AI Capabilities
Every AI assistant in WinnerWare starts out as a plain conversation: it can answer questions, but it can't take action on its own. The Capabilities tab is where you turn on specific abilities — like sending an email, looking up a user, or searching your content — so the assistant can actually do things for you instead of just describing how you'd do them yourself.
This page explains what the Capabilities tab is, where to find it, what each ability does in plain language, and how to turn one on safely.
Turning on the Capabilities tab
The Capabilities tab doesn't appear by magic — it only shows up once the right features are turned on:
- You need AI Chat set up first, with at least one AI Profile or Chat Interaction to edit. See AI Chat for that setup.
- To see the Tools checklist at all, enable AI Agent (feature id
CrestApps.OrchardCore.AI.Agent) under Configuration -> Features. Without this feature, the Capabilities tab either won't show a Tools list, or will show one with nothing in it — there's nothing to turn on until this feature is active. - Each category underneath Tools only appears once its own underlying feature is also turned on — see the Enabled by default? column in the table below. If you enable AI Agent but a category you expected is still missing, that category's own feature isn't on yet.
- The deployment that answers the chat must have Tool calling checked on its Model capabilities card (Artificial Intelligence -> Deployments). This doesn't change what the tab shows — you can check boxes either way — but without it WinnerWare removes every tool from the request, so no capability ever runs. See AI Deployments.
Where to find it
The Capabilities tab appears in two places, and it works the same way in both:
- AI Profile — open Artificial Intelligence -> Profiles, open the profile you want to change, and select the Capabilities tab.
- Chat Interaction — open the Chat Interaction, and select the Capabilities tab.
Use an AI Profile when you want a defined, reusable assistant with a stable set of abilities. Use Chat Interactions when you want to manage the abilities for that all-in-one chat experience directly. See AI Chat for the difference between the two.
What's on the tab
The Capabilities tab has two sections:
- Tools — a checklist of individual abilities, grouped into categories. Checking a box lets the assistant use that ability during a conversation. This is the section most people will use.
- Agents — lets this assistant call on other specialized assistants (ones set up as "Agent" profiles) to help with a bigger job. Most day-to-day setups don't need this; it's for more advanced, multi-step assistants.
Only the tools and categories you're allowed to grant appear on the list — see Who can turn on a capability below.
What each capability does
Tools are grouped into categories, and each category heading on the tab uses the exact name shown in the table. Once AI Agent is turned on, most of these categories are already available on a standard WinnerWare site — the features behind them (Content, Content Types, Users, Roles, Workflows, Recipes, Notifications, Email) ship enabled out of the box. The rest need a feature turned on separately, as noted below.
| Category | What it lets the assistant do | Enabled by default? |
|---|---|---|
| Communications | Send an email (Send Emails), send an in-app notification to a person (Send User Notification), or send a text message (Send SMS message). See Send an email for the exact wording to use. | Yes for email and notifications. Send SMS message needs SMS turned on. |
| Content Management | Search your content, read a content item, create or update one, publish or unpublish it, clone it, delete it, or get a link to it. This is what powers the "build me a survey" style prompts described in AI Prompting. | Yes |
| Content Definitions | Look up, create, update, or remove the structural definitions behind content types (the templates content items are built from). This is a technical, setup-level capability — most day-to-day assistants don't need it. | Yes |
| Users Management | Look up information about a user, or search for users. Useful for assistants that help staff find or verify accounts. | Yes |
| Roles Management | Look up information about a role. | Yes |
| Workflow Management | Look up existing workflows, or build a new one (for example, one that emails a group of users). Pairs with AI Prompting's workflow example. | Yes |
| Features Management | Check which site features are turned on, search for a feature, or turn one on or off. This changes site configuration, so keep it restricted to trusted administrators. | Yes |
| Recipes | Apply predefined site settings, or list, inspect, and run setup recipes. This is a setup/configuration capability meant for administrators, not everyday chat. | Yes |
| System | List time zones. Low-risk and safe to leave on. | Yes |
| AI Profiles | List AI Profiles, or view one. Low-risk and safe to leave on. | Yes |
| Tenants Management | List, create, set up, enable, disable, reload, or remove tenants. This changes the whole installation, so keep it restricted to trusted administrators. | No — needs Tenants turned on, which is normally only the case on the main (host) site |
| AI Analytics | Query chat session metrics. | No — needs AI Chat Analytics turned on |
Each checkbox has its own name and description right on the tab, so you can always read the exact wording there before turning it on.
Built-in abilities that aren't on the tab
Some abilities are built in and don't appear on the Capabilities tab at all, because the assistant gets them automatically when they apply:
- Knowledge search, when the assistant has a data source on its Knowledge tab.
- Memory — saving, finding, listing, and removing things the assistant remembers about the person — when AI Memory is turned on and the signed-in user has personal memory turned on.
- WinnerWare's own report and lookup tools, for example the Survey Reports tools List surveys and Query interview data report. See Query survey report data.
These still need Tool calling on the deployment, like every other tool.
A voice assistant uses the same Capabilities tab. Keep its tool list short; see AI Realtime Voice.
How to turn on a capability
- Open the AI Profile or Chat Interaction and go to the Capabilities tab.
- Find the category that contains the ability you want (for example, Communications for Send Emails).
- Check the box next to it.
- Save the profile or interaction.
Once saved, the assistant can use that ability the next time someone asks for it in conversation — you don't need to write any code for a built-in ability to start working.
Tool calling must be on. Every capability on this tab is a tool, and the model can only use tools when its deployment has Tool calling checked on the Model capabilities card. If it's unchecked, WinnerWare silently removes every tool from the request: the checked boxes here do nothing, and the assistant may even claim it sent an email when it didn't. Check the profile's or interaction's Chat deployment — or the Default chat deployment under Settings -> Artificial Intelligence if it's set to Default. See AI Deployments.
Send Emails needs one more thing beyond the capability being checked: delivery configured under Settings -> Email, or the assistant will report a send failure even with the box checked. If Tenants Management or AI Analytics is missing from the tab entirely, that's the feature noted in the table above not being turned on yet — check with your administrator.
Who can turn on a capability
Using a capability and being allowed to configure a capability are two separate checks in WinnerWare:
- Being allowed to talk to an assistant doesn't automatically mean you're allowed to use every ability that assistant has turned on. Each ability carries its own permission.
- By default, only Administrators can use every ability. Any other role needs to be granted access to that specific ability (or a broader "use any AI ability" permission) under Security -> Roles before its members can trigger it in conversation.
- If someone without the right permission tries to use an ability, the assistant simply leaves that ability out of the conversation instead of failing outright — it will look like the assistant "forgot" it can do that. If a capability seems to stop working for one person but works for an administrator, this permission gap is the first thing to check. If a capability doesn't work for anyone, including administrators, check Tool calling on the deployment first.
Because a handful of categories (Tenants Management, Features Management, Recipes, Content Definitions) can change how the site itself behaves, keep those limited to administrators even if you loosen permissions elsewhere.