How to Use Ask Maz in Ninety

Ask Maz is a conversational feature inside Ninety that lets you ask plain-language questions about your business and receive clear, role-relevant answers drawn from your live data. Instead of navigating across Scorecards, Rocks, Issues, and your Vision to piece together a picture of what's happening, you can ask Maz directly and get a consolidated answer in seconds. Ask Maz is available on the Thrive and Legacy plans through the Maz sidebar on the right-hand side of every page in Ninety.

What is Ask Maz?

Ask Maz is a conversational feature in our AI interface that provides on-demand insight into your business data. Type a question in plain language (no special syntax or query language required), and Maz returns an answer drawn from your live Ninety data.

Ask Maz is not a search bar. It understands context, surfaces connections across tools, and highlights risks, trends, and gaps you would otherwise have to find manually. You can ask follow-up questions, drill deeper into any finding, and create action items directly from the conversation, including Issues, To-Dos, and Headlines, without leaving the chat.

What Ask Maz can access

Ask Maz sees the same data you do. The teams and items your role gives you access to in Ninety are the same teams and items Maz can see — nothing more, nothing less. Maz can access:

Current priorities

• Rocks.
• To-Dos.
• Issues.

Company vision and structure

• Vision tool pages.
• Org Chart.

Performance metrics

• Scorecard KPIs.

Meetings and updates

• Past meeting summaries and details.
• Headlines and Cascading Messages.

Teams and people

• Company directory.
• Teams you belong to, with cross-team data available on request.

Knowledge Portal

• Your company's internal documentation, training materials, and learning resources — including default content from Ninety and anything your team has added.

Who can use Ask Maz

Ask Maz is available to all user roles on the Thrive subscription plan. Each role sees only the data their permissions allow:

• Owners and Admins see company-wide data across all teams.
• Managers and Team Members see data for the team(s) they belong to.
• Coaches see data for the companies they work with, scoped to their access.
• Observers see data within the limits of their read-only permissions.

How to use Ask Maz

Ask Maz is available from the Maz sidebar throughout Ninety; you do not need to navigate to a specific page to use it.

1. Open the Maz sidebar. Click the Maz icon on the right-hand side of any page in Ninety. Select an example prompt or click Ask Maz to get started.
2. Type your question. Ask anything about your business in plain English, no special formatting or syntax needed.
3. Review Maz's answer. Maz returns a response scoped to your role and permissions. Answers draw from across your Ninety data, automatically surfacing connections between tools.
4. Continue the conversation. Ask follow-up questions, drill into a specific finding, or pivot to a new topic. Each question builds on the last, so you do not need to re-explain context as the conversation continues.

To start fresh on a different topic, use the New Chat button to begin a new conversation.

Managing your conversation

Once a conversation begins, Maz keeps it open until you actively close or reset it. Three controls in the top-right corner of the sidebar manage this:

• New chat icon: starts a fresh conversation and clears the current one.
• Expand icon: opens the sidebar in a larger view.
• Close (X): closes the sidebar panel.
   

To minimize the sidebar without ending the conversation, click the double arrow icon on the left edge of the panel. The sidebar collapses back to the tab on the right side of the screen.

When an ongoing conversation is minimized, the Ask Maz tab displays a sparkle icon instead of the standard icon. Click it to reopen the sidebar and continue where you left off.

Providing feedback

After receiving a response from Maz, you can click the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon to open a bubble that will send your feedback directly to our product development team.

Write in your message to let us know anything about Maz's response, then click Submit. You can also click the Skip button to send your feedback (thumbs-up or down) without an additional message.

Turning answers into action

When Ask Maz surfaces something worth acting on, you can ask Maz to create one or more Issues, To-Dos, or Headlines directly from the chat. Maz may ask for follow-up details inline, such as the due date or the owner, before creating the item.

For example: after asking "Which of our Rocks do not have defined milestones?", you can follow up with "Create a To-Do for each Rock owner to add milestones by [date]." Maz will create one To-Do per person, assign the correct owner, and use the due date you specified.

Ask Maz currently supports creating:

• Issues (short-term and long-term).
• To-Dos.
• Headlines.

Suggested prompts

We're constantly testing new ways of analyzing our data with Maz's assistance. You'll see some sample prompts directly in Ninety when you hover over the Ask Maz sidebar. These example prompts will change depending on the Ninety tool page you're accessing.

More suggested prompts

Variations of the prompts below have proven valuable for our teams and early testers. We'll continue adding to this list as more users engage with our AI features.

Before a meeting

• "What should I be aware of before the leadership team's next weekly meeting?"
• "What's our leadership team's average meeting rating, and how can we improve it?"
   

Rocks and quarterly priorities

• "Are our Rocks well aligned with our annual goals?"
• "Which of our Rocks do not have defined milestones?"
• "Are we on track to reach our annual revenue goal?"
   

Scorecard and KPIs

• "For the Leadership team's Scorecard, which KPIs are leading vs. lagging indicators?"
• "How well does our leadership team's Scorecard connect with our current Rocks and annual goals?"
   

Org Chart

• “Is our Org Chart aligned to our current Rocks, annual goals, vision, and Scorecard?”
  
   

Asking follow-up questions

Some of the most useful Ask Maz conversations combine a diagnostic question with a follow-up action. For example:

• "Which of our Rocks do not have defined milestones?" → "Create a To-Do for each Rock owner to add milestones by [date]."
• "Is our Org Chart aligned to our current Rocks, annual goals, vision, and Scorecard?" → "Create a long-term Issue regarding [the gap Maz identified]."

Tips for better answers

These tips will help you get the most value from your conversations with Ask Maz.

• Ask in plain language. No special syntax is needed. Ask the way you would ask a colleague.
• Be specific. "Which Scorecard KPIs have been below goal for three or more weeks?" will return a more useful answer than "What's going wrong?"
• Build on the conversation. Maz remembers context within a session. You do not need to re-explain what you are looking at with each follow-up; just ask your next question.
• Wait to start a new chat. Ask Maz does not save conversation history. Only use the New Chat button after you finish the current conversation. Starting a new one permanently clears everything.
• Complete data produces better answers. Maz draws from your live Ninety data. Complete Scorecards, current Rocks with milestones, and up-to-date Issues give it more to work with.