# Chatting with Gracie

## Chatting with Gracie

Gracie gives you one place to ask questions across SureCloud. Instead of moving through menus to find a record, open a dashboard, or inspect a report, you can ask in natural language.

Gracie reads and works with the data you already have access to. She stays within your existing permissions and keeps the conversation tied to your current work.

### Opening Gracie

Gracie is available across the platform from the top toolbar. You can open her from a home page, a record, or a dashboard and continue the same conversation as you move around SureCloud.

{% hint style="info" %}
Gracie opens alongside your work. You can close the panel, reopen it, and pick up where you left off.
{% endhint %}

### Common tasks

Gracie can help with four common tasks in chat:

{% tabs %}
{% tab title="Find and read records" %}
Ask Gracie to find records by name, attribute, or relationship. She can summarise a record, read its version history, and surface linked records without making you navigate away.

*"Show me the open incidents raised against Vendor X in the last 30 days and summarise the root causes."*
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Create and update records" %}
Where your role allows it, Gracie can create records and update existing ones on your behalf.

*"Create a new risk for the finance function called 'Late month-end close' and set the likelihood to Medium."*
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Query dashboards and reports" %}
Ask Gracie a question about a dashboard or report in plain English. She can interpret the data and answer directly in the chat panel.

*"Which controls on the SOC 2 dashboard failed their last test?"*
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Carry on the conversation" %}
Gracie keeps enough context to support follow-up questions. Start broad, then narrow the conversation without repeating the full request.
{% endtab %}
{% endtabs %}

### How responses work

Gracie is designed to be transparent. She shows what she is doing as she works, not only the final answer.

{% stepper %}
{% step %}

#### You ask a question

Type or paste your request into the Gracie panel.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Gracie works through the request

A collapsible reasoning view shows the steps Gracie is taking, including the records or sources she is reading and how she is interpreting the question.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### You get an answer, with references

The answer appears with formatting intact and links back to the records, dashboards, or reports used in the response.
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

### Response layout

Gracie can return lists, headings, and linked references in the chat panel. When a response needs a next step, she can also surface structured actions so you don't have to type everything manually.

If you need more room, you can expand the conversation for longer chats and larger outputs.

### Chat history

Conversation history is preserved so you can return to a previous thread and continue it. This also gives Gracie context for follow-up questions within the same conversation.

### Permissions

Gracie is **permission-aware**. Every response is limited to what the user can already access in SureCloud:

* Records you can't see in the UI won't appear in Gracie's answers.
* Records you can see but can't edit won't be editable via Gracie either.
* Historical data is read under the same permission rules as the live record.

Tenant admins can also control who can use Gracie and how actions are governed. See [Governance & Controls](/surecloud-docs/documentation/gracie/governance-and-controls.md).


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://surecloud.gitbook.io/surecloud-docs/documentation/gracie/chatting-with-gracie.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.