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AI Command Bar (Ctrl+K)

The orange "AI" button at the top-right of every page (or press Ctrl+K / Cmd+K) opens a natural-language command bar. Tell it what you want and it will navigate, search, send messages, create tasks/contacts/segments, change deal stages, or answer questions about your CRM data. Answers can be saved straight to the org Knowledge Base from the response bubble.

Steps

  1. Click the "AI" pill in the top header, or press Ctrl+K (Windows) / Cmd+K (Mac) from anywhere.
  2. Type what you want: "send email to Jane about renewal", "move all leads above 80 score to Qualified", "create task to follow up with Acme tomorrow", "show me deals closing this month".
  3. For destructive actions (sending messages, bulk stage changes, deleting contacts, clearing the inbox), the bar previews the plan and asks you to confirm before running. "Delete all my emails" / "clear my SMS inbox" / "wipe WhatsApp" map to a clear_inbox action that deletes Conversation rows for the org with an optional channel filter — messages cascade-delete with their parent conversation.
  4. Send an SMS, set a reminder, or update a contact field directly from the bar: "text Marcus on my way", "remind me to follow up with Acme tomorrow", "change Sarah's phone to 214-555-1234". Phone updates / email / company / job title and the other whitelisted fields land via update_contact; reminders are CRMown in-app notifications you can deep-link to a route.
  5. Education suite: "draft a course on Stripe payments", "outline a 12-lesson curriculum on real estate investing", "write the lesson body for Webhooks 101", "draft the quiz for module 2". Both return drafts you persist from the course editor.
  6. For answers worth keeping (how-to explanations, info lookups, search results), click the violet "↑ Save to Knowledge Base" pill below the answer to promote it to the org KB. The pill flips to "✓ Saved to Knowledge Base" on success. Skipped on action confirmations and on responses that already came from the KB.

Good to know

  • Attach a spreadsheet or document: the 📎 button (or drag-and-drop) takes .xlsx, .xls, .csv, .docx, .pdf and .txt as well as images — up to 3 files, 15 MB each. A chip shows what was read (each sheet and its row count), so a wrong sheet is obvious before you act on it. Attachments stay for the whole conversation, so "now import it" works as a follow-up. They are cleared when you close the bar.
  • Import a list from a spreadsheet: attach it and say "import the Mark sheet as contacts". You get a PREVIEW first — row count, which column maps to which CRM field, and how many rows lack an email — and nothing is written until you say "import it". It uses the same engine as Contacts > Import (AI column mapping, de-duplication, custom fields) and appears in Imports, so it can be undone there. Messy research sheets are handled: a cell holding "(302) 555-1212 / info@acme.com" is split into Phone and Email, "Martin Blair / Cindy Blair" takes the first person, and notes columns become custom fields.
  • Fill the gaps: after an import, say "research the ones missing an email". Contacts with no email are looked up through your enrichment providers in the background, filling only blank fields (this uses your monthly enrichment allowance).
  • Write to the list: say "write emails to that list about <your offer>". CRMown writes a multi-step sequence and enrols those contacts. It is created as a DRAFT — read the emails in Lead Gen > Outbound and activate it yourself before anything sends. You need a connected Google or Microsoft mailbox, since outbound sends from your own address.
  • It reads contact notes, AI summaries, recent activity, and your import history — phrases like "the 28 contacts that were updated yesterday" work.
  • For navigation, just say "go to billing" or "open Jane Smith".
  • The reply parser is tolerant — if the AI returns a prose answer instead of structured JSON, it's shown as a help reply rather than crashing the bubble. So conversational questions ("how do I…") work even when the model goes off-script.
  • Multilingual: type or speak in any of 10 languages — English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, German, Italian, Tagalog. CRMown AI understands and replies in the language you used regardless of any saved setting. Setting the org primary language just biases voice recognition + action phrasings toward that language for accuracy.
  • Mic language pill (next to the mic button): the Web Speech API can't auto-detect language, so by default the mic listens in the org primary language. If you speak a different language than your org default (e.g. you're a French speaker in an English-primary org), click the flag pill to override your mic language for your account only. The pill turns teal when you're overriding the org default, and "Reset to org default" appears in the picker to clear it. Persisted in localStorage so you only set it once per browser.
  • If you type in a language different from your org's primary language, the bar surfaces a one-tap "switch org default" hint underneath the answer.
  • Brand-aware: the bar knows YOUR organization's name and your configured brand colors (Settings > Customize > Brand Colors). "Our organization", "our brand", "our logo", and "our colors" always mean your org — never the CRMown product. Ask "what are our brand colors?" and it answers from your configured palette; ask "what are the two primary colors in our logo?" and it actually reads your uploaded org logo image and answers from the artwork. If you haven't set brand colors or uploaded a logo yet, it says so plainly instead of inventing hex values.
  • Logo-vision reads raster logos only (PNG / JPG / GIF / WEBP). An SVG logo can't be color-analyzed by the AI — set your brand colors manually under Settings > Customize > Brand Colors so "our brand colors" questions still answer correctly.
Example: Friday 4:48 PM. The owner needs to send a "billing question?" email to the 23 customers whose Stripe payment failed this month. Cmd+K → "send email to customers with status=past_due asking if they need a payment-method update". The bar previews the recipient list, the email body, and asks for confirmation. She approves and is off to dinner by 4:52.

Troubleshooting

AI command bar (Ctrl+K) not responding
AI token quota exceeded, API key not configured, or network issue.
Fix: Check Settings > AI Usage for remaining tokens. If quota is 0, wait for monthly reset or upgrade. If using BYOK, verify the API key is valid.
AI gives wrong or generic answers
AI needs context. With few contacts/deals, responses are less specific. Complex or ambiguous commands also confuse it.
Fix: Be specific. Instead of "update my pipeline", say "move Sarah Mitchell to the Negotiation stage in the Sales pipeline." More CRM data → better AI performance.
Asked about "our logo" or "our brand colors" and the AI described CRMown's own purple/orange branding instead of mine
The bar now injects your organization's name + configured brand colors and reads your uploaded logo for visual questions, so "our logo / our brand" resolves to YOUR org. If you still see CRMown's branding, your org likely has no logo uploaded and no brand colors set — the AI had nothing org-specific to read.
Fix: Upload your logo and set your palette under Settings > Account (Organization Logo + Brand Colors). For "colors in our logo" specifically, the logo must be a raster image (PNG/JPG/GIF/WEBP) — SVG logos can't be color-read, so configure brand colors manually.
"↑ Save to Knowledge Base" pill is missing on an answer
Pill is only shown for help / info / search / navigate replies, and only when the answer didn't already come from the KB (no point round-tripping). Action confirmations (executed bulk changes, etc.) are excluded — those aren't knowledge.
Fix: If you want to preserve an action confirmation as a how-to, run a follow-up question like "how do I do that move-to-qualified bulk change" — that reply will be promotable.
"↑ Save to Knowledge Base" disabled
Promotion needs the contacts:edit permission. TEAM/Viewer roles can't promote.
Fix: Ask an Admin/Owner to promote the answer, or have your role upgraded.

Error messages

  • AI quota exceeded — Monthly token limit reached. Upgrade or wait for reset. Starter 500K, Pro 2M, Max 10M tokens/mo.
  • AI service unavailable — CRMown AI is temporarily down. Try again in a few minutes.
  • Command not understood — Rephrase. Use simple, direct language.
  • BYOK key invalid — The API key in Settings > AI Usage is incorrect or expired. Get a new key from your AI provider.

Plans

AI included in every plan. Token limits: Starter 500K/mo, Pro 2M/mo, Max 10M/mo. BYOK = unlimited tokens on any plan.

Related

  • AI Usage (Settings) — check quota and configure BYOK
  • AI Business Objectives (Settings) — improve AI context
  • Training — knowledge base articles inform the AI support helper

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