Ask Cactus from Docs and What's New
Ask Cactus with the current page or release as context, then reopen, share, or save the conversation.
Ask Cactus
From Docs
On a Docs page, select a suggested question or enter your own in Search or ask a question.
Select Send.
The open page supplies context for your question. In the Cactus app, owners also send the page, route details, and any selected text as context; the page title can appear in the input as a chip.
Ask about a passage
As a product owner in the Cactus app, select text in the Docs article.
Enter your question in the chat, then select Send.
The selected words go with your question. Cactus expands partial words to whole words, and your selection must stay within one section and contain text. A selection across sections or one containing only whitespace doesn't open a question.
The input shows Chat with selected text while your selection is attached. Press Escape, click outside the article and Cactus's controls, or move to another page to clear the selection and its attached question.
From What's New
With a release open in What's New, enter your question in Search or ask a question and select Send. The open release supplies context; the What's New list supplies context when you ask from the list.
Use chat history and controls
On Docs pages, the conversation shares the reading column with the page. When you close the chat, the article returns; leaving Docs closes the chat but keeps its conversation.
Reopen a conversation
In the open chat, select History.
Select a conversation to reopen it.
The list shows up to six earlier conversations, newest first. If there are none, it says No earlier conversations yet. Your personal conversations are available to you; anyone on the product team can open its setup conversation.
A valid conversation link from Docs or What's New opens that thread in chat; an invalid conversation reference is ignored.
Start a new chat
In the open chat, select New chat. It starts an empty conversation, clears typed text and attached pictures, and resets the unread count. On Docs, the article returns in place of the empty conversation.
Close the chat
Select Close, or press Escape while focus is in the chat. The conversation stays in history; on Docs, the article returns.
Other controls
An open chat offers New chat, History, Close, and actions supplied by the host. In the Cactus app, these include Share and Save as a page. If the bar is too narrow, host actions move into the History list.
Read page answers in context
In the Cactus app, Cactus answers in prose unless you ask it to save an answer as a page. When Cactus writes a Help page as an answer, the reply appears first and the page follows on its own paper. The page appears this way only when it has both a title and a body.
When an answer points to a published page, Docs and the Help Center can show the full page inline, with Open the page under its title.
If the page can't be read, Cactus shows a page card instead. In Messenger, the card includes the answering section and opens the Help Center page in a new tab.
In the Cactus app's Docs, a source link in an answer opens the matching Docs page. Messenger marks answers that wrote a Help page as page answers in conversation history.
Limits and save results
| What it is | Value | Who it holds for | When it holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| History entries shown | Up to six, newest first | Anyone using the chat | When the History list opens |
| Source-page titles shown under an answer | Up to three | Anyone reading an answer with sources | After the answer is finished |
| Saved page timing | The catalogue message says it appears in a few minutes | Teammates saving an answer | After the save is queued |
| Save-page eligibility | Product owner | Product owners | When saving a conversation as a page |
| Save-page content | The conversation’s latest answer | Teammates saving an answer | When a page is requested from a conversation |
| Save-page audience choices | Only you, Your team, or Everyone | Signed-in teammates | When choosing who the page is for |
| No answer to save | Ask something first | Teammates | When the conversation has no page-shaped content |
| Team has no plan | Not saved; Cactus is paused until the team picks a plan in Settings, under Plan | Teams without a plan | When saving is paused for lack of a plan |
| Save request fails | Couldn't save. Try again | Teammates | When the save request fails |
| Save outcome message | Shown for four seconds before the control returns to a button | Signed-in teammates | After a queued, no-answer, or paused result |
Save a page
Cactus uses the conversation’s latest answer. Only product owners can save a page, and the conversation must belong to the product you’re working in.
In the conversation menu, select Save as a page.
Choose Only you, Your team, or Everyone.
Cactus queues the request for page creation. The page isn’t published immediately. Generate and manage help pages explains how pages are written and published.
Choosing Everyone doesn’t override the page writer’s decision about whether a page belongs in the Help Center. If the conversation searched team-only tools, Cactus still queues the request, but doesn’t keep that answer as evidence for the page. The page is based on the code and the question instead.
A reply given while the team had no plan isn’t used as the text for a saved page.