Ask Brick

Ask Brick is the assistant built into Brick. You type a question or an instruction in plain words, and it reads and updates your CRM for you.

Open Ask Brick#

There are four ways in, and they all lead to the same chat.

• Click Ask Brick at the top right of the page. It opens the side panel on a new chat. The button does nothing while the panel is open, and a chat page has no button.
• Press ⌘K to open the command palette, then press Tab to switch it to Ask. Type your question and press Enter. The panel opens with the question already sent.
• Press ? (or click Help) to open the Help drawer, type in Ask a question, and press Enter. The drawer closes and the panel opens with the question sent.
• Click a chat in the Chats section of the sidebar to open it full screen.

The side panel sits on the right and stays open while you move between pages. Drag its left edge to make it wider. Opening it again after you close it starts a fresh chat; a page reload brings back the chat you were in.

Open full screen in the panel header moves the chat to its own page, with the sidebar still beside it. Every chat has its own page, which the sidebar rows open. Brick never shows the panel and a chat page at the same time.

The pill at the bottom of the panel switches between Ask Brick and Support. Support is where you write to the Brick team. See Help and support.

Write a message#

Type in the box at the bottom and press Enter to send. Shift+Enter starts a new line. While Ask Brick is answering, the send arrow becomes a stop button. Press it to stop. The partial reply stays on screen until you reload.

Above the box, Brick suggests follow-up questions after each answer. Click one to send it.

Under the latest answer you can Copy reply, mark it Helpful or Not helpful, or Try again to get a new answer to the same question.

The + button takes a CSV file of contacts. Ask Brick does not read the file itself; it hands it to the import wizard. See Import and export.

What it can read#

Ask Brick reads your data the same way the pages do, so it sees exactly what you see and nothing from anyone else.

• Contacts: find, count, and open them, including by custom attributes and by when they were added or last updated.
• Deals: find and count them by pipeline, stage, amount, or close date.
• Tasks: your open tasks by default; ask about finished work to see completed ones.
• Notes: the notes on one contact or one deal at a time.
• Lists: which lists you have and what is on them.
• Inbox: find conversations and read what was said in an email thread, a text thread, or a call.
• Brick itself: what has shipped, from the changelog.

Results show as real Brick cards you can click through to the record. Below a set of results, See all opens the matching page with the same filters and sort, without touching any view you saved. For tasks, that page shows completed tasks too, so it can hold more rows than the chat counted.

What it can change#

• Create and update contacts, deals, tasks, and notes. It can also set a custom attribute you have already defined.
• Record a call, a text, or a meeting that already happened. Tell it "I had coffee with Dana yesterday" and it shows you a card with what it will log, so the interaction counts on Dana's record. See Log a call, text, or meeting.
• Create, rename, and delete lists, and add or remove records on them.
• Complete or reopen a task.
• Send a text or an email to a contact, or reply in an existing conversation.
• Mark a conversation open or closed.

Log a call, text, or meeting has a recording of Ask Brick logging a meeting.

Ask Brick cannot edit or delete a call, text, or meeting it logged: open the contact and use the kebab on the row. It cannot log an email, because your emails arrive on their own once you connect a mailbox. Ask Brick cannot delete a contact, a deal, a task, or a note. Ask it to delete a contact, and it shows you the contact's card and points you to the contact's own page; for a deal it points you to the deals board. It cannot create a custom attribute either: ask it to "start tracking" something and it sends you to Settings → Records. It cannot add, rename, or delete a pipeline or a stage, and it cannot search within one list. It writes task and note bodies as plain text, with no formatting, images, or @ mentions. It cannot change who a task is assigned to, and nothing alerts you when a task comes due. In the Inbox it cannot see or change the read or unread dot, delete a conversation, or read an attachment.

Confirm before it writes#

Before Ask Brick creates or updates a record, it shows a card in place of the message box. The card names the change at the top, such as Create contact, then lists each attribute and the value it plans to write.

Click any value to change it. The card uses the same editors as the table, so an email or a phone opens as a chip and a select opens its options. When there are two or more rows, each has a checkbox; untick a row to leave that attribute out. When you create a contact, the name is always included.

Press Create or Update (or ⌘Enter) to write it. The page updates at once. If the write fails, the card shows the error and stays open so you can try again or discard. Press Discard and the chat records Discarded. Nothing changed.

Texts and emails get the same card, with the message as the field you can edit and Send text or Send email as the button. A fresh email also has a Subject box; a reply shows the thread's subject and its Cc line, which you cannot edit, because the reply goes to everyone on the thread. A fresh email needs a connected mailbox, or Send email stays greyed out. A text needs your Brick number. Deleting a list gets a red Delete list button and nothing to edit.

A card that logs a call, a text or a meeting has four rows: Kind, Date, With and Summary, and Log activity as its button. It also has Edit in its header, which opens the full log form with everything filled in. That form's button reads Done: it hands your changes back to the card and writes nothing, so the card stays the only thing that saves. A date still ahead gets a yellow notice, and it counts once that date has passed.

A card that creates a deal has a Deductions row. When a preset applies to new deals, the row already holds its deductions. Click the row to change them. Ask Brick sets deductions only when it creates a deal. It cannot change the deductions on a deal you already have, and it tells you to edit them in the Commission section of the deal. See Commission.

The card waits until you answer it. It survives a reload and a switch to another chat.

Three changes run at once with no card, because each is one reversible step: completing a task, adding or removing a record on a list, and marking a conversation open or closed. When you ask for something vague or in bulk ("clear my inbox"), Ask Brick first says in words what it is about to do and waits for your yes.

Dictate a question#

Click the microphone in the message box to record. A timer shows while you speak. Click Stop and transcribe to finish, or Cancel to throw it away. A recording stops by itself after 60 seconds.

Brick adds the words to the end of whatever is already in the box. It sends nothing until you press Enter, so you can fix a word first. A tap too short to hold a word gets Didn't catch that. Try again. If the transcription fails, the text you already typed stays as it was.

Ask how-to questions#

Ask Brick answers questions about how Brick works from these help articles. Ask "How do I import contacts?" and a Searched the help docs pill shows it looked. The pill sits in the reply's Thought process section, open while Ask Brick works and folded once the answer ends; click Thought process to open it again. The answer names the article it used.

When the answer comes from one article, a card for that article appears under the reply. Click it and the article opens in a new tab. An answer drawn from several articles shows no card; ask to see the articles and you get a card for each.

Chat history#

Brick creates a chat when you send your first message. It reads Untitled chat until a name arrives, drawn from the first question and answer. Opening the panel and closing it without sending saves nothing.

The Chats section of the sidebar lists your five newest chats. The + on its header starts a new one full screen. Once you have more than five, an All chats row opens the full list with a search box.

In the panel, the clock icon opens Chat history, with a Search chats field at the top and your chats grouped by when you last used them. To rename a chat, double-click its title at the top of the panel or the chat page. The star beside the title adds the chat to Favourites in the sidebar. The ⋯ menu holds Copy URL, Copy chat ID, and Delete chat; delete runs at once, with no confirmation. A chat row in the sidebar has its own ⋯ menu with Delete chat too.