Ask
Stop searching, start asking 
Finally, a proper way to leverage all your team's knowledge and documentation. Enough of endless search results where you don't know where to start.
What is Ask?
Ask accepts questions and then intelligently searches across your workspace documents for answers. It will provide you with a summarized response, as well as a list of documents that it used as sources in its answer.
How Ask differs from Search
Ask is able to compare your question to particular content in documents in a much more specific and meaningful way than a normal keyword search. It uses the benefits of language processing and AI to understand your intention, to find relevant passages (even if they don't use the same wording you typed!), and to synthesize that information into a cohesive answer.
How to use Ask
To ask a question, click the Ask button at the top of the left sidebar or press Command-Shift-K (Ctrl + Shift + K on Windows), then type your question in the modal that appears.
If you were using Search instead, you can add a question mark to the end of your query and you will be prompted to use the AI assistant.
Use Ask from Slack
You can directly use Ask from Slack. Slack is the place where most questions are dropped and instead of pinging a colleague, you can ping Slite instead, and have everyone go on with their day with less interruptions.
Tips for writing great questions
Since Ask uses natural language, your results will be much better if you ask exactly what you want to learn, instead of thinking only about keywords. Give clear intention when possible.
Examples:
time-off approval policies?→ "How do I submit time-off requests for approval?"- Explain X feature as If I was 10 years old.
- What is the goal of the marketing team for Q3?
- Can you summarize the product newsletter of April 2025?
- What are the three main advantages of feature X?
How to optimize Ask results
Ask works best when your content is well-structured and up to date. Below are a few ways to improve the quality of answers.
Structure your documents
Use headings (H1, H2, H3, H4) to add semantic context. This helps Ask:
- Isolate the most relevant parts of your docs
- Retrieve and rank more accurate responses
Verify important docs and flag outdated content
You can flag content as outdated using the Doc Verification feature. Outdated docs will rank lower in Ask while verified docs will be prioritized.
Use filters to refine your query
Below the question field you can filter by:
- Source type (docs, Collections, archived docs, docs published to web)
- Sources (select which docs you want to analyze)
- Date range
- Contributors
- Verified docs only
Adding filters helps Ask pull from the most relevant content.
Track Ask Usage with Ask Insights
You can get visibility into the kinds of questions your team is asking — and where your documentation might be falling short — using Ask Insights .
FAQ (Click arrow to read more)
Is Ask available in languages other than English?
Yes, Ask works with multiple languages.
- You can ask your question in any language.
- You'll receive answers in the same language as your question (translating whatever information it found to answer your question.)
- You can ask it to answer you in another language.
e.g., Can you tell me in Spanish what is the time off policy?
How long does it take to index new content?
It takes about 10 minutes after the end of the last edit session to index the content added or edited.
How long can my questions be?
The limit is between 50 and 75 words depending on the length of the words.
What content does Ask access?
The set of documents that Ask can access on behalf of a user is exactly the same as the general search, filtered by user permissions. It will answer only based on the docs you have access to and will not include docs from "My private channel".
Ask uses any written content in your Slite docs, but will not be able to give answers based on content from comments or Collection attributes (e.g. tags.)
What if the answer cannot be found?
If Ask has low confidence that your documents contain a relevant answer, it will tell you that it is unable to answer, rather than producing a low-quality response. You can then assign the question to a teammate using Ask Insights .
Is my content used to train or teach AI?
Your content is not used in any way for the training of Ask's language and AI models. At the end of a question request, there is nothing retained or learned from what it read during processing the answer.
Is any data sent to or processed by a third-party app?
Yes, doc sources are sent to Azure OpenAI to process the answer. You can read more on privacy and data processing in Privacy Policy at Slite .
Will Ask produce answers based on answers found in PDFs?
Yes, Ask is able to take into account content from PDFs that are uploaded to Slite.
Can Ask be enabled on public docs?
Yes, you are able to enable Ask on public docs and let your visitors use it as well.
To do so, you need to add your own Custom OpenAI key in your Slite settings (subject to OpenAI's privacy practices ), and then make sure to
Enable AI powered search on the doc level:
Are Guests able to use Ask?
No, Guests cannot use Ask in the workspace.
Do I need to use an OpenAI API key?
While we use Azure OpenAI for Ask, you may want to use an OpenAI API key in the following cases (if so, you will be subject to OpenAI's privacy practices ):
- if you want to enable Ask on public documents (shared with the web)
- if you don't want to worry about hitting the monthly AI quota
- if you have specific privacy requirements (you negotiated something with OpenAI and you prefer to use your own key)
- if you want to enable GPT-4 instead of the default GPT-3.5
Can I ask a question as part of a Zap?
Yes! You can use the Ask Question action:
