CivicPlus Agent FAQs

The CivicPlus Chatbot on your website is being upgraded to CivicPlus Agent, and it comes at no additional cost to your organization under your current subscription.

Here's what your residents and staff can look forward to:

• More relevant and helpful answers drawn from your trusted CivicPlus content

• Improved self-service, including guided actions like submitting a SeeClickFix 311 CRM service request

• Deeper CivicPlus integration across your website, documents, and connected applications

• Text and voice interactions in multiple languages, so more residents can get help in their preferred mode of communication

• Enhanced analytics that help your team spot trending topics and content gaps

• Less routine call and email volume, freeing staff to focus on higher-value work

CivicPlus will add the CivicPlus Agent in the same place as the current CivicPlus Chatbot based on your previous implementation.

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. That means it can begin answering questions from your website content right away, before you add any 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, with broader permissions planned in future enhancements.

Admins can adjust the agent’s name, icon, colors, tone, and response length, as well as 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.

If you are currently using the CivicPlus Chatbot, CivicPlus will add the CivicPlus Agent in the same place as the current CivicPlus Chatbot based on your previous implementation.

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 Implementation Consultant for help.

Yes. You can create separate agents uniquely branded for specific departments; however, it is important to note that all agents draw from the same shared knowledge base. 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, powered by CivicPlus Intelligence, 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 CMS.

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.

Yes, CivicPlus Agent is available in multiple languages. 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 understands nuanced, multi-part questions and carries conversational context through a session. Switching topics mid-conversation can affect accuracy, so a Clear Context button lets residents reset when they change topics. Clear Context also starts a new conversation ID, which makes it easier for admins to review a specific exchange later.

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. This can include website pages, documents, alerts, news, events, FAQs, and municipal code from CivicPlus solutions such as Web Central and Web Evolve. You can also upload documents directly to the Knowledge Base and add public external URLs as additional knowledge sources.

Yes. You can add public, HTTPS-secured external websites 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. You can upload multiple documents at once, such as policies, guides, or operational materials, and review them in the platform to confirm they were added.

Yes. Admins can connect or disconnect content sources as needed. This is helpful for removing outdated content, focusing an agent on 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 the agent to find content and formulate responses.

Not at this time. CivicPlus Agent generates responses from your available content rather than from set question-and-answer pairs. 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. If your organization restricts guest submissions for certain categories, these categories may not be available through the agent. Support for authenticated users is being scoped for the future. Learn more about the CivicPlus Agent and SeeClickFix 311 CRM integration.

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.

It helps residents quickly find information published on your municipal website, including departments, services, news, events, forms, contact information, and other frequently requested resources, without needing to navigate multiple pages.

It helps residents find and understand municipal code by answering questions about local ordinances, regulations, and requirements, while directing them to the relevant sections of the municipal code for additional context.

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.

It 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 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 approach is to use unanswered questions to spot content gaps, then update your website or knowledge base rather than training a single 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.

Every answer the CivicPlus Agent gives is paired with a confidence score. This score is a signal for how well the answer is supported by real, verified information sources available to the agent.

Confidence is meant to help interpret how grounded an answer is. It is not a score for tone, readability, or how polished the response sounds.

Learn more about CivicPlus Agent Confidence Scores.

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.

No. CivicPlus Agent provides automated, informational responses generated from your organization's connected content. Responses may not always be complete or accurate and are not legal advice or an official determination. Residents should verify important information, including questions about ordinances, deadlines, and municipal code, with the relevant official source or department.

Back-end data such as configuration, stats, and conversations is secured through CivicPlus Platform authentication with SSO support. Customer conversation data is not shared or used to train the model. The CivicPlus Agent includes guardrails to discourage users from sharing sensitive personal information, such as Social Security numbers, and it answers only from your 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 is aligned to WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards. 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.