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Sela uses a small set of ideas again and again. This page defines each one briefly and points to the page that covers it in depth. For a quick lookup of single terms, see the Glossary.

Organization, workspace and branch#

An organization is your business account in Sela. In the dashboard it is called your workspace, and every record (conversations, contacts, settings, billing) belongs to exactly one workspace. A person only reaches the workspaces they belong to. See Security and privacy.

If your business has several locations, a business account groups several branch workspaces. Each branch keeps its own channels, conversations, contacts and settings, while one branch pays for the plan and the plan allowances are pooled. Enabling multiple branches is one-way. See Multiple branches.

Conversation, status and handling#

A conversation is a thread between one customer and your business on one channel. Every conversation has two separate states, and mixing them up is the most common source of confusion.

Status is the lifecycle of the conversation: New, Open, Waiting on customer, Waiting on team, Snoozed, Closed or Blocked. Not every move is allowed. A closed conversation can only be reopened, and closing needs a reason. Waiting on customer, snoozed and blocked pause the SLA clock. See Inbox and conversations.

Handling says who is dealing with the conversation right now: the AI, a human, or nobody yet. The states are AI active, AI paused by rule, AI paused for flow, Human requested, Human active, Approval pending and Resolved. In a workspace without AI Assist they read Needs agent and With agent. Only "AI active" lets the assistant reply. See AI control and takeover.

AI control#

The assistant answers only when a fixed set of checks all pass: the AI is switched on, AI Assist is on your plan, credits remain, an assistant identity exists, the conversation is open, no human owns it, its handling state is "AI active", no cooldown or guided flow blocks it, and the channel's automation switch is on. If any check fails, the AI stays silent and your team handles the message. Your team can pause the assistant on one conversation with Pause assistant, take the conversation over, and give it back with Hand back to assistant. See How the AI works.

Escalation#

When the AI cannot or should not continue, it escalates: it records a reason, a summary, a priority and a category, sets the status to Escalated, alerts your team and stops replying. It also escalates automatically when it repeatedly cannot verify its answers against your data. Escalations appear in the Needs review and Unassigned inbox views and in the mobile app's escalation queue. See Notifications, SLA and escalations.

Contact and contact session#

A contact is a customer record in your CRM, with fields, tags, a lifecycle stage and channel identities such as a phone number or a Telegram account. The same person on WhatsApp and on web chat can be merged into one contact. See Contacts and CRM.

A contact session is the web-widget concept. When a visitor first opens the widget, Sela creates a session and remembers it in the browser. Chat history belongs to the session, not to the email address, so the same person on another device starts fresh. Sessions last 24 hours by default and can be extended to 30 days. Sites that already know the visitor can skip the login form with Identity verification (HMAC). See Web chat widget.

Channels#

A channel is a way customers reach you. Sela supports the web chat widget, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram direct messages, Telegram, email and SMS, all feeding one inbox. Human phone-style calls are covered separately. Each channel has its own rules: WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram enforce a 24-hour reply window set by Meta, and WhatsApp uses approved templates outside it. Channels are connected under Settings, then Workspace setup, then Integrations. See Web chat widget, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, Telegram, Email and SMS and Calls.

Assistant identity and scope#

The assistant identity is the name, brand, tone and rules your customers see. Sela will not answer under its own name, so a saved identity with a brand is required. Scope is the boundary of what the assistant will talk about: your business only. Knowledge text, campaigns and available tools cannot widen it. See Assistant identity and scope.

Knowledge base and grounding#

The knowledge base holds the stable text facts the assistant may quote: policies, FAQs, contact details, payment methods and guides. Grounding means the assistant answers from evidence, not memory. Sela checks each drafted reply against the evidence the assistant found, and an unsupported reply is replaced with a short hedged message. Live facts come from structured sources with a fixed order of authority: product identity, price and availability from the catalog, delivery fees from delivery settings, and opening status from working hours and published branches. See Knowledge base and Catalog and products.

Tools, effects and confirmation#

A tool is a small, controlled function the assistant can call. Most platform tools are read-only: knowledge search, branches, catalog lookups, offers, delivery fee, order status and customer profile. Only a few have an effect: preparing an order quote saves a quote, handing off changes the conversation status and notifies your team, and setting a cooldown pauses an abusive conversation for a short time. The assistant cannot take payments, book appointments, issue refunds or edit customer records.

Confirmation is how orders stay under your control. The assistant prepares a quote, the customer confirms that exact quote, and only then is the order recorded, as a request that your team approves or rejects. See Tools and actions and Orders and payment links.

Credits and the wallet#

AI runs on credits. Your plan includes a monthly allowance in blocks of 100 credits, and each model call uses a small fraction of a credit. Monthly credits are used first, then a prepaid AI wallet, then the AI stops answering, while your team can still reply manually. Human replies do not use credits. See Credits and usage.

Plans and entitlements#

A plan decides what your workspace can do. New agreements are business plans: Starter, Growth, Business and Scale, with their own prices for restaurants and Standard Stores, or a Custom agreement. Each plan includes monthly AI credits, staff accounts and capacity, and you can buy extra credits, staff accounts and capacity. Workspaces on an earlier platform agreement (Sandbox, Inbox, Operations, Scale or Enterprise) keep its terms; there, the AI assistant is an add-on to the platform plan. An entitlement is a single capability a plan grants, such as AI Assist, API keys or boards. Features stack: each plan includes everything in the plan below it. A locked item shows a padlock. Prices and limits are only on Plans and billing.

Roles and permissions#

A role is a preset bundle of fine-grained permissions. There are seven fixed presets: owner, admin, manager, agent, designer, finance and viewer. Owners and admins always have every permission. Roles without the reveal permission see phone numbers and emails partly hidden. Buying or changing your Sela subscription is limited to organization admins and owners. See Team, roles and permissions.

Work items#

A work item is a card on a board that your team tracks to completion, often created from a conversation. Related concepts are tasks and reminders with an owner and a date, appointments on the team calendar, and approvals, which are requests that need someone's decision. These need the Operations plan or higher. See Tasks, work items and approvals.

Automations#

An automation is a deterministic rule: when something happens, if conditions match, do these actions. Automations are separate from the AI assistant and you can combine them. See Automations and proactive messages.

Where to go next#

• Take the Platform tour to see where each concept lives in the dashboard.
• Follow the Quick start to set everything up.
• Look up a single term in the Glossary.