to me button in a new chat, the voice button on an opportunity's page, or ⌘⇧Space (Ctrl+Shift+Space on Windows). On a phone, use the button in the bottom bar.
• Aino opens the call: in a new chat it asks what happened today, in a chat about an opportunity it asks what's new with that customer, and in a chat you come back to it picks up where you left off.
• A chime (and a buzz on a phone) means it's your turn. Heard enough while Aino is still talking? Just start talking over it, or press Skip (or the space bar): the rest of the spoken reply is dropped, the written answer stays in the chat, and the call goes on. Before Aino records something you said, it names the customer in a few words so you can correct a misheard name, and saying a name again corrects it; a short "Reconnecting…" is just the network changing, and the call carries on.
• Need time to think? Aino normally answers when you pause. Pick When I say so in your set-up or under Settings › Profile › Voice conversations, and from your next call Aino waits until you say one of your phrases or press Done (or the space bar), however long you pause. The suggested phrases are "over to you", "your turn", "done" and "over" (in Finnish and Swedish there are ones of their own too), and you can remove them or add your own. Say the phrase as the last thing, on its own. What you've said so far shows in the chat. In this mode "done" hands over instead of hanging up; "I'm done" still hangs up.
• Say "thanks", "I'm done", "stop" or "bye" to hang up, or press Esc or End. Opening another chat, or putting the phone app in the background, also ends the call. A call also ends by itself after 15 minutes (Aino says so a minute before) or when your daily AI allowance is spent: Aino tells you before hanging up, and a note under the chat says why.
• The conversation is saved as a normal chat you can read later.
• It speaks your language, the one chosen in Settings, and follows you if you speak another.

Drop in a spreadsheet

Click the paperclip next to the message box to upload a .csv, .xlsx or .xls file of companies and contacts. It is imported right away (there is no preview), and a View import button shows the progress. Everyone except executives can do this. For a careful import with a preview, ask your admin to use the company set-up.

Find anything: ⌘K

Press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows), or click the magnifying glass at the top of the sidebar. Type to search opportunities, tasks, accounts, chats and your inbox, or jump to any page. Chats are found by their title and by what was said in them; a chat found by its messages shows the words that matched under its title. Picking a task in the Complete a task section ticks it off immediately.

If the chat stops answering

If sending fails, your text is put back in the box so you don't lose it.