How Ask Yes Chef works

Ask Yes Chef is the app as a conversation. You ask in your own words; it looks the answer up in your restaurant’s records and tells you in a sentence or two. It is on the web, beside every page, and on the iPhone, as chat mode.

It looks things up; it does not remember them

Every figure, name and time in an answer is read from your records at the moment you ask. It does not answer from memory or estimate. If it cannot look something up, it says it cannot see that and points you at the screen where you can.

It has your permissions

What it may look up, and what it may set up, is decided by your level and your own permission switches at the location you are asking about. An Employee can ask about their own shifts, hours, holiday, checks and training. A Supervisor running the shift can also ask who is clocked in and what is overdue. Pay is included only for people who may see pay. There is nothing to configure: change someone’s permissions and what the chat does for them changes with it.

An answer is a sentence and a card

Under the sentence is a card for each thing it looked up: shifts, a check, a person, figures, sometimes a chart. The card is the record itself. Tap it to open the screen it came from. Under that are a few follow-on questions you can tap.

Nothing changes until you press

When you ask for a change, it sets it up on a card with one button, such as Add shift or Request. You read the card and press. Most cards take one tap. A delete, and a card with several rows, take two: the button changes to Tap again to delete or Tap again to do all, and the second tap does it. The change is made by you, with your permissions, and the app’s usual rules still apply: a shift that clashes is still refused.

One location at a time

A conversation is about the location named at the top of the chat. Change the location and you are in a different conversation.

A visit, and earlier ones

The conversation stays as you left it while you move around the app. After half an hour away it starts fresh. Earlier questions are kept for 90 days and can be scrolled back to.

The tasks in this section

• Open Ask Yes Chef on the web or the phone.
• Ask a question: what it can look up, with examples.
• Ask it to do something, and the confirm step.
• Tell it several things at once, for whoever is running the shift.
• Speak a question on the phone.
• See earlier conversations.
• When Ask Yes Chef gets it wrong.
• What happens to what you ask.