You will need the Reporting permission plus either the Read AI Assistant or Write AI Assistant permission to use the AI Assistant. Your church's account must also be on the Core Plus plan.
The AI Assistant is a chat panel inside the Query Builder. Instead of adding filters and columns by hand, you describe the report you need in plain language, such as "members who joined in the last 90 days," and the assistant builds it for you. The finished report can be run, saved, scheduled, added to a dashboard, and used for bulk actions in the same way as any other saved query.
This article explains where the assistant lives, who can use it, and what it can and cannot report on. For step-by-step instructions, see How do I build a report with the AI Assistant?
Where to find the AI Assistant
Go to Reporting > Query Builder in the left-hand navigation menu. On the Designer tab, a two-button switch sits above the builder: Query Editor and AI Assistant. Select AI Assistant to open the chat panel. Select Query Editor to return to the filters, query, and columns you may already know.
The assistant follows the Data Source dropdown, so you can build reports on all three sources the Query Builder offers:
People - lists of people (one row per person) or counts of people, such as members by campus.
Contributions - lists of gifts or giving totals by fund, designation, campus, method, batch, or time period.
Groups - lists of groups or counts of groups, such as small groups without a leader.
Changing the data source while the assistant is open starts a fresh conversation for the new source.
Tip: The assistant is only available in the Query Builder. The report Library, Metrics, and accounting reports work the way they always have.
How the assistant works
Every report follows the same three steps:
Describe - Say what you need in plain language, the way you would ask a colleague. You can follow up to narrow the results or add columns.
Review - Read the report's summary and the assumptions the assistant made, such as which date field it used. Open View SQL if you want to see exactly what runs.
Preview and save - The report runs automatically so you can check the results. Save it to Saved Queries to run it again later or use it in a dashboard widget.
Each message you send counts as one AI message against your church's monthly allowance. Running a saved report never uses a message. See How do AI Assistant messages, billing, and permissions work? for details.
Who can use the AI Assistant
Two things must both be true before the chat panel opens.
Your account is on the Core Plus plan. Core Plus is the only plan that includes the AI Assistant (churches on a legacy Premium plan keep it too), and it is the only plan offered as a free trial. On any other plan the AI Assistant button still appears with a padlock, and selecting it opens an upgrade panel instead of the assistant. Upgrading turns the assistant on right away.
You have the right permissions. You need the Reporting permission plus one of the two AI Assistant permissions:
Read AI Assistant - can open saved AI reports in the assistant and run them, but cannot start or refine conversations.
Write AI Assistant - can create and refine AI reports with the assistant. These messages count against the monthly allowance.
Super users have both permissions. When the assistant was released, everyone who already had the Reporting permission was given both, so your staff kept working without any setup. If you want to limit who can spend messages, remove Write AI Assistant from the people who only need to view reports.
Two data sources need one more permission. The Contributions source also requires Full Read Contributions, and the Groups source requires Full Read Groups. Without them, that source does not appear in the Data Source dropdown.
What the assistant can report on
The assistant reads the same records you can already see in the Query Editor, and nothing more. Every report runs as you, so your campus limits, group access, financial permissions, and hidden custom fields all apply. If you cannot see a person in Contacts, the assistant cannot put them in your report either.
The assistant can build reports from these areas:
People - names, contact information, demographics, birthdays and anniversaries, record type, campus, custom fields, important dates such as Joined On and Baptized On, envelope numbers, and who created the profile.
Families - family membership and position (adult, child, spouse), the family manager, and whether contributions combine.
Notes, safeguards, and connections - profile notes, background checks and certifications, and connection workflows with their status and assignee. Your notes, safeguards, and connections permissions apply.
Giving - transactions and their designations, fees, deposit amounts, payment method, batches, check numbers, online and recurring flags, pledges with their campaigns, and funds. Requires Full Read Contributions.
Groups - groups with their type, category, campus, meeting schedule, leaders, and member counts; memberships with role and last attended date; volunteer positions; and group custom fields. Requires Full Read Groups.
Events and attendance - events with their calendar and dates, attendance summaries, per-person attendance marks, and check-in records with times and stations.
Forms - forms and their entries, including the person, event, group, and amount paid.
Serving - service plan assignments with the person, date, team, position, and status.
Lookups - campuses, funds, designations, and your church's dropdown values such as record types and group types.
What the assistant cannot report on
Anything outside the areas above is not available to reports yet. That includes sent emails and text messages and their opens, accounting ledgers and journals, files and documents on a profile, chat messages, media, and event registrations beyond form entries. If you ask for one of these, the assistant replies with a short message explaining that the data is not available to reports yet and does not build a report.
A few rules also shape what the assistant builds:
A People report lists people or counts them. If you ask for a list of groups or gifts while on the People source, the assistant points you to the right data source instead.
A Contributions report lists gifts or totals giving. A one-row-per-giver report, such as top donors or lapsed givers, is a People report, and the assistant will say so.
A Groups report lists groups or counts them. A list of members or leaders is a People report.
"Today" means your church's own calendar date, and phrases like "this year" or "last 30 days" stay current, so a saved report is still accurate when it runs next month. A specific date you type stays fixed.
Zero rows is a valid result. The assistant delivers the report with a sentence explaining that nothing matched.
How your data stays safe
The assistant can only read. It writes read-only queries against report data, and every query is checked before it runs. Anything that would change data or reach outside the report data is rejected. The SQL you see under View SQL is for display only. Nothing in the browser can submit SQL, and there is no way to edit it by hand anywhere in the product. Every change goes through the chat.
Good to know
Scheduled AI reports are always sent as a CSV file.
A chart report reads at most 5,000 rows. Tables, exports, scheduled sends, and mail merges have no row cap.
A report that selects more than 100,000 people cannot be used for bulk actions, workflows, or access criteria.
Your conversation is not kept after you leave the page. The saved report, its explanation, and its assumptions are permanent. The chat transcript is not.
During a Core Plus free trial, the assistant includes 20 messages instead of 50, and reports can be run but not saved.
If your plan later stops including the assistant, your saved AI reports keep running everywhere. You can open them read-only, but you cannot refine them or build new ones until the plan includes the assistant again.