AI
Four answering modes, one per website.
The setting lives in Dashboard → Domains → pick a website → Behavior tab → Answering behavior. It decides what the assistant is allowed to say to every visitor on that site. Open Q&A is the default and is right for most businesses; the other three exist for specific reasons, listed below.
Do not confuse these
This is not the same setting as Chat mode
| Answering mode (this page) | Chat mode | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | What is the assistant allowed to talk about? | Who answers the visitor — the assistant, or a person? |
| Scope | One website. A second site keeps its own mode. | The whole account, including messaging channels. |
| Where | Domains → your site → Behavior tab. | Settings → AI & chat behaviour. |
| Values | Open Q&A, Funnel (gated topics), Catalog (auto-refresh), Manual only. | AI only, AI first, Human first, WhatsApp only — see chat modes. |
Mode by mode
Open Q&A — the default
The assistant answers any question it can ground in your knowledge base.
- When the knowledge base has nothing close enough, it says so and points at the likely page — it is built not to guess. Questions clearly unrelated to your business are politely turned back.
- When you verify a new website, we run one bounded crawl of your homepage and sitemap so the assistant has something to say on day one. The number of pages is capped, and the cap depends on your plan.
- Good for: small product sites, service businesses, professional practices — anywhere you want the assistant to be genuinely useful about your business.
Mode by mode
Funnel (gated topics)
The assistant answers only about the topics you list, and offers to take contact details for everything else.
- You write the allowed topics into a box on the same screen — one per line, up to 12 topics, up to 280 characters each. The assistant is given your wording as-is, so write it for a human, and include the instruction where there is one.
- Good topics look like this:
Submit an article — point them to /submit Advertise with us — capture company name and budget Contact the owner — collect their message and email - Do not paste URLs as topics. A line like
https://example.com/guidelines-for-submitting-articles/matches a visitor's real question badly. We try to pull keywords out of a URL, but a plain description works far better. - The mistake almost everybody makes: selecting Funnel and not saving any topics. With an empty list the gate does nothing at all and the site keeps answering exactly like Open Q&A. Add at least one topic and press Save topics.
- Good for: article hubs, portfolios and marketing sites where you want enquiries captured rather than an encyclopedia answering on your behalf.
Mode by mode
Catalog (auto-refresh)
Answers exactly like Open Q&A, and keeps a large, fast-changing site in sync.
- Choosing Catalog does not, by itself, import anything. The refresh comes from what you register on the neighbouring Knowledge Base tab: sitemaps, and under Catalog & feed connectors, a Shopify catalogue, a WooCommerce catalogue, or a CSV or JSON feed.
- After you connect Shopify, the first import starts on the next 15-minute cycle and moves up to 1,000 products at a time, so a large catalogue arrives over several cycles rather than all at once.
- Good for: shops and large product databases where prices and stock change and a one-off crawl would go stale within days.
Mode by mode
Manual only
Nothing is fetched automatically. The assistant knows only what you have added by hand.
- The day-zero crawl is skipped entirely — the auto-seed box on the Behavior tab will read skipped, which is correct and not an error.
- You add every source yourself on the Knowledge Base tab.
- Good for: an unreleased product, content under an agreement that forbids copying, or regulated material where an automatic fetch would be unsafe.
- The trade-off: an empty knowledge base means the assistant will keep saying it does not have the details. That is the mode working as asked, not a fault.
How to choose
Pick by what you want the assistant to do
| If this is you | Choose |
|---|---|
| “Answer my customers' questions about my business.” | Open Q&A |
| “I want enquiries, not a general chatbot. Two or three things only.” | Funnel (gated topics) |
| “Hundreds or thousands of products, and prices change.” | Catalog (auto-refresh) |
| “Nothing about my site should be fetched without my say-so.” | Manual only |
Unsure? Start on Open Q&A and watch a few real conversations. Switching later costs nothing, and the change applies from the next visitor message.
How
Change the mode
- Sign in at
app.orcalinq.com. - Sidebar → Setup → Domains, then select the website you want. Each site is configured separately.
- Open the Behavior tab.
- Under Answering behavior, click the card for the mode you want. It saves immediately and shows a confirmation — there is no separate Save button for the mode itself.
- If you chose Funnel, fill in Allowed topics below and press Save topics. That part is a separate save.
The same screen shows an Auto-seed status box: not yet seeded, in progress, the number of pages taken, or the reason it failed. Read that box first whenever the assistant seems to know nothing about your site.
If that did not work
The five common surprises
- Switched to Funnel, and the assistant still answers everything. Your allowed-topics list is empty. Add at least one line and press Save topics.
- Funnel mode refuses a question that is on your list. The topic is probably written as a URL or a single terse keyword. Rewrite it as a sentence a customer would recognise — that text goes straight to the assistant.
- Switched from Manual to Open, and nothing was crawled. The crawl is triggered when a domain is verified, not when you change mode. Add your pages or a sitemap on the Knowledge Base tab.
- Auto-seed says skipped, and mentions a storefront password. A Shopify store with the password page enabled cannot be crawled from outside. Either turn the storefront password off, or connect the Shopify catalogue on the Knowledge Base tab, which does not go through that page.
- Catalog mode chosen, nothing refreshes. Catalog is only a promise until a connector or sitemap exists. Check the Knowledge Base tab — if it says no connectors are registered, that is your answer.
Something else? Write to support@orcalinq.comwith the website address and the mode you have selected.
Open Q&A is a sensible default. The other three are for when it is not.
Set it per website, change it whenever, and it takes effect on the next visitor message.