Avvi help center

Troubleshooting Signed out with ”Session Expired” → Avvi ends a session for several different reasons and shows the same panel for most of them. Signing back in restores the same access. How-to Add a client to Avvi → Adding a client needs their Microsoft 365 organization details. An administrator of that organization then has to approve access before anything runs. Concept What ”Admin consent required” means → A client shows this until an administrator of that organization approves Avvi’s access. The client is listed but nothing can run against it yet. Reference What Avvi needs before it can manage a client → Five separate things have to be true. Each one fails with a different message, so the message tells you which one is missing. How-to Grant admin consent for a client → Consent is given in the client’s own Microsoft sign-in, not in Avvi, and only an administrator there can give it. Avvi generates the link to send. How-to Try Avvi safely before using it on a real client → A practice client lets you rehearse a real approval without touching a live tenant, and costs no actions. It still counts against your client limit. How-to Set up Avvi before your first real client → Four settings change what a client experiences. Doing them before the first client is added avoids reworking every client afterwards. How-to Set up the support mailbox → The support mailbox is the only route your clients’ staff have to reach you from inside Avvi. Leaving it unset removes that route silently. How-to Choose which notifications Avvi sends → One switch stops all outbound support mail. A separate list chooses which events are worth an email. Changing the delivery route silences nothing. Concept What multi-tenant access is, and whether you need it → Multi-tenant access decides whether an administrator can work on client organisations other than your own. Two separate settings both have to allow it. Concept The two routes to full access in Avvi → One person holds full access because they set the organisation up. Others get the same from a group toggle. Tenant-wide security investigation differs. How-to Give a client’s own staff access to Avvi → Import the client’s security groups, then map which of their admin groups may manage which user groups. Permissions add up rather than replacing each other. How-to Set usage limits for a client → Optional caps stop one client consuming everything. When a cap is reached, that client’s requests are blocked until the next period. How-to Connect Microsoft Teams for a client → Three things must line up: the feature enabled, the client’s administrator granting the Teams permissions, and an administrative role in their tenant. How-to Turn on a feature for one of a client’s user groups → Every capability starts switched off for a group. Turning one on is done per mapped group on the client, and permissions add up across groups. How-to Introduce Avvi to a client’s staff → What to tell a client’s people before you switch it on. They get one screen, everything starts switched off, and their questions come to you. Concept What your client’s users actually see → One conversation screen and nothing else. No dashboard, no settings, and no support panel, which is why every question they have arrives with you.

Troubleshooting “You do not have permission to perform this action” → Avvi refuses a blocked action in two different ways. One names the feature and one deliberately does not, and they need different responses. Troubleshooting A Global Administrator cannot get into Avvi → Being a Global Administrator in Azure AD does not grant Avvi access on its own, so an administrator has to grant it explicitly. Concept Why Avvi does not name the missing permission → The refusal hides the internal permission name, so describe the action you were trying to take rather than quoting the message. Troubleshooting A user says Avvi cannot find somebody → Avvi searched only the people that account is allowed to see. That is a mapping you control rather than a missing person, and the message says so.

Concept Which time zone a scheduled action runs in → A scheduled action uses the time zone on your profile, and falls back to US Eastern when nobody has set one. Naming a zone in the request overrides both. How-to Show Avvi a screenshot → Chat accepts up to three images per message at 5 MB each. You can attach them or paste a screenshot straight into the message box. Troubleshooting “This conversation has accumulated too much context” → A long conversation reaches a point where Avvi cannot process another turn. Retrying the same message does not help; starting a new conversation does. Troubleshooting Avvi only did part of what I asked → A long request can stop partway, leaving some work done and some not. Avvi says how far it got, and checking before you retry stops anything running twice. Concept How to phrase a request so Avvi can act on it → Naming the person and the outcome in one sentence works. Describing a situation and hoping usually produces a question back instead of an action. Concept What can I ask Avvi to do? → Ask in ordinary words about your own account, your email, or the computer you work on. What is available depends on what your IT team has turned on. Troubleshooting Why did Avvi tell me to contact my administrator? → The message means your account is not allowed to do that, not that the request was wrong. Avvi can pass the request to whoever manages your IT. How-to Check what Avvi did after you asked → Avvi reports what it did in the conversation itself, and says when a request has been logged with IT support. Reading the reply is the check. Concept Who receives your support request → Requests go to the mailbox your own organisation configured, which reaches your IT team or the provider that manages your Microsoft 365. They do not reach Avvi. Troubleshooting Avvi says support is not configured for my organisation → Avvi cannot pass your request on because your organisation has not finished setting that up. Nothing was sent, and the fix is your administrator’s. Concept Why does Avvi ask me to confirm before it does something? → Confirming is how you check Avvi understood you. Anything that changes something waits for you, and anything that only looks something up does not. How-to Can I undo something I asked Avvi to do? → There is no undo button, but most changes reverse by asking for the opposite. Ask in the same conversation and be specific about what to put back. Concept Can Avvi read my email? → Avvi can see information about messages, such as who sent one and whether it arrived. It does not open your mailbox and read the contents of your mail. How-to How do I know Avvi finished rather than gave up? → A finished request ends with Avvi saying what it did. A stalled one leaves the last message describing what it was about to do. Concept Why does Avvi sometimes take a while to answer? → Questions answered from what Avvi already knows are quick. Anything that has to reach Microsoft 365, or your own computer, takes as long as that takes. Concept Who can see my conversations with Avvi? → Your conversations belong to your account and are not browsable by colleagues. What is shared is a record of the changes made, with your name on it. How-to How do I ask about my own account? → Say "my" and Avvi uses your own account. It is the shortest way to ask and it removes the risk of naming the wrong person. Troubleshooting Avvi says it cannot find the person I named → The person usually exists. Avvi searches only the people you are allowed to see, and the message says so. Concept Does asking Avvi something count against my company’s allowance? → Yes. Every message counts, whether it changed anything or not, and the allowance belongs to your company rather than to you. Concept Does Avvi change anything when I ask a question? → No. Anything that changes something is shown to you first and waits. A question is answered and nothing happens. Troubleshooting Avvi showed a technical-looking error I do not understand → Quote it back and ask what it means. Avvi wrote it and can explain it in ordinary words, or tell you it needs your IT team. How-to How do I report that Avvi got something wrong? → Say so in the same conversation. What makes a report useful is what you expected, what happened, and roughly when. Concept What is Avvi, and why has my company given me access? → A chat assistant for the everyday IT things you would normally ask your IT team about. Ask in ordinary words and it either does it or explains why not. Concept Why can I only see chat and nothing else? → Chat is the whole product for you. The settings and dashboards belong to the people who manage your Microsoft 365. How-to Your first day with Avvi → Three questions to try, in order, ending with something that actually changes. Fifteen minutes and you will know what it is for.

Concept Retiring versus wiping a device → Retiring removes company data and keeps personal data. Wiping removes everything. Avvi cannot reverse either one. How-to Remove mailbox access you granted earlier → One request removes all three permission types at once. It does not cancel a scheduled removal or a scheduled grant, which have to be cancelled separately. How-to Forward someone’s email to a colleague → Forwarding is set on the mailbox itself rather than as an inbox rule, so it survives a tidy-up. It also keeps running silently until somebody stops it. How-to Find an email that never arrived → Delivery history reaches back about ninety days but looks at the last two unless you give a period. Quarantine searches whatever it currently holds. How-to See which devices a user has → Ask by name and Avvi lists their managed devices with compliance state, operating system, model and storage. How-to Lock a lost device → Locking is the first move on a lost machine and the only reversible one. Retiring and wiping remove data and cannot be taken back. How-to Recover a local administrator password for a machine → Ask by device name and Avvi returns the stored local administrator password. Every retrieval is recorded against you and the device. How-to Create a distribution list → Avvi asks one question you should decide before starting: whether people outside the company can email the list. How-to Add or remove people from a distribution list → Name the list and the person and Avvi does it. The common mistake is asking about a Microsoft Team by the same name. How-to Create a security group → Where a client runs their own directory, the group is created there rather than in the cloud. Avvi routes it and refuses if it cannot reach them. How-to Find out which groups someone belongs to → One request returns every kind of membership at once: security groups, Microsoft 365 groups, distribution lists and directory roles. How-to Add or remove someone from a Team → Ask Avvi what Teams exist first. The name you were given is often a distribution list, and the two are managed separately. Concept What Avvi can see in a user’s mailbox → No request returns the text of a message. What Avvi reads is the delivery record and the mailbox settings, which is what the useful answers come from anyway.

Troubleshooting My connector shows OFFLINE → OFFLINE means no check-in for more than five minutes. The Heartbeat column says when it last reported, and that timestamp decides what to look at next. Reference What each connector status means → A handful of statuses appear on Connector Fleet and only one of them means fully working. The rest each point at a different action. How-to Install a connector → Generate a code, run the installer on the machine, and pick the modules that match what it is. A single-machine code lasts fifteen minutes. Concept What the Connector Fleet page is for → One list of every machine running a connector, across all your clients, with whether each is checking in and how its work is going. Reference How to read the Connector Fleet columns → Nine columns, and three of them answer most questions: Status, Heartbeat, and Failures 24h. How-to Update a connector → Connectors check for updates hourly on their own. Forcing one restarts the service, and that only works while the machine is reachable. How-to Remove a connector you no longer need → Removing stops the machine receiving commands. It does not uninstall the software, so the service keeps running until somebody removes it on the machine. Concept What does revoking a service key actually stop? → Revoking a key blocks future installs that would have used it. Machines already enrolled with that key carry on working. Troubleshooting A password reset worked in the cloud but not on the local network → The reset was made as a cloud-only change. Where a client’s accounts live in their own directory, the reset has to go there instead. How-to Restart a server → Ask, choose a delay, and confirm. Avvi checks for active remote sessions first and reports success once the machine is back. Concept Which quick fixes can Avvi run on a machine? → A short, deliberate list of low-risk repairs, each preceded by a diagnostic. Avvi checks before it fixes rather than trying things.

How-to Assign a licence to someone → Most failed assignments are a subscription with nothing left rather than a badly worded request. Checking what is available first tells the two apart. How-to See which licences a user has → One request lists what is assigned to somebody. It is the starting point for every other licensing question, including what to remove when they leave. Troubleshooting Avvi says there are no licences available → Three different situations produce this. Genuinely none free, a seat bought seconds ago that has not propagated, and the wrong subscription named. How-to Buy licences for a client → Purchasing runs through your distributor integration and is off by default. Orders above a value need a master administrator to approve them. Troubleshooting A licence purchase succeeded but the user still has no licence → Buying a seat and assigning it are two steps. The seat also takes a short time to become visible before it can be assigned at all. How-to See how much of a client’s allowance is used → Three figures are kept per client: API calls, conversations, and actions. Actions counts every message sent to Avvi, not changes made. How-to Ask for more clients or AI requests → Use the Let us know button on the Usage screen. It opens a support conversation with your plan attached, which the Subscription form does not do.

How-to See what Avvi did → Every action is recorded with who asked, which client, what was targeted and whether it succeeded. Filter the record, then export it if somebody needs a copy. Concept What the daily summary email is → A digest of the day’s activity, sent to the support mailbox. It is skipped entirely on a day when nothing happened, which reads as a delivery failure. Reference Which actions need confirmation and which do not → Anything that changes something is confirmed first, and that gate is enforced. A few sensitive lookups are asked about by convention rather than enforced. Reference Which actions cannot be undone → Most changes can be reversed by asking for the opposite. A few destroy something, and the confirmation is the last point at which they can be stopped. How-to Check Avvi understood before it acts → The confirmation is the check. It names the person, the change and the client, and reading those three is faster than reversing a mistake. How-to Tell Avvi which client you mean → The client is chosen in the picker, not in the sentence. Naming a client in a message does not switch to it. Concept Can Avvi act on the wrong client by mistake? → The client comes from the picker and is checked on every request, so Avvi cannot drift. The real risk is a person aiming a correct request at the wrong one. How-to Ask Avvi to do something for several people at once → Name everybody in one request and Avvi confirms the whole set together. An ambiguous name does not stop the batch, so read the summary at the end. How-to Schedule something for later → Say when as part of the request. Avvi checks every half minute, runs the change, then confirms whether it actually took effect. Troubleshooting My scheduled action did not run → Ask what is scheduled. If the entry is gone, it already ran, was cancelled, or failed, and the record tells you which. Absence is the signal, not a status word. Concept Can two people work on the same client at once? → Yes, and nothing locks the client. Each conversation carries its own approvals, so the risk is two people making conflicting changes. How-to A user reports Avvi got something wrong → Start from the record, not the report. It shows what ran, who asked, what was targeted and whether it succeeded, which is often a different story.

How-to Set your time zone and time format → Regional settings on your profile control the time zone Avvi works to. Until one is actively chosen, Avvi falls back to US Eastern. How-to Reset a user’s password → Ask Avvi in plain language, naming the person. Avvi asks whether the password is temporary or permanent, and whether to sign the person out everywhere. Troubleshooting A user is locked out. Which action do you need? → Locked out covers four different states with four different fixes. Picking the wrong one leaves the person still locked out. How-to Reset a user’s multi-factor authentication → Removing a person’s authentication methods signs them out everywhere. Whether they are forced to set up a new one depends on whether any method survives. How-to Give someone temporary access when they cannot complete MFA → A temporary access pass lets somebody sign in without the second step. Avvi asks how long it lasts and whether it can be used more than once. How-to Offboard someone properly → Offboarding is a sequence of separate requests. Doing them in order, and knowing which ones are optional, is what stops a departure being left half done. How-to Disable an account when someone leaves → Disabling stops sign-in and signs the person out everywhere. Avvi asks whether it is temporary or permanent, because that decides what happens to the licences. How-to Create a new user account → A plain create gives you a blank account with no groups and no licences. Asking for an account like an existing colleague copies both in one go. How-to Check whether a user’s sign-ins look suspicious → Ask for a security investigation on the person. It reports what it checked, what it skipped and why, so read the completeness before the conclusion. Concept A user is flagged as risky. What does that mean? → Risky is Microsoft’s verdict, not Avvi’s. It means Microsoft saw something it considers a sign of compromise, and it is a prompt to look rather than a finding. How-to Approve or decline a quarantine release request → Requests wait on the Quarantine Release page as Pending. Handling them needs global or master administrator access, which most administrators do not have. How-to An account may be compromised. What do I do first? → Reset the password, sign them out explicitly, then look for what was left behind. Do not assume an MFA reset signed them out. How-to Handle a suspected phishing report → Find out who else received it before deciding anything. One report usually means several deliveries and one person who clicked. How-to Sign a user out of everywhere → Revoking sessions ends access on every device within seconds. It is the action that stops an intrusion already in progress. How-to Check what one person has shared outside the company → One request lists the files somebody has shared beyond the organisation. It is the question to ask when an account has been compromised or somebody is leaving. How-to Stop a file being shared → Removing a share needs the file and the specific permission on it. List the permissions first, because a file often carries several. How-to A user deleted a file. Can I get it back? → Usually yes, from their recycle bin. List what is in it, then restore the item you want by name. How-to Send a password or secret to someone safely → Avvi creates a link that expires and stops working after a set number of views. The secret is encrypted before it leaves your browser. Troubleshooting The person I sent a secure link to says it does not work → A link stops working when its time runs out or its views are used. Both are one-way, so the fix is always a new link. How-to Restrict Avvi access to your office network → An allowlist limits where Avvi can be used from, and it is checked at sign-in. Getting it wrong locks everybody out with no way back from inside the product. Troubleshooting I turned on IP restrictions and locked us out → The check runs at sign-in, so nobody at your organisation can get in to undo it. Avvi support is the only route back. How-to Grant or end Avvi support access → Generate a code from the profile menu, and revoke it from the same place. Support sessions are read-only, and only one grant can be active at a time. Troubleshooting A user cannot sign in and nothing looks wrong → Ask for their failed sign-ins. The failure reason names the policy or the condition that blocked them, which the account itself never will.

Reference Common Avvi messages and what they mean → The messages people ask about most, what each actually means, and which of them you can do something about. Reference What the sign-out messages mean → A small number of panels, each with a different cause. Only two of them mean something is wrong with the account. Reference The limits worth knowing about → The figures that decide whether something is possible, gathered in one place. Most are about time rather than quantity. Reference How far back can Avvi look? → Every kind of history has a different window, and the shortest one usually decides whether a question can be answered. Reference Which emails does Avvi send, and to whom? → Almost everything goes to your support mailbox. The one exception is a secure link, which goes to the person you are sending it to. Reference The different kinds of Avvi user → Five kinds in two groups: people at your organisation, and people at your clients. What each can do comes from a different place in Avvi. Concept What is the difference between a client and a tenant? → A tenant is the Microsoft 365 organisation. A client is that tenant as Avvi knows it, with your settings on top. Concept Settings, or a client’s settings? → Your settings apply everywhere and affect every client. A client’s settings apply to that client alone. Most confusion is about which one somebody changed. Reference Where each setting lives → Eleven sections under Settings, plus everything on a client’s own record. This is the map for finding one without hunting. Troubleshooting Is this problem Avvi or Microsoft? → Two questions separate them. Does it fail for every client, and does it fail for read-only requests too? Reference Glossary of Avvi terms → The words that mean something specific here, including several that look like ordinary English and are not.