| Plan | ✓ Professional ✓ Advanced ✓ Scale ✓ Enterprise |
Ask Vista is the AI assistant built into Vista Social. Ask it a question, hand it a job or put an agent on a schedule, and it works from the profiles, posts, inbox and reports already in your account. There is nothing to install.
Follow these six steps in your first week. For a full tour of what Ask Vista can do, see Introducing Ask Vista.
Step 1: Open Ask Vista and ask your first question
Press X on your keyboard from any page in Vista Social. Ask Vista opens with a chat box, a few suggested asks and a list of recent chats and agent results that need your attention. You can also open it from the Ask Vista card on your dashboard, from the drawer on any page, or in the Vista Social mobile app.
Type your request, or click the microphone to say it. Use the profile selector in the chat box to choose which profiles Ask Vista looks at. Then keep the conversation going with follow-ups like "make it shorter" or "do the same for Instagram."
Try asking:
- "How did my profiles perform last week? Keep it to 5 bullet points."
- "What should I post about today?"
- "Who in the inbox should I reply to first?"
Tip If you want Ask Vista to be the first thing you see, turn on Open Ask Vista first in Ask Vista settings. |
Step 2: Tell Ask Vista about you
Preferences are a few lines about you and how you like answers: your role, the brands you manage, caption length, whether you want numbers in a table. Ask Vista reads them in every chat, so you never have to repeat yourself. Preferences are personal, so your teammates don't see them.
There are three ways to add them:
- Open Ask Vista settings and type them under Preferences.
- Say "remember that..." in any chat, for example "Remember that I always want last week next to this week."
- Click Import to bring over what ChatGPT or Claude already knows about you.
Learn more in Ask Vista preferences and memory.
Step 3: Teach Ask Vista your brand in Brain
Brain is where your team keeps the facts and rules for each brand or client: products and prices, FAQs, policies, brand voice and when to hand a conversation to a person. Ask Vista, your agents and your inbox replies all use Brain, so everyone works from the same source.
Add documents, web pages or a Zendesk help center, or write guidance directly. Each knowledge base belongs to a profile group, so each client gets their own. Use the Test tab to ask a question and see how Ask Vista answers before customers do.
Good things to add first:
- Your FAQ page or help center
- Your brand voice and words to avoid
- Product, menu or price lists
- Rules for what to escalate, such as refunds, complaints or allergy questions
Learn more in Brain: Getting Started.
Preferences or Brain? Preferences are about you and only you see them. Brain is about a brand or client and the whole team shares it. When the two disagree, Brain wins. |
Step 4: Put your first agent on duty
An agent is a job Ask Vista runs for you on a schedule. Pick one from the library of prebuilt agents, or describe the job in one sentence and Ask Vista sets it up. Agents report back in Ask Vista, by email, or in Slack or Teams, and you can pause or change them at any time.
Agents to start with:
- Start every day knowing what matters (Daily): "Every weekday at 8 AM, summarize my inbox, today's scheduled posts and yesterday's performance."
- Never miss a slow reply (Hourly): "Every hour, flag inbox messages that have waited longer than 2 hours."
- Catch posts that take off (Daily): "Every morning, find posts from the last 7 days that did much better or worse than usual and tell me why."
- Send clients a weekly recap (Weekly): "Every Friday at 3 PM, draft a recap email for each client with wins and what's coming next."
- Keep the calendar full (Weekly): "Every Monday, check the next 7 days for empty days and suggest posts to fill them."
- Close the month in minutes (Monthly): "On the 1st of every month, build last month's report for each client as a PDF."
Agents are available on the Advanced, Scale and Enterprise plans. Learn more in Ask Vista agents.
Step 5: Save a task you repeat as a skill
A skill is a saved recipe for a task you do often, like writing in a client's voice, formatting a weekly report or running a content audit. Instead of typing the same long instructions every time, type / in the chat box and pick the skill.
You don't need to write a skill yourself. After a chat goes well, ask: "Save what we just did as a skill called weekly-recap." Ask Vista drafts the skill for you to review.
Learn more in Ask Vista skills.
Step 6: Connect Slack, Teams and your other tools
Add Ask Vista to Slack or Microsoft Teams so your team can mention it in a channel and get answers without opening Vista Social. Agents can post their results to a channel, too. Connect tools like HubSpot, ClickUp and Notion so Ask Vista can act in them, for example adding a lead from your inbox to HubSpot.
Slack and Microsoft Teams need the Premium integrations add-on.
Attach files and create documents
Ask Vista can work with your own files and turn its answers into files you can share.
- Attach a file: drag a spreadsheet, export or document onto the chat box, or click Add attachment. Then ask about it, for example "Which 10 posts in this export had the most engagement?" Learn more in How to attach files to Ask Vista.
- Create a document: ask Ask Vista to turn an answer into a PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Markdown, CSV or web page, then download it or share it as a link. Learn more in Ask Vista document generation.
Prompts to try in your first week
- Understand performance: "Why did our Instagram reach drop last week? Show me the posts that pulled it down."
- Plan content: "Our goal this quarter is to grow TikTok followers by 20%. Look at the last 90 days and suggest a content plan."
- Write posts: "Turn this blog post into 5 LinkedIn posts in our brand voice."
- Repurpose winners: "Take our top 3 Instagram posts from last month and turn them into TikTok ideas."
- Work the inbox: "Go through unanswered messages since Friday. Answer simple questions from our FAQ and flag leads and complaints."
- Report to a client: "Build a September report for the Acme profile group and share it as a link."
- Use your own data: Attach a spreadsheet, then ask "Schedule the posts in this file for next week."
- Learn the product: "How do I connect a TikTok profile?"
Tips for great results
- Say what good looks like. "Write 3 posts under 150 characters, with one question each" works better than "write some posts."
- Name the profiles or group. "For Ruby's Cafe" or "across all client profiles" keeps answers focused.
- Follow up instead of starting over. Ask Vista remembers the whole chat, so "make the second one funnier" just works.
- Review before you approve. Posts and replies follow your approval workflows, so read what Ask Vista prepared before it goes live.
- Save what works. When you find yourself repeating a request, turn it into a skill or an agent.
Important notes
- Ask Vista is AI, so it can occasionally get things wrong. Check its answers, numbers and drafts before you act on them or publish.
- Ask Vista works with your permissions. It only sees the profiles you can access and only takes actions your role allows.
- Ask Vista uses AI credits from your plan. See How to track your AI usage and credits.
- Admins can turn AI features on or off for each profile group. See How to manage your AI features per profile group.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I open Ask Vista?
A: Press X on your keyboard from any page in Vista Social. You can also use the Ask Vista card on your dashboard, the drawer on any page or the mobile app.
Q: Do I need to set anything up before I use Ask Vista?
A: No. Ask Vista already has access to the profiles, posts, inbox and reports you can see. Adding Preferences and Brain makes the answers more personal and on brand, but it isn't required.
Q: What can I ask Ask Vista?
A: Anything about your social media work: performance questions, content ideas, drafting and scheduling posts, inbox replies, reports, tasks and how to use Vista Social. You can also ask it to do the work, not just answer.
Q: Can Ask Vista take actions in my account?
A: Yes. Depending on your role, it can create and schedule posts, reply to and tag inbox messages, create tasks, build reports and set up agents. Posts and replies follow your approval workflows.
Q: Can I talk to Ask Vista instead of typing?
A: Yes. Click the microphone in the chat box and say your request.
Q: What is the difference between Preferences and Brain?
A: Preferences are personal notes about you and how you like answers, and only you see them. Brain holds the facts and rules for a brand or client, and your whole team shares it.
Q: What is the difference between a skill and an agent?
A: A skill is a saved recipe you run yourself by typing / in a chat. An agent runs a job on its own on a schedule and reports back.
Q: What does the blue dot next to a chat mean?
A: The chat has a new reply or update you haven't seen yet, for example a task Ask Vista finished while you were on another page.
Q: Which plans include Ask Vista?
A: Ask Vista is available on the Professional, Advanced, Scale and Enterprise plans. Agents are available on Advanced, Scale and Enterprise. Slack and Microsoft Teams need the Premium integrations add-on.
Need help?
Reach out to our support team, and we are happy to help.
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