Using Chats

You can chat about a wide range of topics with Alan, whether it's answering specific questions, creating and optimizing text, developing ideas, or extracting and structuring information.

Each chat with Alan is a separate conversation, and Alan remembers the previous contents of a conversation via the context. Therefore, it is a good idea to start a new chat for each new question or topic.

Starting a Chat

To start a chat with Alan, click on the "New Chat" button.

You can now enter your prompt (e.g. a question or instruction) directly in the chat input field at the bottom of the screen and submit it.

Alternatively, you can first select an expert, more information about this advanced feature can be found in the section Experts.

Interacting with Alan

To interact with Alan in a chat, follow these steps:

1. Formulate questions: Enter your question or request in natural language into the chat interface. Precise formulations improve the response quality.
2. Start a conversation: If the initial results do not exactly match your expectations, do not hesitate to ask follow-up questions. Alan is designed to meet your needs through conversation.
3. Check: Before using the answer in your work, it is important to verify its accuracy. Make sure the information meets your requirements and verify critical details if necessary.

For more tips on chatting with Alan, consult our Prompting Guide.

Message Actions

When hovering over a submitted or completed message, you see various actions at the bottom of the message that you can execute by clicking on them:

• Copy: Copy the content of the message as Markdown, preserving formatting.
• Remember: Bookmark particularly important or relevant messages to remember them. On the top of the screen, you can use the "Show bookmarks only" button to filter the marked messages in a chat. Also, in the sidebar, chats that contain bookmarked messages are marked separately.
• Again: You can ask Alan to generate an additional answer. This is helpful if an answer does not yet exactly meet your requirements or if you want to collect multiple answer ideas. You can navigate between the different answers by using the arrow buttons that appear after generation.
• Edit: You can edit your submitted inputs and ask Alan to generate a response to the edited prompt. This is helpful if you want to make your original prompt more specific. You can also navigate between the different prompt options and Alan's respective responses by using the arrow buttons that appear after generation.

While an answer is being generated, you can click on the "Abort?" button at the top of the message to abort the generation.

Chat with Files

If you want to use documents as the basis for your request, you can upload them directly to the chat using the Chatting with Files feature. This allows Alan to consider the entire content of your files and provide more precise answers. This is especially helpful when:

• Background knowledge is needed to understand your question.
• You want to summarize a file.
• You want a direct comparison between multiple files.
• You want to include more extensive content without having to manually copy and paste.

Model selection

In your chats with Alan, you can select which large language model (LLM) should be used for generating answers. Different models and parameters can influence the accuracy and response speed of the answers.

Use the Comma LLM L for more demanding tasks and the Comma LLM S for quick responses, for example in combination with knowledge bases.

Important: A model is pre-selected for you in each chat by default, so can immediately start chatting without selecting a model. Optionally, you can adjust the model selection as needed.

You can adjust the model selection at any time during the chat. For example, you can generate answers with different models using the "Again" message action and compare or combine the answers for optimal results.

Selecting a Model

To adjust the model selection, click on the left tab above the chat input field.

In the opening tab, you find an overview of all available large language models. You see which model is currently selected and can click on a model to adjust the model selection as needed.

Model Status

For each model, you see the current status. Models with the status available are immediately ready for use.

Status	Description
Available	The model is available and can be used for chatting.
Updating	The model is being updated and will most likely be available for chatting again once the update is complete.
Inactive	The model is currently not available, but it can be started by sending a chat message. After about 15 minutes, it will be ready.

By clicking on the question mark next to a model, you receive more information about the model.