Ellie Chat (Beta)

Ellie Chat lets you ask questions about your ClickTime data in plain language and get back a direct answer, a chart, or a sortable table — no report building required. Ellie, ClickTime's analytics assistant, looks up your data for every question and explains the result. For example, you can ask "Which projects had the most hours logged last month?" or "Show me a bar chart of hours by client for Q1."

Note: Ellie Chat is currently in a closed BETA and isn't yet available to all ClickTime accounts. Within ClickTime, Ellie Chat is opened from the AI Chat button. To ask about joining the beta, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or contact ClickTime Support.

Before You Begin

• Your account must be part of the Ellie Chat beta. Access is enabled by ClickTime and can't be turned on from within your account.
• Once your account is in the beta, an Administrator must turn on "Enable ClickTime to Utilize AI for Intelligent Data Recommendations" in Company > Preferences. This setting is off by default.
• At this time, Ellie Chat is available to Administrators only. Because Administrators can see all of your company’s data in ClickTime, Ellie can answer questions about any of it.
• Ellie Chat is designed for desktop browsers and isn't optimized for mobile devices.

What You Can Ask About

Ellie can answer questions about:

• Hours and time by project, division, client, or over time, including timesheets and approvals
• Labor costs
• Billings, including billable vs. non-billable time, billable ratio, utilization, and realization
• Budgets, including status, burn rate, and at-risk projects
• Clients, including revenue, margins, and billing rates
• Time off and expenses
• Resourcing, capacity, estimates, headcount, and individual people, including allocation questions such as "Who is overallocated in October?"

Every answer comes from your ClickTime data. Ellie doesn't guess at numbers — it works out what you asked, pulls the matching data, and explains the result. Ellie Chat is also read-only, so it can't create, change, approve, or delete anything in ClickTime.

Ellie doesn't answer how-to or settings questions about ClickTime, general-knowledge questions, or forecasts. If you ask for something Ellie can't do, it tells you what it can do instead.

Open Ellie Chat

1. Sign in to ClickTime as an Administrator.
2. On any page under the Company tab, including Company Reports, click the round blue AI Chat button in the bottom-right corner of the page. Ellie Chat opens in a new browser tab, and you're signed in automatically with your ClickTime login.

You can also go directly to ai.clicktime.com in a new tab.

Tip: If the AI Chat button is in your way, drag it anywhere along the left or right edge of the screen, or use your keyboard's arrow keys to move it. ClickTime remembers its position in your browser.

If your ClickTime session ends while you're working, Ellie Chat asks you to sign in again. Click Continue to sign-in, and your work will still be there when you return.

Ask a Question

1. Type your question in the Ask Ellie anything box at the bottom of the page.
2. Press Enter or click the send button.

Tip: When you start a new chat, starter prompts such as "Show me hours by client this quarter" appear above the input box, worded with your company's own terms. Click one to send it right away.

You can type your next question while Ellie is still answering. It's sent as soon as the current answer finishes.

Ask by voice

1. Click the microphone in the bottom-right corner of the chat box, next to the send button, and speak your question.
2. While Ellie is listening, the chat box shows Listening… with a timer, and the microphone turns into a red stop button. Click the stop button when you’re done. Your words appear in the input box so you can edit them.
3. Press Enter or click the send button. Nothing is sent automatically.

Recordings stop after 2 minutes, and your browser needs to allow microphone access. Audio is transcribed through ClickTime's own Azure AI service, and the audio and text are never logged.

Refine your question

You can make your question more specific by adding:

• A team or division, such as "hours for the Engineering team"
• A time range, such as "last month," "Q1," or "trailing 12 months." If you give a date without a year, Ellie uses the most recent one and tells you which year it picked.
• Exclusions, such as "exclude contractors" or "drop the Cost column"
• A chart type, such as bar, line, pie, heatmap, or calendar. If you ask for a chart without naming a type, Ellie picks one that fits the data.

You can also ask about yourself, such as "What did I work on last week?", and ask follow-up questions in the same chat, such as "What about Q2?" or "Make it top 15."

How Ellie Answers

• Answer first. Answers are short and lead with the result, with the key figure in bold. If your question is based on a wrong assumption, Ellie points it out instead of going along with it.
• See what Ellie is doing. While Ellie works, it shows each step it takes using your company's field names, such as "Looking up time entries by Client Name." When the answer is ready, the steps collapse into a single line you can expand. Answers then appear word by word as they're written.
• Assumptions you can change. If a question could mean more than one thing, you get an answer right away along with the assumption behind it, such as which time period it used. An Adjust this answer? card under the answer lets you switch to another option with one click, such as This year instead of This month, or Worked hours only. Click Keep as is or Skip all to leave the answer unchanged.
• Fewer follow-up questions. If one person clearly matches a name, Ellie answers for that person. It only asks when two people are equally likely, and then the options appear as buttons you can click.
• Follow-up suggestions. After an answer, Ellie suggests follow-up questions you can click to send.
• Active records first. If an active and an inactive record share a name, Ellie uses the active one. Inactive records are labeled (inactive), and totals that include inactive people, jobs, or tasks say so. Lists of people default to active employees.
• Search by meaning. You can find jobs, clients, tasks, expense types, and other lists by describing them. For example, "plane tickets" finds Airfare. Abbreviations don't match this way yet, so "vacation days" won't find "PTO." Use the name as it appears in ClickTime for those.
• Your company's terms. Answers use your company's own ClickTime terms (for example, "Matter" instead of "Client"), currency, and date format. Custom field questions, such as "hours where Function is IT," work as expected and aren't case-sensitive.
• Closest result. If a question can't be completed, Ellie shows the closest result and explains what it includes.

Understanding Your Answers

Ellie returns answers in one of three formats:

• Text: A short answer with one key takeaway. Detailed figures may be listed as bullets.
• Charts: Displayed directly in the conversation. Hover over any part of a chart to see its exact values.
• Tables: Click any column header to sort, and click again to reverse the sort. Longer tables scroll, and the header row stays in place as you scroll.

Breakdowns by time period include every period. Periods with no time entries show as 0 instead of being left out. Internal ID columns are hidden unless you ask for them.

Chart types

Ellie can create bar (including stacked and 100% stacked), horizontal bar, line, area, combo (bars plus a line), pie, donut, scatter, heatmap, and calendar charts, and picks the type that best fits your question. For example:

• "Logged hours against the estimate by month" shows hours as bars and the estimate as a line.
• "Hours per person per week" shows a heatmap with people down the side and weeks across.
• "Daily hours over the last 60 days" shows a calendar grid.

Many charts have a toggle in their top-right corner that lets you switch between up to three views of the same data, such as Line and Bar. Not every chart has one. You can also ask Ellie for a specific chart type.

Work with tables and download data

• Show or hide columns: Click the column settings icon in the top-right corner of the table, then select or clear columns under Show columns.
• Download CSV: Click Download CSV below any chart or table to download the data it shows as a CSV file.
  

To keep things clear, answers include related ClickTime details alongside the figures — for example, client names paired with project names, or a person's division shown next to their name.

Tip: Not sure where to start? Ask Ellie what it can do, what charts it can make, or what data it can see.

Teach Ellie How Your Company Works

Ellie can remember lasting facts about your company, so you don't have to repeat them in every chat.

• Tell Ellie something lasting, such as "Remember that our fiscal year starts in April," and it offers to save it to your company memory. Nothing is saved until you click to confirm.
• Ellie may also offer to save something it learned during a conversation, such as what your team means by a particular term. Click Not now to decline.
• Saved memory is shared by all Administrators and applies to every chat. For example, once your fiscal year is saved, "hours this quarter" uses your fiscal quarter.
• If your question says something different, your question takes priority.

To manage company memory, click Memory at the bottom of the sidebar. The Company memory page is shared with every Administrator in your company, and any of them can view, edit, and delete entries. To add an entry yourself, type it in the box and click Add. Your company can save up to 50 entries of up to 300 characters each, and the page shows how many you've used. Click Back to chat to return to your conversation.

Share Feedback on an Answer

Every answer includes thumbs up and thumbs down icons in its bottom-right corner. Click either one, and add an optional comment (up to 1,000 characters) to tell us what worked or what wasn't right. Once a vote is recorded, it can't be changed.

Our team reviews Ellie Chat feedback regularly, and it directly shapes how Ellie improves during the beta, so we appreciate every response you share.

Save an Answer as an Artifact

An artifact is a saved chart or table that you can bring back into any chat. An artifact saves the question behind the answer, not a snapshot. Each time you open it, Ellie re-runs it against your current data, so the numbers stay up to date.

1. Below the answer you want to keep, click Save Artifact.
2. In the Label field, keep the suggested name or enter a new one (up to 100 characters). By default, a chart uses its chart title and a table uses its table title.
3. Click Save. A Saved! confirmation appears.
   

Each person can save up to 50 artifacts.

View, Retrieve, or Delete Saved Artifacts

1. Click My Saved Artifacts in the top-right corner of the page. A panel opens with two tabs, Dashboards and Artifacts. Each tab shows a count, and the footer shows how many you've used (for example, "Dashboards saved 3 of 10").
2. On the Artifacts tab, choose an action below an artifact:
   • Retrieve Artifact: Adds the artifact to your current chat as a new message, or as a card in Canvas Mode.
   • View Prompt: Shows the original question that produced the artifact.
   • Delete Artifact: Permanently removes the artifact. When prompted, confirm the deletion, or click Cancel to keep it.
     

Build a Layout with Canvas Mode

Canvas Mode lets you collect multiple charts and tables on one board, arrange them how you like, and export the result as a PDF or save it as a dashboard. It's a good fit when you want to put together a quick report to share with someone else.

In Canvas Mode, the canvas appears on the left and a chat panel appears on the right. Charts and tables you ask for in the chat panel are added to the canvas as cards instead of appearing in the conversation.

Turn on Canvas Mode

1. Turn on the Canvas Mode toggle in the bottom-left corner of the chat box, or ask Ellie to switch to Canvas Mode.
2. Switching modes, in either direction, starts a new chat. Your previous chat, including any canvas cards, is saved in the chat sidebar so you can reopen it anytime. If you switch straight back before doing anything in the new chat, your previous chat reopens.

Add cards to the canvas

1. In the chat panel on the right, ask a question or click a starter prompt.
2. The chart or table is added to the canvas as a card, and the chat panel confirms what was added.
3. Repeat to add more cards. You can also add a saved artifact from My Saved Artifacts.

A canvas holds up to 10 cards. When it's full, new charts and tables aren't added, and Ellie lets you know.

Tip: Each card shows the question that created it just below its title, so it's easy to tell your cards apart.

Arrange and manage cards

• Move a card: Hover over the top of the card, near its title or the dotted handle in the top-right corner, until your cursor turns into a hand. Then click and drag the card where you want it.
• Resize a card: Click and drag the resize handle in the bottom-right corner of the card. Charts adjust to fit the new size.
• Download CSV: Download the card's data as a CSV file.
• Save Artifact: Save the card as an artifact to use later.
• Remove: Remove the card from the canvas. This doesn't delete a saved artifact.
  

Export the canvas

1. In the top-right corner of the page, click Export Canvas. The top bar also shows how many cards you have and how many pages they'll export as (for example, "1 card · exports as 1 page").
2. In the Export canvas to PDF window, review the page list. Each card gets its own page, and cards are never split across a page break.

3. Click Export PDF.

   

Each page of the PDF includes your company name, your name, and the date it was exported. Cards that failed to load are left out.

Note: Export Canvas is available once at least one card has been added to the canvas.

Save a Canvas as a Dashboard

You can save your canvas as a named dashboard and open it right from ClickTime. Each card re-runs its question when you open the dashboard, so your numbers are always current, not a snapshot.

1. In Canvas Mode, click Save New Dashboard in the top-right corner of the page.
2. In the Save New Dashboard window, enter a name (up to 80 characters) and click Save. Every card on the canvas is saved, except cards that are still loading or failed to load.
3. A confirmation message, such as Saved "Hours by Month" to My Saved Dashboards, appears. While the canvas is open, an Update Saved Dashboard button also appears in the top bar so you can save later changes to the same dashboard.

Your saved dashboards appear in two places:

• In ClickTime, go to Company > Dashboard. Your saved dashboards are listed in the left menu under My Saved Dashboards, below Approval Dashboard, Project Performance, and People Dashboard. Click a dashboard's name to open it. To change the order of the list, click the sort icon next to My Saved Dashboards and choose Newest to oldest, Oldest to newest, A to Z, or Z to A.
• In Ellie Chat, under My Saved Artifacts on the Dashboards tab.

Edit, rename, or delete a dashboard

• When a dashboard is open in ClickTime, Delete, Rename, and Edit appear in the top-right corner.
• Edit opens the dashboard in Canvas Mode in a new tab, with its cards where you left them. Click Update Saved Dashboard to replace the saved version, or Save New Dashboard to keep a copy.
• Rename and delete dashboards from the dashboard itself in ClickTime, or from My Saved Artifacts in Ellie Chat.

Each dashboard keeps its own copy of each card's question, so deleting a chat or a saved artifact doesn't affect your dashboards.

Note: Dashboards are private to the person who saved them. Each person can save up to 10 dashboards, with up to 10 cards each. Sharing, PDF export, and CSV download aren't available for dashboards yet.

Manage Your Chats

Ellie Chat saves your conversations automatically, so there's no Save button. A chat is saved as soon as you send your first message and is updated as you continue. Your past chats are listed in the sidebar on the left, titled by the first question you asked.

• Show or hide the sidebar: Click Hide Sidebar or Chat Sidebar at the top left of the page.
• Start a new chat: Click New Chat at the top left of the page, next to Hide Sidebar.
• Reopen a chat: Click the chat in the sidebar. The full conversation is restored, including charts and tables. A chat from Canvas Mode reopens in Canvas Mode, with your cards where you left them. The step-by-step progress Ellie showed while answering isn't shown again.

• Rename or delete a chat: Right-click the chat in the sidebar, then select Rename or Delete.

  

Note: Chats are kept for 90 days from when they're created.

Common Questions

Why can't I open Ellie Chat?

Ellie Chat is currently in a closed beta and is available to Administrators only. You'll only see the AI Chat button if all of the following are true:

• Your account is part of the beta.
• "Enable ClickTime to Utilize AI for Intelligent Data Recommendations" is turned on in Company > Preferences.
• You're signed in as an Administrator.

If any of these aren't met and you go to ai.clicktime.com directly, you'll be returned to the ClickTime sign-in page. To ask about joining the beta, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or contact ClickTime Support.

What's the difference between Ellie Chat and AI Chat?

They're the same feature. Ellie is the name of ClickTime's analytics assistant, and the button you click in ClickTime to open it is still labeled AI Chat.

Can Ellie change my ClickTime data?

No. Ellie Chat is read-only. It can look up and summarize your data, but it can't create, edit, approve, or delete anything in ClickTime.

How current is the data in Ellie Chat?

Ellie Chat data is synced periodically, so very recent changes in ClickTime may not appear right away. As noted below the input box, AI can make mistakes, so we recommend verifying important information.

What's the difference between a saved chat, an artifact, and a dashboard?

• A saved chat is the full conversation and is kept for 90 days.
• An artifact is a single answer you chose to save so you can bring it back into any chat.
• A dashboard is a saved canvas of up to 10 cards that you can open from ClickTime.

The three are separate, so deleting a chat doesn't delete any artifacts or dashboards you saved from it.

Will a retrieved artifact or dashboard show the same results as when I saved it?

Not always. Artifacts and dashboards re-run their questions against your current data each time you open them, so the numbers can change. Dates depend on how the original question was asked:

• Specific dates stay fixed. For example, "Show me all expenses submitted on Jan 1, 2026" always shows Jan 1, 2026.
• Relative date ranges update. For example, "Show me a cost breakdown from the past 3 months" shows the 3 months before the day you open it.

Why did Ellie say my result is too large?

Ellie can return up to 10,000 rows (or 10,000 groups for grouped results). For larger results, try a shorter time period, add a filter, or group by something broader, such as month instead of day.

Why did Ellie ask me to slow down?

To keep Ellie Chat fast for everyone, there's a limit on how many data requests can be made per minute, and one question can make several requests. If you reach it, Ellie tells you how many seconds to wait before trying again.

Can I use Ellie Chat on my phone?

Ellie Chat isn't designed for mobile devices at this time. For the best experience, use a desktop browser.

What's Coming

We're actively building on Ellie Chat. Upcoming features include:

• Manager access: Managers will be able to use Ellie Chat.
• Sharing dashboards, plus PDF export and CSV download for dashboards.

Features and timing may change as the beta continues. We'll update this article as new features become available.