Ask Dockli is the AI assistant built into Dockli. It lives right where your files do — inside the Windows File Explorer experience — and it can find, read, summarize, organize and act on your Microsoft 365 content in plain language. Ask it to “find the Q4 budget files and move them into an Archive folder,” “summarize what’s in this folder,” or “draft an email to Priya with the vendor contract attached,” and it does the work on your actual files.
Grounded in your files, inside your permission boundary
Ask Dockli is not a general chatbot bolted onto a file manager. Every answer is grounded in your real SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive content, and it operates strictly within your existing Microsoft 365 permissions. Dockli’s local service holds your delegated Microsoft Graph token and makes every call as you — so the assistant can only ever see, open or change what you could see, open or change yourself. It never widens your access.
Just as importantly, the assistant is honest about what it does. It calls real tools to search, read and act — it does not guess file names or invent results — and for anything that changes your files it either acts transparently or asks first (see Autonomous Mode).
Included with Spark
Ask Dockli ships with the Spark plan. On the Essential plan the AI surfaces are hidden entirely — there is no AI Mode toggle and no folder AI button. See Plans for a full comparison.
The model behind it
Ask Dockli is powered by Azure OpenAI (gpt-4o), reached through a hardened Azure API Management (APIM) gateway. Your Dockli client never holds the OpenAI key. Instead, APIM validates a signed licence entitlement (proving you hold a live seat) and injects the real key server-side, so paid AI can only be used by a genuinely licensed user. Responses stream back token-by-token over Server-Sent Events, and the assistant runs a tool-calling loop at a low temperature for precise, repeatable results. The full custody model is documented in Ask Dockli privacy and security.
Two ways to work: global and folder-scoped
Ask Dockli appears in two places, and both share the same conversation surface and capabilities.
| Surface | Where | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| The global assistant | The Dashboard’s AI Mode toggle (the ✦ pill on the search bar) | Ask about anything you can access across your whole workspace — search, summarize, organize, compose, navigate. |
| The folder-scoped panel | The AI Mode button inside a folder, opening a panel docked to the right edge | A conversation locked to the folder you opened it in. Every action defaults to that folder, and the panel auto-closes the moment you navigate away. |
You can move fluidly between them — a folder-scoped chat and a global chat are both saved to your chat history.
A tour of what it can do
- Find and rank files in plain language. Ask for “my most recent proposal” or “the largest files in Vendors” and Dockli searches your workspace and cites the results as clickable file chips. See Using the assistant and Searching.
- Read and summarize. Dockli reads document text server-side to answer questions and summarize — no need to open anything.
- Organize your files. Create, rename, move, copy, archive and delete — individually or in bulk — with clear confirmations for anything sensitive. See Using the assistant.
- Attach documents for grounding. Drop up to five files onto the bar (or pick them) and Dockli reads their text to inform its answer. See Attaching documents.
- Talk instead of type. Dictate a prompt, or hold a hands-free voice conversation where Dockli submits each utterance after a natural pause. See Voice and dictation.
- Create and edit Office documents. Ask Dockli to draft a Word doc, a spreadsheet or a deck, review a side-by-side before/after diff, and save it as a new version. See Documents and diffs.
- Compose email and Teams messages. Draft, refine the tone, pick recipients and send Outlook mail or Teams messages without leaving the chat. See Email and Teams.
- Remember your conversations. Every chat is saved locally, per account, and re-openable from the Chat History drawer. See Chat history.
Where to go next
- New to it? Start with Using the assistant.
- Care about the security model? Read Ask Dockli privacy and security and Security architecture.
- Something not working? See Troubleshooting AI and dictation.