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.
The rule is one line: if a request changes something, Avvi shows you exactly what it is about to do and waits. If it only looks something up, it happens straight away.
No setting turns confirmation off for a change, and no phrasing skips it.
A few sensitive lookups sit outside that gate and are asked about by convention instead. Retrieving a machine’s local administrator password is the one to know: Avvi asks, and the record rather than the prompt is what actually governs it.
For everything in the table below the check is enforced by Avvi itself rather than by the assistant, so it cannot be talked around or forgotten under pressure.
An action that arrives without a matching approval is refused outright.
Scheduling something for later, and releasing quarantined mail in bulk, are asked about in the same way but are not covered by that enforced check. Read those two confirmations with more care, because the wording is the whole of the protection.
A confirmation is also specific and short-lived. It approves the exact change described, once, and it stops being valid after about thirty minutes.
| Kind of request | Confirmed first? | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Looking something up | No | Who has access to a mailbox, what licences are free, recent sign-ins, delivery history |
| Changing an account | Yes | Reset a password, disable or enable, unlock, reset multi-factor |
| Changing mailbox access | Yes | Grant or remove access, Send As, forwarding |
| Changing licences | Yes | Assign or remove |
| Anything on a device or server | Yes | Restart, retire, wipe |
| Several changes at once | Yes, as one approval covering all of them | Onboarding, offboarding, bulk changes |
Good to know
A user asking why Avvi keeps asking them to confirm, or whether asking a question changes anything, is describing this gate working correctly.
Approving a set of changes approves that set. Adding another change afterwards needs its own approval, even in the same conversation.
A confirmation that has been sitting unanswered for half an hour stops working. Ask again rather than replying to the old one.
Related pages
Checking that Avvi understood you before you approve has its own page.
So does what cannot be undone once you have approved it.