CivicPlus Agent FAQs

After your subscription is active, the CivicPlus implementation team completes the initial setup, including creating the agent, applying your organization’s branding color, and connecting your main website as a knowledge source. You will receive next steps once the agent is ready for review and customization. Typical implementation is lightweight and may be completed in approximately 1 to 2 weeks depending on customer complexity.

Your agent is pre-configured with a default name, your organization’s primary branding color, and your main CivicPlus website as a knowledge source. This allows the agent to begin answering questions from your website content before additional customization.

Reply to your implementation contact with the names and email addresses of the team members who should have admin access. CivicPlus recommends limiting the initial admin group to a small set of staff who will manage agent settings and content sources.

Access to agent configuration, including Agents and Knowledge settings, is currently available to designated organization owners. Permissions are expected to expand as the product matures.

Admins can manage agent settings such as name, icon, colors, tone, response length, knowledge sources, uploaded files, external websites, fallback messaging, testing, conversation history, and custom agents for specific departments or pages.

A customer-facing configuration change log is not available at this time. This has been identified as a potential future enhancement.

No. Your main CivicPlus website content is connected during initial setup. If additional websites, sub-sites, or external sources need to be included, admins can add them in the agent settings or work with CivicPlus for assistance.

Either option works. The agent can go live with the default configuration, or your team can customize branding, knowledge sources, fallback message, and other settings before launch. You can continue making updates after launch.

The agent is added to your website using an embed code. Your implementation contact can help coordinate placement, or your team can submit the embed code request through CivicPlus Support.

Yes. Admins can preview and test how the agent looks and responds before launch using the testing tools in the agent settings on the Knowledge Base page. Customers who want a non-public test experience may be able to enable the agent on an internal-only URL before public launch.

Both options are available. Your admins can configure the agent directly, or you can share your preferences with your CivicPlus implementation contact for assistance.

Yes. You can create separate agents uniquely branded for specific departments; however, it is important to note that all agents rely on the same “brain” and connected content. Agents may be shown on some pages of a website and not on others, and this is configurable on the agent configuration screen.

Admins can use CivicPlus Help Center resources for creating and customizing agents, configuring the knowledge base, and testing the agent before launch.

CivicPlus Agent is an AI-powered assistant that lives on your website and helps residents get answers to common questions using your organization’s own content, including website pages, uploaded documents, and connected CivicPlus applications. It supports text and voice interactions and can help residents complete certain guided actions, such as submitting a 311 service request.

CivicPlus Agent is available across CivicPlus CMS platforms, including Web Central, Web Evolve, and Streamline.

Yes. Agents within an organization share a single knowledge base, allowing configured sites and subsites to be used as knowledge sources.

The CivicPlus Agent can be configured to display on DHP sites and can be branded separately. DHP sub-pages may need to be manually added to the agent’s configuration. By default, the agent is placed on the main site, but implementation teams can work with customers to expand placement.

This configuration is under review. Customers should check with their implementation team for the latest guidance.

Yes. Synonym handling is managed by the underlying large language model, currently Open AI 5.2 with reasoning, so customers do not need to manually add synonyms to page metadata.

All languages supported by Open AI are fully supported for both input and responses, allowing the Agent to respond in the language the resident uses.

Yes. The CivicPlus Agent uses a large language model to understand nuanced and multi-part questions. Conversational context is carried through a session, though switching topics mid-conversation may affect accuracy. A Clear Context option can help users reset context when changing topics. This action will also trigger a new conversation ID in the agent’s conversation history, making it easier for admins to investigate issues.

An employee-only intranet agent is not currently supported, though it is a future possibility.

CivicPlus Agent uses a dedicated index built by CivicPlus from your organization’s content, which may include website pages, documents, alerts, news, events, FAQs, and municipal code from CivicPlus solutions such as Web Central and Web Evolve. Customers can also upload documents directly to the Knowledge Base and add public external URLs as additional knowledge sources.

Yes. Public, HTTPS-secured external websites can be added so the agent can reference information that lives outside of your CivicPlus website, such as state resources, county resources, or partner sites. External results may be cited as “Source: External [URL].”

Partial scoping is possible by adding specific URLs to the external search configuration, but deep crawling or strict restriction to a single page or section is limited today. CivicPlus plans to enhance external web crawling capabilities in the near future.

Yes. Bulk content upload allows your team to upload multiple documents, such as policies, guides, or operational materials, in one action. Uploaded documents can be reviewed in the platform to confirm they were added.

Yes. Admins can connect or disconnect content sources as needed. This can be useful when removing outdated content, limiting the agent to specific departments, or preparing for a content migration.

Yes. Metadata included in the website search index, including metadata on the current published version of a page, can be used by CivicPlus Agent to find content and formulate responses.

No. CivicPlus Agent does not support training specific question-and-answer pairs. It generates responses based on available content. The recommended approach is to improve the underlying website content or upload supplemental informational documents to the Knowledge Base. Prose-style documents generally work better than Q&A-formatted lists.

For organizations using eligible CivicPlus web products and SeeClickFix 311 CRM, the CivicPlus Agent can guide residents through reporting issues such as potholes, graffiti, or broken infrastructure and submit the request into SeeClickFix as a guest submission. Learn more about the CivicPlus Agent and SeeClickFix 311 CRM integration.

Submissions are created as guest submissions. If your organization restricts guest submissions for certain categories in SeeClickFix 311 CRM, those categories may not be available through CivicPlus Agent. Support for authenticated users is currently being scoped as a future feature.

The Agenda and Meeting Management Select integration helps residents ask about meeting schedules, agenda items, past discussions, and ways to attend or participate in upcoming meetings.

Yes. The chat button can be adjusted to better fit your site experience, including small, medium, or large size options, custom icon or logo, vertical placement, and greeting callout text.

Yes. Customers can configure a custom name, upload a custom icon or logo, and apply branding settings. These settings can be managed by the customer or in coordination with CivicPlus.

Yes. Tone and response length are configurable settings in the CivicPlus Agent.

The greeting callout is a configurable message bubble that appears near the chat button to invite residents to interact with the agent. Residents can dismiss it during their session.

Yes. The widget can be configured to open on load in supported scenarios, such as through a query string parameter or embed configuration.

Yes. The agent supports voice interactions where available, allowing residents to ask questions by speaking and receive spoken responses. If voice is not available due to browser or device limitations, residents can continue using text.

Voice availability may depend on configuration and supported browser or device capabilities. Text interaction remains available regardless of voice support.

If the CivicPlus Agent cannot find a reliable answer in its connected knowledge sources, it displays a fallback message encouraging the resident to rephrase or use another support path. Fallback messages can be customized to direct residents to an individual, phone number, or website.

Yes. Admins can configure custom fallback messages per agent, such as directing residents to a department phone number, office hours, service portal, or other preferred contact method.

Rich text formatting, including hyperlinks, is supported for all admin-configurable text inputs.

Yes. Conversation history is accessible from the agent-level menu in the admin dashboard. A more robust customer-facing analytics dashboard is in development with anticipated delivery during Q3 of 2026 to provide deeper visibility into utilization, trending topics, content gaps, unanswered or low-confidence responses, and response performance.

Available or planned insights may include unique users, total queries, trending topics, questions the CivicPlus Agent could not answer, conversation details, citations, and confidence indicators.

Export to CSV functionality is in development and will be limited to conversations and conversation metadata. Export functionality will be available from the Conversations screen for a single agent at a time.

Analytics can help identify missing or unclear content, frequently asked resident questions, and opportunities to improve your website or knowledge sources. The recommended workflow is to use unanswered questions to identify content gaps, then update website content or Knowledge Base documents rather than training a specific response. Once quick-prompts are supported, recommended guidance is to leverage trending topics as a source to create quick-prompts and place them on your agent’s widget to reduce search fatigue about a popular topic.

Conversations are currently retained indefinitely. CivicPlus plans to introduce configurable retention policies in a future release.

Yes. CivicPlus Agent responses include citations to the source content used to generate the answer, helping residents verify information and navigate to more detail. External sources may be cited as “Source: External [URL].”

Confidence indicators help show how closely a response aligns with available source content. Lower-confidence answers can signal where content may need improvement.

Back-end data such as configuration, stats, and conversations is secured through CivicPlus Platform authentication with SSO support. Customer conversation data is not shared back to the LLM provider to train the model. The CivicPlus Agent includes guardrails to discourage users from sharing sensitive personal information, such as Social Security numbers, and is restricted to answering from available content sources.

CivicPlus Agent currently uses OpenAI 5.2 with reasoning. CivicPlus plans to introduce hybrid model routing in the future while maintaining the policy that customer conversation data is not shared back to train the model.

Yes. The CivicPlus Agent chat UI is WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliant. An Accessibility Conformance Report is expected to be published in the CivicPlus Help Center.

Confirm the source was added successfully, is publicly accessible where required, uses a supported format, and has completed processing. Remember that external site search is not real-time and may reflect cached content. If the issue continues, contact CivicPlus Support.

Review the connected content sources to confirm the correct and current information is available. If the issue persists, contact CivicPlus Support so the configuration and source retrieval can be reviewed.

This may be related to the website embed, allowed websites, or site security settings. Contact CivicPlus Support for assistance if the public widget is not behaving as expected.

Check whether content sources, website pages, uploaded files, or agent settings recently changed. If nothing obvious explains the change, contact CivicPlus Support for troubleshooting.