Ask Eklo, the AI assistant for your church workspace

Ask Eklo is the AI assistant built into Eklo: church staff ask it in plain words about their tasks, chat, people and requests, and it can do things for them, like adding tasks, posting in chat and deciding requests. It only sees what you can see, and it asks before doing anything that tells someone else. Its answers carry the "e." mark. What it posts or sends for you, such as a chat message, a comment or a request, goes out in your name with no AI mark, so read the card before you confirm.

Guests don't have Ask Eklo.

Open Ask EkloCopy Anchor Link

• Click Ask Eklo at the top of the left rail to open its own page. On a phone, tap Ask Eklo in the bar at the bottom.
• Press ⌘J (Ctrl+J on Windows) from anywhere to open it in a window over the page you're on. Without a keyboard, as on a tablet, tap Search or ask… at the top and choose Ask Eklo anything. Press Esc to close it.
• In Search or ask… (⌘K), type your question and choose Ask Eklo: … at the end of the results. It opens in a window on a new chat, with your question ready to send.
• On a channel, a thread or a task, click Summarize (on a narrow screen, just the "e." button). Ask Eklo opens in a window on a new chat and reads that channel's latest messages, the thread (just the start of a long one), or the task with its subtasks and latest comments. It reads them again for each follow-up in that chat.

Type your question in the box at the bottom and press Enter, or click Send (the arrow). Shift+Enter starts a new line. A new chat suggests a few questions, such as What's waiting on me?; click one to put it in the box. While it works, a moving set of bars shows it's thinking. Each step it takes, like searching tasks, is shown as it runs.

If Ask Eklo can't finishCopy Anchor Link

If something goes wrong partway through, a message appears under your question with a Try again button. If Ask Eklo had already created a task before it stopped, the button says Continue instead. Ask Eklo then picks up where it left off without creating the same task twice.

If you send more than 30 questions in 10 minutes, Ask Eklo asks you to try again shortly.

What it can doCopy Anchor Link

• Find tasks: "What's still open in the Easter Sunday project?" It looks at top-level tasks in projects you can see, by project, status, who they're assigned to and due date. It can also list the projects you can open.
• What's due for you: "What do I have due this week?" It lists your open tasks that are overdue or due soon, soonest first.
• Create a task: "Ask Sam to order lilies for Easter Sunday, due April 1." It can set the title, description, status, priority, due date and who it's assigned to, and add up to 100 subtasks, one per line. It can assign the task only to someone who can open the project. See Confirm and Undo.
• Change a task: "Move the lily order to Friday", "Mark the bulletin done", "Give the parking task to Jo." It finds the task by its title in projects you can see that aren't archived, and can change its title, description, status, priority, due date or who it's assigned to.
• Comment on a task: "Comment on order lilies: Jim, can you pick them up?" It can mention people by name, as long as they can see the task.
• Find people: "Who's on the Worship team?", "Who's our youth pastor?" It searches your workspace's members by name, email or title, or by team, and gives each person's title, role and manager. It leaves guests out unless you ask for them.
• Teams: "What teams are there?" It lists the teams you can see, how many members each has, and whether you're on it.
  • Create a team: "Set up a Hospitality team with Ana and Ben." Owners, admins and managers can. The team gets its chat channel, and you become its admin.
  • Add people to a team: "Add Chris to Worship." The team's admins, and the workspace's owners and admins, can.
• Search chat: "What did we decide about parking?" It searches messages in channels you can read. It doesn't read direct messages.
• Post in a channel: "Post in #worship that rehearsal moves to 6pm." It posts as you, in channels you can post in, and can mention people by name.
• Create a channel: "Create a channel for the ushers." If you're an owner or admin, it can make one that only owners and admins post in.
• Forms: "Create a purchase order form that my manager approves." It can read the forms you can see, create forms, and change forms you can edit.
• Workflows: "When an event request is approved, add a task in Facilities due 2 days before the event, and post it in #office." It can set up any step the workflow editor offers: approvals, tasks, chat posts, emails and notifications, and conditions on the answers. It shows you every step on the card before you confirm, and keeps the steps you don't ask it to change. If someone changes the workflow before you confirm, it asks you to try again rather than overwrite their change. A workflow too long for one card, more than 20 lines, is built in the Workflow tab.
• What's waiting on you: "What's waiting on me?" It lists the requests waiting on your decision, by form and reference, with who sent each. It never sees the answers on them.
• Approve or decline a request: "Approve Sam's room booking" or "Decline ROOM-0042, the hall is booked that night." When you decline, it passes your reason on as a note. The Confirm card shows you the request's answers, with long ones cut short and file questions showing just the file names; Open request has the rest. Ask Eklo itself never sees them. No one can decide their own request, with Ask Eklo or without it.
• Your requests: "What are my requests waiting on?" It lists the requests you've sent, with who each is waiting on or how it was decided.
• Send a request: "Book the youth room for 30 people." It fills in a form you can see from what you tell it, and asks about anything required that you left out. It can't attach files.
• Read a file you attach: "Sum up this agreement for the board" or "Who's on coffee on May 17?" with the rota attached. See Attach a file.
• Work out dates: "When is Pentecost next year?", "What date is six Sundays from now?" It counts days, weeks and months, and knows the church year: Easter (Western and Orthodox), Ash Wednesday, Holy Week, Ascension, Pentecost and the Advent Sundays. "Today" is today in your workspace's time zone.
• Look things up on the web: "What's the CCLI rule for live streaming?" or "Sum up this article for the elders: https://…". It searches the web, or reads a page you link to, and is told to say what came from the web. It won't open a link it finds by searching chat or tasks, or in a file you attach, so to read a link someone posted in chat, paste it into your question. The pages it used are listed under the answer as Sources, and open in a new tab. If a search or a page didn't work, that's listed there too. Web results can be out of date or wrong, so check the source before you rely on it.
• Answer questions about Eklo: "How do I set up single sign-on?" or "Who can create a team?" It searches these help pages, answers from what they say and tells you which page it used. The pages are listed under the answer as Sources. If the help pages don't cover your question, it says so rather than guessing.
• Remember things about you: "Remember that I lead the youth team" or "From now on, keep answers short." See Memory.
• Remind you: "Remind me Friday at 9 to call the caterer" or "Remind me in two hours to lock up." See Reminders.
• Make an image: "Make an image for the Easter flyer." See Images.
• Work through a spreadsheet and chart it: "Chart attendance by month" or "What's the giving trend this quarter?" with a CSV or Excel file attached. See Charts and analysis.

When a name fits a few people, projects, teams, channels, tasks or forms, it shows them on a card instead of guessing; if many fit, it asks you to be more specific. Tap the one you mean to carry on. The card stays there if you reload.

It can't delete tasks, messages, forms, requests or files, read direct messages, read the answers on a request, or read what's inside files in the Library or in chat.

When you ask about "everyone" or "all contacts", Ask Eklo means the members of your workspace. See Who belongs in a workspace.

Answers can use lists, bold text, headings and tables.

Below an answer, the tasks and other things it talks about are listed as rows you can open, with their real due dates, or how long something has been waiting on you. Anything Ask Eklo did for you is shown under Done for you, with Undo when it can be undone. Up to two suggested next steps may follow; click one to ask it. The line at the bottom says it's an AI answer, what it read and when; click it to see the list.

You can copy an answer as plain text with Copy, rows included.

Export an answerCopy Anchor Link

Export under an answer downloads it as a Word document (.docx), a PDF or a Markdown file (.md), with its headings, lists, tables and code as they appear in the answer, and the rows listed under it. The file is named after the answer's first heading, or your question. Only you can export your own conversations. A PDF can't show emoji or some non-Latin scripts, such as Chinese or Korean; use Word for those.

Questions can be up to 8,000 characters.

Attach a fileCopy Anchor Link

Click the paperclip next to Ask Eklo… to pick files, or paste one in. Each file uploads straight away, then Ask Eklo reads it once, which usually takes a few seconds. While it does, the file says Reading…. You can send your question then too; if a file still isn't ready when Ask Eklo needs it, it tells you to ask again in a moment.

If a file can't be read, because it's damaged, too long or too complicated, it says Can't read this file, and Ask Eklo tells you why when you ask about it. Hover over the file to see the reason.

• What it reads: PDFs, photos and images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP), Word documents (.docx), spreadsheets (.xlsx and .csv), and text and Markdown files.
• How much: up to 5 files with a question, each up to 32 MB. A PDF can have up to 100 pages and be up to 18 MB; an image up to 3.75 MB. Photos are made smaller before they upload. For a long document, spreadsheet or text file, it reads as much as it can at once and tells you if it stopped before the end. If one answer would need more than it can take in at once, it asks you to ask about a file on its own.
• Older formats: it can't read .doc, .xls or PowerPoint files. Save them as PDF, .docx or .xlsx first.

Only you can open the files you attach, and only in that conversation. They appear on your question, and you can click one to open it.

Files you attach are deleted 30 days after you attach them. The conversation keeps the file's name and Ask Eklo's answers about it, but the file can't be opened or read again. To ask about it later, attach it again.

Ask Eklo is told to treat what a file says as information, not instructions. Once you've sent a file, anything it would change in that conversation waits for you to confirm, even a task for you, and the card says why.

If a file you attached can't be found when you send, Ask Eklo says so. Attach it again and ask once more, or click Ask without the files.

Confirm and UndoCopy Anchor Link

Ask Eklo asks you first before doing anything that tells someone else, before changing someone else's task, before remembering anything about you, and before making an image. Anything else happens right away, and you can undo it, except forgetting something it remembered, which can't be undone.

• Anything that tells someone else waits for you. That's a message, a comment, a new channel or team, a task for someone else, a form, a request you send or a decision on one. Ask Eklo shows a card with what it will do and who will be told, with long text cut short. Nothing happens until you click Confirm. Cancel drops it. A card left for a day expires and nothing is done; ask again to start over.
• A change to someone else's task waits for you too, such as marking Jo's task done or moving its due date. A task is someone else's when it's assigned to them, or when no one has it and they created it. The card names whose task it is and what will change, and taking their task for yourself waits as well. They're told only if the task is assigned to them or given to them; otherwise the change shows in the task's activity under your name.
• A task for you, or for no one, is added right away. So is a change to one of your own tasks that doesn't give it to someone else. Its card under Done for you has an Undo button that takes it back. Undo stays there until you refresh the page or reopen the conversation; after that, change or delete the task in Tasks yourself. Undo can't put back a change once someone has changed the same thing again. Undo can't remove a task after someone else has added subtasks to it. Someone who runs the project can delete it.
• Remembering something about you waits for Confirm, and then has Undo on its card. Forgetting happens right away, and can't be undone. See Memory.
• A reminder is set right away, since it only ever tells you. So is canceling one. Each has Undo on its card. See Reminders.
• Making an image waits for Confirm, as it spends your AI budget. See Images.
• After it searches the web or reads a web page, every change waits for you. Web pages can hold instructions written for AI assistants. Ask Eklo is told not to follow them, and from then on in that conversation, even a task just for you shows a card first that says why, such as "This came after reading a web page."

When you click Confirm, Ask Eklo checks again that it can still do it. For example, the person must still be able to open the project, and a request must still be waiting on you. If it can't, the card stays and says so. If Confirm stops partway, the card says it may or may not have been done. Check before asking again.

ConversationsCopy Anchor Link

A follow-up carries on the same conversation, so Ask Eklo knows what "it" or "that project" means: "Add flowers to that project." On Ask Eklo's own page, the conversation stays when you refresh. Your 50 most recent conversations, including ones you had in the window, are listed in the sidebar there, newest first, so you can open one again. Only you can see your conversations.

To start over with nothing carried across, click New chat.

Delete a conversationCopy Anchor Link

On Ask Eklo's page, open the conversation and click Delete, then Delete conversation to confirm. It's deleted for good, with its messages, the files you attached to it and the images and charts it made; there's no undo. What it did for you stays: tasks it added, what it remembers about you and reminders it set. A conversation that's still answering can't be deleted until you stop it.

Conversations are deleted 90 days after their last message, so one you keep using stays. Files attached to a conversation are deleted sooner: 30 days after you attach them (see Attach a file). A file you attach but never send is deleted once it's a day old. Deleting your account, or the church deleting its workspace, removes them all sooner, and so does leaving the church or being removed from it: if you join again, your list starts empty. What Ask Eklo remembers about you isn't deleted with a conversation (see Memory).

Download your Ask Eklo dataCopy Anchor Link

You can download a copy of everything Ask Eklo keeps for you in a church, as one ZIP file.

1. Open Settings → Profile.
2. Under Your Ask Eklo data, click Download my Ask Eklo data.
3. We email you when it's ready, usually within a minute or two. Come back to Settings → Profile and click Download.

The ZIP holds:

• Each conversation, as a Markdown file to read and a JSON file with the same content: your questions, the answers, the web pages they cited, and each step Ask Eklo took (the tool it used, what it asked it to do and how it went, including any card you confirmed or cancelled).
• The files you attached and the images, charts and files Ask Eklo made, while they're still kept.
• What Ask Eklo remembers for you, and your reminders.
• A README listing what's in it and what isn't.

It doesn't include conversations, files and images already deleted (see Conversations), the raw results Eklo's tools passed to Ask Eklo while it worked, which can hold other people's details the conversation never showed you, or anything else in the church: owners and admins export the church's data from Settings → Data, and that export never includes anyone's Ask Eklo conversations.

Only you can download it, signed in, while you're still in the church; leaving the church, or being removed from it, deletes it. Each church you belong to has its own copy to ask for. It works when AI is turned off, and the download is deleted after 7 days. You can have one copy being prepared at a time.

A copy you've already made keeps what was in it until it's deleted, 7 days after it was ready. To leave out a conversation you've since deleted, or something Ask Eklo has since forgotten, ask for a new copy.

MemoryCopy Anchor Link

Ask Eklo can remember things about you between conversations: your role, a team you lead, or how you like answers. It's told to offer to save something only when you ask it to, such as "Remember that I lead the youth team", and reads what it remembers each time you ask it something.

• Only you see what it remembers. It's never shared with anyone else in your church, and each church you belong to keeps its own.
• It keeps up to 20 things, each up to 500 characters.
• To forget something, say "Forget that I lead the youth team", or delete it yourself (see below).
• Undo on its card under Done for you takes back something it just remembered, until you refresh the page or reopen the conversation. Forgetting can't be undone: Ask Eklo drops its words from its record of saving it, so there's nothing left to put back.
• It's told not to keep sensitive details about other people, such as someone's health, family, money, pastoral or safeguarding matters, or anything about a child, and to offer a neutral note instead, such as "You check in with Jane each week." Nothing is saved until you confirm, so read the card first.
• It always asks before remembering. It shows what it will remember on a card, and saves it only when you click Confirm. That way nothing it reads, such as a chat message or a task, can plant a memory.

See, edit or delete what it remembersCopy Anchor Link

1. Open Settings → Profile.
2. Under What Ask Eklo remembers, click the pencil to edit something, or the bin to delete it.

What you delete or ask it to forget is gone from your next conversation, and in the conversation where it was saved or forgotten, every exact copy of its words is replaced with "(forgotten)", including in your messages and the conversation's title. Something you or Ask Eklo wrote in other words, such as "Remember that I lead the youth team" for "You lead the youth team.", or in another conversation, stays until you delete that conversation. What it remembers in a church is deleted if you leave or are removed from that church, or delete your account.

RemindersCopy Anchor Link

Ask Eklo can remind you of something later: "Remind me Friday at 9 to call the caterer", "Remind me next Sunday morning to bring the bread" or "Remind me in two hours to lock up." When it's time, you get a notification in Eklo and an email.

• Times are in your workspace's time zone, even when the clocks change in between. "Morning" means 9am, "afternoon" 2pm and "evening" 6pm, and a day with no time means 9am.
• Reminders are only ever for you. Ask Eklo can't remind someone else; assign them a task instead.
• You can set them up to a year ahead, and have up to 50 waiting in each church.
• To cancel one, say "Cancel the caterer reminder", or use Undo on its card while the answer is on screen.

See or cancel your remindersCopy Anchor Link

1. Open Settings → Profile.
2. Under Reminders, click the cross next to one to cancel it.

Only reminders still to come are listed. Your reminders in a church stop if you leave or are removed from that church, or delete your account. A reminder is deleted 30 days after it's sent.

ImagesCopy Anchor Link

Ask Eklo can make an image for event graphics, slide backgrounds, flyers and social posts: "Make a landscape slide background for Sunday's sermon on hope."

• It waits for you to confirm. Ask Eklo shows a card with the full description of the image, its shape and quality. Nothing is made or spent until you click Confirm, so a message or page Ask Eklo reads can't make one for you. Once made, an image has no Undo.
• Once you confirm, the image shows under the answer, with a Download button. Download it to keep it or use it elsewhere.
• Images are square, landscape or portrait. Say which you want, or Ask Eklo picks one to fit, such as portrait for a flyer. Ask for a quick draft or the best quality if you want one; it uses standard quality otherwise.
• Images are deleted after 90 days, or sooner if you delete the conversation, leave the church or are removed from it, delete your account, or the church deletes its workspace. Only you can see them.
• Each image counts toward the monthly AI budget more than a question does. Ask Eklo checks the budget when you confirm, and stops offering images once the budget is used up.
• Some requests are declined by the image provider's safety checks. Ask Eklo says so, and you can ask for something different.

Charts and analysisCopy Anchor Link

Attach a spreadsheet (.xlsx) or a CSV file and Ask Eklo can work through it: totals, averages, trends, comparisons and charts. "Chart attendance by month", "Which month had the highest giving?"

• It runs code to get the numbers right. Ask Eklo writes and runs a short Python program on your file, in a sealed space at our AI provider with no internet access, rather than estimating from the text. The step shows as Worked through the data, or Made a chart, under the answer.
• Charts show under the answer, on the same card as images, with a Download button. A CSV, Excel or PDF file it saves for you, such as a cleaned-up CSV, shows as a file you can download.
• Only with a file attached. It works on the spreadsheets and CSV files you attached in that conversation, and nothing else in Eklo. To chart something else, export it as a CSV and attach it.
• Charts and files are deleted after 90 days, like images, and only you can see them.
• It pauses with the other costlier extras once the monthly AI budget is used up. Without it, Ask Eklo can still read the file and answer from it.
• Ask Eklo treats what a file says as information, so after it reads one, any change still waits for you to confirm.

Monthly AI budgetCopy Anchor Link

Your church has a monthly AI budget that covers what Ask Eklo costs to run. Everyone's questions count toward it, including answers you stop partway.

• At 80%, Ask Eklo shows a notice that the budget is running low.
• At 100%, it shows another notice, and the costlier extras pause until the budget resets: searching the web or reading a page you link to, making images, reading files you attach, and charting a spreadsheet. Everything else under What it can do keeps working, so questions go on counting past 100%.
• At 120%, Ask Eklo pauses until the budget resets. It won't start on a new question, and an answer already under way stops after the step it's on, so one answer can take the budget slightly past 120%.

The budget resets at midnight on the 1st of each month, in your workspace's time zone.

Owners and admins can see how much of the budget is used in Settings → Usage. Everyone else can ask their church's owner.

Your own capCopy Anchor Link

Someone can also have a monthly cap of their own, set by the church's owner. The same steps then apply to that person's questions as they near their cap, even while the church's budget has room. If your own cap is what's used up, ask your owner to raise it, or wait for the 1st. When it's the church's budget that has run out, the steps above apply to everyone until the 1st.

Turn AI off for your workspaceCopy Anchor Link

Who: owners and admins.

1. Open Settings → General.
2. Under AI features, switch off Allow AI features.

This hides Ask Eklo for everyone in the workspace and stops the workspace's content from being sent to an AI provider for new questions and Confirm cards; an answer already under way can finish. It deletes nothing: conversations, images and memories are kept as before, and each person can still see and delete what Ask Eklo remembers in Settings → Profile. While it's off, conversations can't be opened or deleted in Eklo: switch it back on to delete one, or ask Eklo at privacy@eklo.io. Switch it back on the same way. AI features are on for new workspaces.

What's sent to the AI providerCopy Anchor Link

When you use Ask Eklo, your question and what it finds to answer it are sent to our AI provider: tasks and projects, chat messages and channel names, people's names (or emails, where no name is set, or someone shares a name and no title, team or role of theirs alone tells them apart), titles, roles and managers, teams and their descriptions, forms, the requests waiting on you and the ones you've sent (form name, reference, stage and who sent each, but never the answers), any answers you give it for a request you ask it to send, and the files you attach. Every question also sends your name and role, your church's name and time zone, everything it remembers about you, and, in a chat started with Summarize, that channel's latest messages, that thread, or that task with its subtasks and latest comments. The recent questions and answers before it in the same conversation, with what Ask Eklo looked up for them, are sent again so it can follow up. When it looks something up on the web, Anthropic runs the search and opens the pages for it, so what it searches for and the links it reads go to Anthropic too. When it works through a spreadsheet or CSV file you attached, the file is stored at Anthropic for its code to read, and is deleted there when you delete the conversation or your account, leave the church or are removed from it, or the church deletes its workspace, and otherwise after 30 days; what its code saves is copied into Eklo and deleted at Anthropic. Ask Eklo runs on Anthropic's Claude, with OpenAI as a backup we may switch to. While the backup is in use, Ask Eklo can't look things up on the web or run code on a spreadsheet. When you ask for an image, Ask Eklo's description of it is sent to OpenAI, which makes the image. Both are listed on our subprocessors page; how we handle that data is in the privacy policy.