TacBot — AI Assistant

TacBot is the AI assistant built into your management dashboard. It can answer questions about your live data and perform actions on your behalf — creating shifts, reassigning guards, approving time off, sending messages, and more. Every action is approved by you on a confirmation card before it runs, so TacBot never does anything without your nod.

Opening it

Tap the floating circular button in the bottom-right of the management dashboard (or any management screen). The chat panel slides in. On a fresh chat you'll see a welcome message and six suggested-prompt chips — one-tap starters for the most common things. The chips disappear as soon as you type or send anything.

What you can ask

Ask questions in plain English, the way you'd ask a colleague. Examples:

• "How many guards are clocked in right now?"
• "Are there any unreviewed incident reports from this week?"
• "Who's been late more than 3 times this month?"
• "Whose SIA licence expires in the next 60 days?"
• "What shifts have no guard assigned next week?"
• "Compile a performance review for Sarah for the last 30 days."

What you can ask it to do

TacBot can take action across most operational areas. Whenever it's about to do something that changes data, a confirmation card appears in the chat:

• WHAT I'M ABOUT TO DO — a one-line summary of every action.
• ✓ Tick (green) — approves and runs the action. The status goes through "Accepted" → "Done ✓✓" once the server confirms.
• ✗ Cross (red) — cancels the action cleanly. TacBot acknowledges and moves on.
• ✏ Revise (blue) — opens a small input where you tell TacBot what to change ("use Sarah instead", "make it 18:00 not 17:00"). TacBot re-plans with your tweak and shows a new card.

Available write actions include:

• Rota & shifts — create, reassign, retime, cancel (soft-cancel; record preserved), recurring patterns. Supports uplifted pay/charge rates and posting to the shift marketplace.
• Time off — approve / decline pending requests, with optional note.
• Reports — mark incident / patrol / check-call reports as reviewed or escalated; manage vehicle defect status and timeline updates.
• Communications — send a direct message to a guard, send a praise badge, broadcast a push notification to everyone on duty, post or edit a team memo.
• Notes — add a note to a guard's active shift or patrol session (useful for things like "add to John's shift log: chatted with the visitor at 3pm").
• Bug reports & feature requests — TacBot can file these directly to the TacDesk dev queue. If you describe something that seems broken, it will ask "Should I file a bug report?". If you ask for something it can't do (and it's a reasonable thing to want), it will ask "Would you like me to file this as a feature request?". Same confirmation-card consent as every other action.

Performance review on demand

Before a 1-to-1 or a team review, ask TacBot:

"Compile a performance review for John for the last 60 days."

It pulls together attendance (including times he forgot to clock out), punctuality (lateness count, average minutes late, worst instance), recent reports filed, SIA licence status, and a simple grade (good / fair / poor) on each. You can then say "now save the punctuality bit as a note on his file" and TacBot will fire an Add Note confirmation card.

If it doesn't know, it asks

If you ask for a write action with key details missing — "add a shift for John" with no time, or "approve that request" when several are pending — TacBot will ask one concise follow-up question instead of guessing. Once it has what it needs, it goes straight to the confirmation card. You shouldn't have to play 20 questions to get something done.

If it can't do something, it says so

TacBot is built to refuse cleanly rather than bodge a workaround. If you ask for something the assistant doesn't support, it will say so plainly and point you at the admin UI. Don't expect it to stuff data into a notes field as a workaround.

What TacBot will never do

For your safety and your audit trail, TacBot is deliberately blocked from these actions — they remain manual via the normal admin screens:

• Delete anything. No shifts, reports, notes, memos, time-off requests, documents — all are retained. The closest TacBot can do is cancel a shift (status flips to "cancelled"; the record stays).
• User accounts. No adding, editing, deleting users, changing roles, resetting passwords, or editing SIA licence records.
• Billing or finance. No invoice changes, no Xero pushes, no rate corrections, no hours arbitration — all remain in the Finance and Hours Review tabs.
• Clients & sites. No adding, editing, or archiving clients. (TacBot can read client information freely.)
• SOPs, documents, training modules. Admin via the existing screens.
• Branding & visual settings. No accidental rebrands.
• Holiday allowance corrections. The accrual / bonus-day controls stay in the Holiday Management tab.

Conversation history

Each chat is saved per user. Tap the history icon in the panel header to switch between past conversations or start a new one. The New chat button gives you a fresh canvas with the suggested-prompt chips reappearing.

Pop-out window

Tap the pop-out icon to detach TacBot into its own browser window — useful if you want to keep it open alongside the rota calendar or a report you're reviewing.

Audit trail

Every action TacBot performs on your approval is recorded — who, what, when, with the one-line summary that appeared on the confirmation card. Useful for compliance review and for understanding what was done in your name.

Usage allowance

TacBot usage is covered by your monthly AI Assistant allowance. If you approach the limit your administrator is notified, and TacBot will let you know if the allowance has been reached for the period. Contact TacDesk if you need a larger allowance.

Who can use it

Managers, Senior Managers, and Administrators on accounts with the AI Assistant add-on. Guards do not see the TacBot button. If your account doesn't have the add-on enabled, contact TacDesk support.

Tips for getting the most out of it

• Be specific where it matters. "Add a shift for John tomorrow 18:00–02:00 at Eastgate at £20/h, post to marketplace" gets you straight to a confirmation card. Vague asks get a follow-up question.
• Chain things naturally. "Who's been late this month? Send each of them a polite message asking what's up." — TacBot will pull the list, then propose a stack of message cards you can approve, cancel, or revise individually.
• Use Revise instead of cancelling. If a card is nearly right, tap Revise and tell TacBot what to change — it's faster than cancelling and re-asking.
• It runs on the data it can see. If something looks wrong, it's usually because the underlying data is missing or outdated, not because TacBot misunderstood.