Ask the documentation
This documentation runs to about seventy pages. Most of the time the problem is not that the answer is missing, it is that you do not know which page holds it, so you leave the portal, search, read something adjacent, and come back.
Ask the documentation is a question box inside the portal for exactly that moment. You type the question in your own words, and an answer comes back written from these pages, with links to the ones it drew on.
It is available to every organisation, with nothing to switch on. Nothing about it changes what your users receive, and nothing in the portal depends on it.
Where it is
Section titled “Where it is”There are two ways to it, and both are the same conversation.
| Where | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Every page of the portal | A sparkle button in the bottom right corner. It opens a panel over the page you are on, so you can ask without losing your place |
| Help, in the portal sidebar | The question box sits at the top of the dialog, above the documentation and support links |
The bubble keeps your conversation while you move between pages. The Help dialog forgets it when you close the dialog, which is what closing a dialog means.
It is not in the “My signature” pane in Outlook, and not on the your details page. Those are for the people whose signature Sigil manages, not for the people configuring it.
Asking a question
Section titled “Asking a question”- Choose the sparkle button in the bottom right of any portal page, or choose Help in the sidebar.
- Type the question into the box at the bottom. It reads “How do I exclude a shared mailbox?” until you do.
- Press Enter, or choose the send arrow. Shift and Enter together make a new line instead of sending.
- Read the answer, then follow one of the links under “From these pages” to the page it came from.
While the answer is being written the panel says “Searching the documentation”. An answer is normally a few seconds.
Following up
Section titled “Following up”A second question carries the conversation, so “what about for a group?” means what it says rather than starting again from nothing.
The box changes to read “Ask a follow-up” once there is something to follow up. To drop the thread and start clean, choose the new conversation control in the panel’s header, or close and reopen the Help dialog.
The transcript is your browser’s and nobody else’s. It is sent back with each follow-up so the question can be understood in context, it is bounded at the last eight messages, and it is stored nowhere. Signing out or closing the tab ends it.
Where the answers come from
Section titled “Where the answers come from”Only from this documentation site. Sigil keeps a search index of the public pages
at docs.usesigil.app, and each question retrieves the passages that match,
which a model then answers from.
That is a deliberate limit rather than a shortcoming. What the documentation says is what Sigil promises, and an answer drawn from anything else is a promise nobody made.
Under each answer, “From these pages” links the pages the passages came from, at most four, best match first. A page whose match is weak is not listed at all: a link under a confident answer is a claim that the page answers the question, and listing near misses teaches you to stop reading the links.
When the documentation changes, the index catches up within about six hours, so an answer can trail a very recent change by part of a day.
What it will not answer
Section titled “What it will not answer”It reads the documentation. It cannot read your organisation.
| Question | Where it goes instead |
|---|---|
| “Why isn’t the signature showing for one person?” | It explains the reasons a signature does not apply, and cannot look up that mailbox. See troubleshooting and activity |
| “Which template will Sam get?” | The rules simulator answers it against your real rules. See assignment rules |
| “What are we paying?” | Billing in the portal. The answer here can only describe how billing works |
| “Change this setting for me” | It writes nothing and does nothing. Every change is still yours to make |
It also has no access to the operator side of the service, your invoices, or anybody’s directory record.
Answers can be wrong
Section titled “Answers can be wrong”The panel says so under every answer, every time, rather than once. The line reads “Answers are written by an AI model from the documentation and can be wrong. Check the page it links before you act on one, and leave people’s details out of your question.”
Both halves of that are meant. The model is instructed to answer only from the passages it was given, to say plainly when they do not contain the answer, and never to state a setting, price, limit or time frame the documentation does not. It can still read a page badly. The links are there so you can check, and the page is the authority where the two differ.
If the answer and the documentation disagree, the documentation is right. Tell us through Help, and we will fix whichever of the two is wrong.
What happens to your question
Section titled “What happens to your question”Nothing is kept.
| Stored by Sigil | No. The question and the answer are not written to any database, and the service’s own log line records how long the answer took and how many pages it cited, never the text |
| Stored by Cloudflare | No. The similarity cache that would otherwise hold question and answer pairs is switched off, and request logging is off on the gateway the requests pass through |
| Used to train a model | No. Cloudflare does not use content sent to its AI service to train models |
| Visible to other people in your organisation | No. A conversation exists in your browser and nowhere else, and it is not in the change log |
The question is processed by Tophhie Cloud as a controller in its own right, rather than on your organisation’s behalf, because it is text an administrator typed rather than directory data or signature content. The privacy policy in the portal carries a row for it. See data and privacy.
Ask about the product, not about people. The instruction to leave people’s details out of the question is there because a question is sent for inference, and the surest way for a colleague’s details not to be processed is for them not to be in the question in the first place. Nothing needs them: “how do I exclude a shared mailbox” gets the same answer as the version with the address in it.
Who can use it
Section titled “Who can use it”Everyone with a portal role, including Viewers, and partner staff working in a client’s portal. Every role gets stuck, and the answers describe the documentation rather than your data, so there is nothing here to restrict by role. See roles and capabilities.
It is not available to API keys. A key is a script, and a script wants the pages themselves rather than prose about them.
What it costs
Section titled “What it costs”Nothing. It is not priced, not an add-on, and not counted against anything on your bill.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Question length | 3 to 500 characters |
| Conversation carried into a follow-up | The last 8 messages |
| Pages cited under an answer | Up to 4 |
| Questions per administrator per organisation | 20 a minute |
| How long an answer may take | 25 seconds, after which it asks you to try again |
When something goes wrong
Section titled “When something goes wrong”| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| “Ask a question of between 3 and 500 characters.” | The box was empty, nearly empty, or holds something longer than a question |
| “That took too long. Try a shorter question.” | The answer did not arrive within 25 seconds. Asking again usually works |
| “The documentation couldn’t be searched just now. Try again shortly.” | The search service did not answer. Nothing is wrong with your organisation’s signatures |
| “Documentation search isn’t available right now.” | The feature is temporarily unavailable across the service |
| “Documentation search is not turned on for your organisation.” | The feature is unavailable to your organisation at the moment. Nothing else is affected, and the documentation site can still be read directly |
| “That’s a lot of questions at once. Give it a minute and ask again.” | More than 20 questions in a minute from you. Nothing is lost, and the next one works |
| “The documentation couldn’t be reached. Check your connection and try again.” | Your browser could not reach Sigil at all, usually a dropped connection |
| “The conversation couldn’t be read. Start a new one.” | The earlier turns sent with your question were not in a shape Sigil could read. Start a new conversation |
None of these affect anything else. Signatures, publishing and delivery do not depend on this feature, and the documentation site itself is always there to read directly.
Still stuck
Section titled “Still stuck”An answer that does not resolve it is a support case, and Help is where that starts. The same dialog carries the support address and the response commitment. If an IT provider manages Sigil for you it names them first, without contact details, because they are the quicker people to ask. See troubleshooting.