Chat in the web app
Ask Centrus questions about your documents, jobs and procedures from the Chat page. This guide covers the chat list, starting a chat, reading answers, the buttons on the message bar and how Chat looks on a phone.
Checked against the app on
Open Chat
Open Chat from the menu on the left. The page has two halves: your chats are listed on the left, and the chat you open fills the right, with the message box along the bottom. The subtitle under the heading reads Start conversations with Centrus, or uses the name your organisation has given its AI.
Start conversations with Centrus
Your personal chat history, excluding agent-generated threads.
08 Oct 07:50
07 Oct 11:47
John Martin
last message sent: 2 minutes ago
What is the response time for a priority 1 fault at Riverside House, and what will the call-out cost us?
Under the Riverside House SLA, a priority 1 fault needs an engineer on site within 4 hours, at any time of day. The 2026 rate card prices the attendance as follows:
| Call-out | When | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Weekdays, 08:00 to 17:30 | £95.00 |
| Out of hours | Evenings, weekends and bank holidays | £145.00 |
Both charges cover the first hour on site. Further time is billed at the hourly rate in the rate card.
Sources:
- • Riverside House SLA.pdf
- • Rate card 2026.xlsx
Centrus may make mistakes. Check important info.
- 1Chat, in the menu on the left.
- 2Start new chat, for a fresh conversation.
- 3The chat list: every chat you can see, newest first.
- 4The open chat's header, with its name, its tags and the gear menu.
- 5The conversation, with Centrus's answer and the files it used.
- 6The message box, where you type and choose tools.
To give a long conversation more room, use Full view, the square icon at the far right of the chat's header. It hides the menu, the page heading and the chat list. Click the same icon, now labelled Exit full view, to bring them back.
Find your way round the chat list
Each row shows the person who started the chat, its name, its tags and when it last changed. Click a row to open the chat. Pinned chats stay at the top, and everything else is sorted newest first unless you choose otherwise.
Your personal chat history, excluding agent-generated threads.
508 Oct 07:5007 Oct 11:47John Martin
last message sent: 2 minutes ago
What is the response time for a priority 1 fault at Riverside House, and what will the call-out cost us?
- 1Search across chat names, each chat's first tag, people and the latest message in each chat.
- 2The archive button, which swaps the list to your archived chats and back.
- 3Folders, for grouping chats you want to find together.
- 4Sort by date, chat name, person or tag, and Bulk Actions for changing several chats at once.
- 5Chat history holds your own chats. Agent history holds chats started by agents.
- 6A pinned chat. The arrows move it up or down among your other pinned chats.
- 7Chats held in WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams, marked with the app's logo.
Search does not read every message. It matches the chat's name, its first tag, the person's name or email address and the most recent message only, so a word from earlier in a long conversation will not find it. A clear chat name helps: double-click a chat's name in the list to rename it there and then, and press Escape to cancel.
The two buttons at the right of each row pin and archive that chat. A Shared tab appears once someone has shared a chat with you, and team leaders see All, Personal, Team, Shared and Agents instead. Folders, pinning, archiving and bulk changes are covered in Organise your chats, and team chats in Share a chat and see team history.
John Martin
last message sent: 2 minutes ago
What is the response time for a priority 1 fault at Riverside House, and what will the call-out cost us?
Under the Riverside House SLA, a priority 1 fault needs an engineer on site within 4 hours, at any time of day.
The arrow at the top right of the list folds it into a narrow strip so the chat gets the width. Click the arrow again to open it, or rest the pointer on the strip for a moment and it opens by itself. The list opens again each time you reload the page.
Start a new chat
- 1Click Start new chat at the top right of the page.
- 2In New chat, choose one or two tags from Select tags (max 2). You can type to search the list.
- 3Click OK. The new chat opens on the right, ready for your first question.
Your personal chat history, excluding agent-generated threads.
New chat
Select up to 2 tags
The tags decide what Centrus can read in this chat: it answers from files and knowledge carrying those tags and nothing else. Only tags on your own account are offered, and your default tag is filled in for you. A parent tag shows how many sub-tags it holds and searches all of them. OK stays greyed out until you have picked a tag. See Choose what a chat can see for how to pick the right ones.
You do not name the chat. Centrus names it from your first message, and you can rename it later.
New chat
You do not have any tags. Apply tags here to start creating chats.
New chat
You do not have any tags. Please ask an admin user to apply tags to your account.
You cannot start a chat without a tag. If your account has none, New chat says so instead of showing the tag box. Admins get a link to the users page to add tags. Everyone else needs to ask an admin, who can do it from Edit users and roles.
Ask a question
Type into the box at the bottom and press Enter to send. Shift+Enter starts a new line instead. The box grows to three lines as you type and scrolls after that.
John Martin
Suggested prompts
Click any prompt to start the conversation
Centrus may make mistakes. Check important info.
A new chat offers four Suggested prompts, written from the names of the documents under the chat's first tag. Clicking one puts it in the message box without sending it, so you can change it first.
John Martin
last message sent: less than a minute ago
Which other detectors share a loop with detector 14 on the Zone 3 panel at Riverside House?
The answer appears word by word. Above it, a panel shows what Centrus is doing, such as Reading your request, Searching your files or Searching the web, with a dot beside each step: grey for waiting, blue for in progress and green for done. When the answer is finished the panel folds up to Worked, with the number of steps, and you can open it again to see them.
To end an answer early, click Stop generating, the round button beside Send. You are not charged for an answer stopped before any of it arrived.
Send more while Centrus is answering
You do not have to wait for an answer to finish. Type your next message and press Enter, and it joins a queue above the message box. Centrus sends the queued messages one at a time, each after the previous answer is complete.
John Martin
last message sent: less than a minute ago
Which other detectors share a loop with detector 14 on the Zone 3 panel at Riverside House?
Detector 14 sits on loop 2 of the Zone 3 panel, with detectors 9 to 13 in the east stairwell and 15 to 18 on the second floor
Centrus may make mistakes. Check important info.
- Up to five messages can wait at once. A sixth shows Queue full.
- Click the cross beside a queued message to take it out before it is sent.
- If you run out of messages, the queue waits and sends once you have more.
Stop generating stops only the current answer. If anything is queued, the next message is sent straight away, so remove queued messages first if you want everything to stop.
Read the answer
When Centrus has finished, the answer sits under your question with everything you need to check it: the steps it took, the answer itself and the files it came from.
What is the response time for a priority 1 fault at Riverside House, and what will the call-out cost us?
Under the Riverside House SLA, a priority 1 fault needs an engineer on site within 4 hours, at any time of day. The 2026 rate card prices the attendance as follows:
| Call-out | When | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Weekdays, 08:00 to 17:30 | £95.00 |
| Out of hours | Evenings, weekends and bank holidays | £145.00 |
Both charges cover the first hour on site. Further time is billed at the hourly rate in the rate card.
Sources:
- • Riverside House SLA.pdf
- • Rate card 2026.xlsx
- 1Worked: open it to see the steps Centrus took.
- 2Tables come out as proper tables, ready to read or copy.
- 3Sources: the files Centrus used for this answer.
- 4Copy message appears when you point at an answer.
- 5Thumbs up and thumbs down, for telling Centrus how it did.
Check Sources before relying on an answer for anything important. A file from Google Drive or OneDrive is a link that opens it there, and Internet Search is listed when Centrus used the web. The line under the message box says as much: Centrus may make mistakes. Check important info.
Copy message copies the whole answer, ready to paste into an email or a job note. The play button beside the time reads the answer aloud.
Thumbs up or thumbs down opens a short form where you can say what was right or wrong, and turn it into a lesson Centrus uses next time. See Teach Centrus from a chat.
The buttons on the message bar
The small buttons on the left of the message bar change what Centrus does with your next message. Some only appear when the chat's AI model supports them.
Centrus may make mistakes. Check important info.
- 1Microphone: speak your message instead of typing it. It glows red while it listens.
- 2Voice mode: a spoken conversation with Centrus.
- 3Reasoning: how much thought the model puts in before answering. Only shown for models that reason.
- 4Web search: lets Centrus look things up online. It turns blue when it is on.
- 5Image: asks Centrus to create a picture. It turns purple when it is on.
- 6Paperclip: attach PDFs, spreadsheets or images, up to 20 in a message.
- 7Send. It turns dark blue once there is something to send.
You can also drag files onto the message box, or paste them in. Attaching files, including which types each model reads, is covered in Attach files and photos. Centrus can also make files for you, such as spreadsheets, PDFs and reports; see Files Centrus makes for you.
The microphone, voice mode and the play button on answers are explained in Talk to Centrus. Voice mode is greyed out when your organisation has fewer than two message credits left.
The globe and the picture icon are covered in Web search and images. The globe is missing when the chat's AI model cannot search the web.
Which buttons you see depends on the AI model, and so does the number of credits each answer uses. To change the model, see Choose the AI model.
The chat's settings menu
The gear at the top right of an open chat holds the settings for that chat.
John Martin
last message sent: 2 minutes ago
What is the response time for a priority 1 fault at Riverside House, and what will the call-out cost us?
- AI Model changes the model you use for chat. The choice applies to all your chats, not just this one, and the page reloads to apply it.
- Share chat lets colleagues read the conversation. See Share a chat and see team history.
- Download chat saves the conversation as a text file, with its name, dates, owner and tags at the top.
- Swap tags changes which tags the chat can read from, keeping one or two. It is not offered once a chat is shared.
- Archive moves the chat out of the main list. Archived chats can be read but not added to. See Organise your chats.
- Rename gives the chat a new name. It is hidden while a chat is archived.
On a chat that someone else owns, such as one shared with you, the menu offers Download chat only.
WhatsApp and Teams chats
Conversations you have with Centrus on WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams are listed here as well, marked with the app's logo. You can open them and read every message, but you cannot reply from the web: the message box is replaced by a note saying so. Carry on in the app the conversation came from.
Your personal chat history, excluding agent-generated threads.
08 Oct 07:50John Martin
WhatsApplast message sent: 1 day ago
Can you send me the Gas Safe RAMS template filled in for Mill Lane?
Here is the RAMS template, filled in for the boiler replacement at 14 Mill Lane. Check the isolation points before you start.
Sources:
- • Gas Safe RAMS template.docx
This is a WhatsApp-generated thread. You cannot send messages here.Chats started by agents behave the same way, under Agent history. To set up the apps, see Message Centrus on WhatsApp and Chat on Microsoft Teams.
Chat in a phone browser
Chat works in the browser on a phone, with a layout that fits the narrower screen. The chat list takes the whole width and Start new chat sits under the page title.
CentrusStart conversations with Centrus
Your personal chat history, excluding agent-generated threads.
08 Oct 07:50Opening a chat replaces the list. The arrow at the top left of the chat takes you back. The tool buttons fold into a single menu button at the left of the message bar, and the reasoning setting opens in its own window.
CentrusJohn Martin
Detector 14 on the Zone 3 panel keeps showing a fault. What should I check first?
Start at the detector head and its base. The manual gives three usual causes of a repeat fault on one detector: a dirty sensing chamber, a loose head, or damp in the base.
Sources:
- • Zone 3 panel manual.pdf
Centrus may make mistakes. Check important info.
Full view is not offered on a phone.
Limits and things to know
John Martin
last message sent: less than a minute ago
Which detectors on the Zone 3 panel were replaced this year?
AI service is currently busy. Please try again in a moment.
Limits Reached
Chat limits exceeded, subscribe to a plan or buy add-on messages
- Two tags at most in a chat, and at least one.
- 20 files in a single message.
- Five queued messages at a time.
- Every answer uses message credits, and the number depends on the AI model. When your organisation runs out, Chat shows Limits Reached with a Go to Billing button. See Credits and browser minutes and Add-ons.
- If the AI service is busy or an answer is cut short, the reason is added to the answer, for example AI service is currently busy. Please try again in a moment. Send the question again.
- If the chat's first tag is deleted, the chat turns red in the list and can no longer take messages. Start a new chat with a current tag.
- Archived chats cannot take typed messages: the message box still looks ready, but nothing sends. Unarchive the chat from its gear menu first.
- Chats shared with you are read-only. Start your own chat to ask a follow-up.
The tags you pick in New chat or Swap tags are remembered by the browser you picked them in. Open the same chat on another computer or phone and Centrus searches only the chat's first tag, even if the header shows two. Use Swap tags on that device to pick them again.
