Meet George: your help desk in the dashboard and the mobile app

1:18

Meet George, Your AI Assistant (1:18 video). Open on its own page

Where to find George

• The Ask George button — George's avatar and the words Ask George in the top bar of every dashboard page, next to the notification bell (just his avatar on a phone). Click it to slide open a chat panel without leaving what you're doing; click it again to close the panel. The Expand button in the panel header grows the panel to fill the window (on a computer); click Collapse or press Esc to shrink it back. Your conversation list is on the George AI page in the sidebar. There is no floating chat bubble in the corner of the dashboard; George lives in the top bar.
• George AI in the sidebar — the full-page chat, with a conversation list on the left and more room for tables and cards.

On the full page, the left sidebar holds your conversations. Click New Chat to start a fresh thread, click any thread to switch back to it (your place is kept), and hover a thread and click the pencil icon to rename it. In the popup panel, a circular-arrow button in the header starts a new conversation once the current one has messages. The popup panel, George on a phone-sized screen and the phone app have a menu button at the top left that lists your conversations; a dot on it means support replied, George finished, or a card is waiting in another chat. George keeps working in one chat while you use another, and the list shows each as Working, Needs your OK or New reply. In the dashboard, the Search chats box at the top of the list finds a conversation by a word or two from its title (titles only, so rename a thread to something you will remember). The phone app's list has no search box.

Talk to George instead of typing

Tap the microphone next to the paperclip in the George chat on the web and talk. When you pause for about a second and a half, your words appear as your message and George answers out loud as well as on screen; then the microphone opens again. While you talk, Done sends right away; while George talks, Interrupt stops him. Tap the microphone again or close the panel to stop. Your browser asks for microphone permission the first time. Voice is web only (not the phone app), English only, and take-turns: you can't talk over him.

What George can help with

George reads your real company data, so his answers are current — not generic. He can:

• Look up customers — contact info, service locations, their jobs, their invoices, and when their next visit is scheduled.
• Check schedules and routes — today's overview, the weekly schedule, any specific date, live route status, and each technician's workload.
• Check billing — invoice stats like outstanding and overdue totals, a customer's invoice history, and completed work orders that haven't been invoiced yet.
• Read anything else the app shows you — a technician's day against their workday, payroll, tips, parts, leads, analytics and settings. George reads the same data the dashboard pages show, with your role's permissions, so he never sees more than you can. Two things are held back from any role without the permission for them, even where a page lists them alongside other details: customer phone numbers and emails (View customer contact info (phone, email)), and prices, visit rates, costs and other money amounts (View invoices or View profitability). George says when something is hidden for your role instead of claiming it isn't on file.
• Do it instead of explaining it — ask "How do I skip the Garcia stop Friday?" or "Move the Garcias to Mike's route" and he prepares the change for your approval. For things he can't change, he gives the exact steps with a link to the right page, and "take me to payroll" opens a page for you — see page awareness, opening pages, charts and tables.
• Know the page you're on — on a customer, job, or invoice page, or on Payroll or Analytics, "this customer" / "this period" just works.
• Prepare changes for your approval — add customers, locations, jobs, employees and routes, create your recurring services and put imported pools on them, edit customers, skip or move visits, archive, and more, always behind an approval card. You approve by clicking Approve or by replying "yes" / "go ahead" in the chat. He never changes data on his own; every company has this, and the George Permissions page lets you set any action to Always, Ask or Never. See George approvals and permissions.
• Connect you with a human — see the escalation section below.

Answers arrive as more than plain text: entity cards you can click to open the customer, job, or route; action buttons that jump to the right page; stat tiles for quick numbers; charts when you ask about trends or comparisons ("compare revenue and profit by route"); and tables for lists.

Stop George or change your mind mid-reply

While George is answering, the send button becomes a square Stop button (on the phone, the mic becomes Stop George). Stopping keeps what he wrote, followed by You stopped this reply. and Continue. You can also just send a new message mid-reply: he stops and answers that instead. Changes he was preparing for approval are dropped (nothing had run); anything that already ran stays done. There is no pause.

Show George photos, PDFs, and files

To show George a screenshot, photo, or PDF on the web, attach it and ask about it: the paperclip (Attach a file), drag them onto the chat, or paste a screenshot. George sees the image or PDF itself, so you can ask "what's wrong in this screenshot?" or "what does this invoice say?". Up to 4 per message (.png, .jpg, .webp, .gif, .heic, PDFs up to 20 MB); they stay in the conversation. Attaching only lets George read the file; it is not saved to a customer, job, or invoice. The one exception is a quote: ask George to quote a customer with photos attached and he can put those photos on the draft quote (it says so on the approval card). Videos (.mp4, .mov, or .webm up to 200 MB, such as a screen recording of a problem) attach the same way and show as a chip with an upload percentage, but George can't watch videos: he only sees the file name. If you ask for a human, the Pool Founder support team gets a link to the video and can watch it, so a screen recording is a good way to show support a bug. Word documents, audio, and zip files are not supported. In the technician app, the camera button next to the Ask George box attaches photos (not PDFs or videos). Spreadsheets are imported instead — see George approvals and permissions.

George in the technician app

Owners and admins get George on the phone too, tuned for the field. Technicians do not see George in the app at all — no button, no sheet. There is no George tab — instead a floating Ask George button (George's avatar and the words "Ask George") sits in the bottom-right corner of the Today tab, the My Stops tab, a job's detail screen, and an unplanned stop's detail screen. On the Complete Job and complete-stop screens it is a small round avatar button in the header instead, next to the screen title.

Tapping it opens George as a sheet over the screen. At the top: George's name with the note AI assistant, a New conversation button (the add-comment icon) to start fresh, and Close. Under the header, a chip shows what George already knows about — About today's route when opened from the Today or My Stops tab, About this stop from a job, unplanned stop, or completion screen — so "what does this pool need?" and "what's next on my route?" just work. A few tappable suggested questions appear until the first message.

• Ask by voice — tap the mic button, speak, then tap Done (or Cancel). The transcript lands in the text box so the tech can read and fix it, then tap the send arrow. Nothing is sent until they do.
• Or type — the "Ask George" text box works like any chat; the mic button turns into a send arrow once there is text.
• Answers are plain text — George answers from the company's live data (customer, location notes, schedule, route progress, chemistry history) and from this help center. There are no clickable cards, no charts or tables, and no dashboard links on the phone; if something can only be done on the web, George says so.
• Open a screen for you — ask "open my route map", "take me to today's route", or "show me this customer's details" and George opens that screen: a short "Opening the screen" / "Opened the screen" status appears in the chat, the sheet closes, and the app moves there. He only opens screens from the app's own list (Today, My Stops, Team, Map, Comms, Account, a job's or customer's detail, the notifications inbox, your scorecard, Report an Issue, and so on) and only for your own route or stop — never another technician's.
• Makes changes with your approval — ask George on the phone to add, move, skip, or edit something and he prepares it on a "George wants to:" card right in the conversation, the same card as the web: the steps, a countdown, Approve and Decline, and Always allow… when the action can skip the card. Nothing changes until you tap Approve (or reply "yes"). The card then shows Working…, then Done with a ✓ or ✗ per step, and an Undo button for 15 minutes when the change can be undone. Offline the buttons dim. See George approvals and permissions. He can open a screen for you (your route map, a customer), but he does not highlight buttons on the phone.
• Show George a photo — tap the camera button to the left of the text box, then Take Photo or Choose from Library (up to 4). Thumbnails appear above the box while they upload; the × removes one. Photos only — no PDFs on the phone — and the photo is for George to read, not saved to the job. Ask him to quote the work in it and he can put the photo on the draft quote.
• Needs a connection — offline, the Ask George button dims and shows "George needs a connection"; inside the sheet a banner reads "George needs a connection. Your stops still work offline." Everything else in the app keeps working offline as usual.
• Asking for a human works on the phone too: the sheet's subtitle changes to "Connecting you to support…" and then "Support joined. George is paused", the message box reads "Message support", and the support team's replies appear in the same conversation. To ask George something else, tap the new conversation button at the top of the sheet. After 24 hours with no messages the support chat ends: the subtitle reads "Support chat ended" and a Start a new chat button replaces the message box.

What George can look up on the phone follows the technician's own role permissions, exactly as in the dashboard — a technician whose role hides customer contact info will not get it from George either. Details in roles and permissions.

Asking for a human

If you want a person instead of the AI, just tell George — "I'd like to speak to a human" works. He hands the conversation to the Pool Founder support team, and their replies appear right in the same chat, labeled with the teammate's name. Support sees the conversation and a link to any video you attached in it (on the web: the paperclip, then pick a screen recording), and anything you attach after a human joins goes straight to them. You'll see the status as it progresses:

• Connecting... — your request is on its way to the team.
• Seen — a support team member has seen your message and will respond shortly.
• Human joined — a human support agent is now in the conversation.

Once a human joins, George stops answering in that conversation: everything you type there, including questions meant for George, goes to the support team, and the message box reads "Message support...". To ask George something else, click Ask George in a new chat in the green banner above the message box (or start a new conversation). The support conversation stays in your conversation list, and support's replies keep arriving there.

You'll know when support replies, even if you closed the chat. Within a minute of a reply you haven't opened you get a Pool Founder support replied notification with the start of their message: in the notification bell, as a push on your phone if you use the Pool Founder app, and by email if the push can't reach you (your notification settings decide the email). Tap or click it to open that chat. In the dashboard a toast pops up with an Open chat button, George AI in the sidebar shows a count of chats with new replies, the Ask George button in the top bar shows the same count, and in your conversation list the chat gets a dot and a Support replied tag. On the phone, the George button reads Support replied and opens that chat. Opening the chat clears all of these. More replies before you open it update the same notification instead of sending another.

A support chat ends after 24 hours with no messages from you or the support team. The conversation stays readable, but the message box is replaced by This support chat has ended. and a Start a new chat button; in the conversation list it is marked Ended. Start a new chat to ask George, or ask him for a human again to reach support. If the support team answers an ended chat later, it opens back up with their message in it.

George and the help center

George is backed by this help center, so how-to answers come with real steps and links — not guesses. He's fastest for questions about your data — a customer's balance, today's routes — and for "where do I do X?" questions. If you'd rather browse yourself, start with the quick start guide and the articles linked below.

Frequently asked questions

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