Ida AI assistant

For staff

Staff get the full assistant, which can draw on your records and the documents you have uploaded to help answer day-to-day questions.

Ida's answers follow the same role boundaries as the rest of Ida OS: admins can ask about anything, including revenue, tuition, and payments; front desk staff can look up what their own screens show — families, dancers and contacts, one family's payments and balance, each family's tuition amount, the schedule with its bookings and requests, class rosters and attendance, and the studio's documents, shop orders, and messages — never the studio's revenue, tuition plans, or settings; and an instructor asking about a family gets the roster, schedule, and attendance side of the answer — never tuition amounts, billing status, or the studio's money.

Ida also knows how your studio is configured, so you don't have to open Settings to check something. Ask what anything is set to — 'What do we charge for a 30-minute private lesson?', 'Which day does tuition bill?', 'What seasons do we have?' — and the answer comes straight from your settings and places, the same values your Settings pages show: studio details, booking prices and approval rules, billing and fees, branding, your locations and rooms, levels, and seasons — and your team: who's on it, each person's role, and whether they've joined, have an invite out, or are inactive. Settings stay owner-only here too: owners can ask about all of it, while front desk and instructors can ask about what their own calendar and rosters already show — the week start, timezone, event types, and the levels, locations, and rooms in use.

Class rosters and attendance answer just as exactly, for every staff role. Ask who's in a class on a date — 'Who's in Ballet 2 on Thursday?', 'Who came to Jazz last week?', 'Is Mia on the roster for Saturday?' — and Ida reads the class panel's own list for that date: the weekly dancers, that date's drop-ins and trials, each dancer's attendance mark, and the seats filled and left, noting a dancer whose family has been archived but who still holds the seat. Leave the date out and Ida takes the class's next one, and on a day the studio is closed for a blackout, Ida says so instead of showing a roster. Attendance questions read the Attendance page's own report — every marked dancer's present, late, excused, and absent counts over the same date ranges the page offers, classes or practices, 'Who misses the most classes?' included — and asking about one dancer brings their complete history, newest first, exactly as their attendance record shows it.

The schedule answers with the calendar's own detail, too. Ask what's coming up, name a day or a week — 'What's on today?', 'What does the week of October 6 look like?' — or search for a class by name, and every class, practice, private lesson, rental, workshop, and closure comes back as its calendar panel shows it: the date and time in your studio's time zone, its dance level, location and room, teachers, capacity and seats filled, whether it takes trial bookings, and its description. Prices stay where the calendar keeps them: the studio owner can ask what a class, booking, or trial costs families, while front desk and instructors get the schedule without prices — exactly as on their own calendar.

Your Home screen answers through Ida as well. Ask 'What needs me today?', 'What's on this week?', ask for a rundown of the day, or ask about any number Home shows, and Ida reads the same Home you see — the requests and tasks waiting on you, today's and the coming days' events, and your student and family counts — with the very numbers on the screen, on your studio's own clock, so Ida's morning rundown and a glance at Home always agree. Every staff role gets its own Home in the answer, money figures included only where your Home shows them, and it works the same in the web panel and the app's Ask Ida.

On the web, Ida sits at the top of your sidebar: click the Ida AI button and the chat opens in a panel docked beside your menu, sliding the page over rather than covering it, so you can keep working with the conversation alongside. Click the button again to put it away.

Ask Ida to make changes

Admins can do more than ask questions. Tell Ida to add a family — 'Add a family named Marlowe with parent Sam and student Mia, beginner' — or to rename a household or update its notes, and Ida prepares the change for you. Nothing is ever saved on Ida's say-so alone: the chat shows exactly what is about to be saved — the family name, contacts, dancers — with Approve and Deny buttons, and only your Approve saves it. Deny it and nothing changes. When you open a fresh chat, Ida lists what it can look up and what it can change for your role, with the same reminder that you confirm before anything is saved.

Your class schedule is in reach the same way. Ask Ida to add a class — 'Add a Beginner Jazz class Mondays 4 to 5pm until December 19' — and it sets up everything a class carries: the name, its dance level, meeting days and time, location and room, capacity, prices, whether it takes trial bookings, instructors, and notes. A weekly class can meet more than one day — say 'Mondays and Wednesdays' and Ida sets up one series that meets both days. Ask it to change any of those on an existing class — including adding or dropping a meeting day — or to remove a class from the calendar. A class can be one date or repeat weekly — a weekly class always needs an end date, and Ida asks for one rather than guessing — while other event types and fancier repeats stay with the calendar's own editor. When a class repeats, Ida also asks whether you mean just that one date or the series from that date forward, and the confirmation spells out the class, its date and time, and how far the change reaches before you press Approve. The moment you approve, the calendar refreshes on its own and families can see the new class in their portal. The calendar's usual protections hold in chat too: a class or date with an active booking cannot be removed until the booking is cancelled, capacity cannot drop below the seats already booked, and dates that fall on a blackout are simply skipped.

A family added through Ida starts on Manual billing, exactly like one you create by hand — nothing is billed automatically until the family sets up autopay themselves. Making changes follows your role: admins get all of it, front desk and instructors make the changes their own screens allow through change cards ('Ida at the front desk' and 'Ida for instructors' below), and families make their own booking and class changes the same way ('For families' below) — never anyone else's. The iPhone app works the same way, with the same Approve and Deny buttons in the chat.

Change anything about your studio

Studio owners can ask Ida for bigger changes too — the same ones Ida makes during setup. 'Add a Saturday 10am Hip Hop class for ages 8–10', 'Add a Ballet 3 level with its own tuition', 'Start a free trial offer', 'Bring in the families from this spreadsheet', 'Invite the families who haven't joined'. Ida asks what it needs (the class size, the last day of the season — it never guesses a date or a price), shows a preview where it helps (your week with the new class, the bills real families would get, the invite email), and then a change card listing everything it will do.

On the card you can leave any line out, tap Change something to send Ida a note, or apply. The page behind the chat refreshes the moment it lands, and Undo on the card reverts it — each line that was taken back is struck through and marked Undone, so the card never reads as if the change still stands, while anything that can't be reverted (an email already sent, a Stripe change already made) stays as it was and says so. A card whose change is already gone — another card's Undo took it back, say — tells you so plainly, 'Nothing to undo', instead of undoing something else. And when a change touches a class's name, spots, or prices, the card states what the dates it touches hold right now — date by date when a series differs, like 'Spots now: 10 on Oct 6, 12 from Oct 13' — so you can see exactly what you are changing before you apply. Because your studio is live, Ida tells you who a money change affects and previews their bills first, and a price on a plan families are already billed on is changed by adding a new plan, not by editing it in place.

Your books and your team are in reach too. Ask Ida to record a payment — a bill the family pays, or cash or an e-transfer you already collected — to fix a hand-recorded payment or its notes, to delete one recorded in error, to mark an open bill paid, to void one, or to take someone off the team, and each arrives as the same change card. Billing a fee your studio hasn't named yet is one ask, not two: say 'add a $45 costume fee for everyone in Junior Ballet' and a single card adds Costume fee to your charge types and bills every family on it, applied together with one approval — leave the new type off the card and the bills that need it wait too. If that very type turns out to already be on your list when you apply — someone added Costume fee in Settings in the meantime — the bills simply go on the one on file and their line says so, as long as it is shown and taxed the same; otherwise they wait, so a bill never lands on a type you didn't mean. And a name is never guessed: one that could mean more than one of your charge types, or that only comes close to one — 'Costume' when your list says 'Costume fee' — has Ida ask which you mean (Did you mean 'Costume fee'?) before anything is billed, added, or renamed; and when two visible types carry the exact same name, Ida asks you to rename or hide all but one under Settings → Charge types first, so a bill never lands on the wrong twin. Undo takes the bills back and the type with them, keeping the type only when payments outside the card have started using it (then it stays, yours to tidy under Settings → Payments). A charge type you had hidden works the same way: a new bill on its exact name shows the type again on a line of its own, just as Create a payment would — unless a visible name comes close to it, when Ida asks which you meant instead of showing it again on its own — and Undo hides it again unless newer payments outside the card are using it. A tuition payment that would leave a family owing twice for a month is refused right on the card, before you can apply it — recording tuition as paid while that month's bill is still open, or billing a month Ida has already billed — with the same pointer the Payments page gives: mark the month's open bill paid instead. Recording, fixing, and deleting can be undone from the card, and so can removing a team member — Undo puts them back, class assignments included. Marking a bill paid and voiding cannot be undone, so Ida only proposes them after you have said so plainly in your own words, and the card quotes your words back before you apply. Voiding an unpaid tuition bill through Ida carries the same choice as Payments — Bill again or Waive this month, both spelled out on the card — and the reply says what happened to the month: billed again at the current price, set up on autopay again, or waived for good. Every money card carries the same promise, too: nothing is ever charged to a card through Ida — refunds and charging a family's saved card stay yours, from Payments. A family's own autopay is theirs alone, and someone who still holds a staff login keeps their place on the team until you remove that login yourself. Ida can also connect a team member's login to their own household — the same link you manage under Team → Manage → Family profile — or take that link off: the card names the family and the dancers that login will book and pay for, the family has to already exist (and the person already have a staff login), and Undo puts the link back exactly as it was.

Your tuition plans are Ida's to manage the same way: ask it to create a plan, change one, close or reopen one, move dancers onto a different plan or take named dancers off one, delete a plan nobody is billed on, or adjust the tuition rules and the day of the month families can drop a class until, and the change card names each dancer affected and previews the bills that change before you apply — unpaid bills for months still being taught are re-priced, while paid bills, bills money is already moving on (a card payment in progress, an open invoice or a credit keeps its price until it settles; a part-paid bill re-prices to the new price minus what was paid), bills for months whose classes are already over, and tuition charges you entered by hand are never touched — refusing, in plain words, any change the Plans page itself would refuse. And at a studio that hasn't set up tuition billing yet, Ida says so and offers to set it up right there — your plans then bill from the next charge date — unless your studio has tuition history from before, when it points you to the Ida team instead so nothing is billed twice.

Your families answer to chat with the same care the Families page takes. Ask Ida to add a household and the card carries all of it — contacts, address, dancers with their levels and plans, even the first bills a mid-period start creates — saved together or not at all. Undo takes it back out, those opening bills included, for the first 15 minutes after the family is added — and only while the household is still exactly as the card left it: once anyone has edited it, a parent has a login or an invite on the way, or the family has registered, joined a class, been marked present, booked, picked up a credit, or paid anything beyond those untouched opening bills, Undo says exactly what it found and leaves the family in place — from there, archive or delete it from the Families page like any other household. Ida can also update a family's details or notes, add or edit a contact or dancer, put a dancer into a weekly class, archive a dancer or bring one back — the card says which unpaid bills re-price — set a family's billing day or trial status, answer a family's class request, and handle the registration fee for one family: a different amount, a waive, a payment link, or recording it paid by hand. A link is only emailed when you say so — otherwise Ida hands it to you to share yourself — and when two households share a name, Ida lists each with its number and asks which you mean rather than guessing — answer with the number, like 'Smith #2', and that exact family is picked. The same care holds everywhere Ida acts on a family by name — recording a payment, approving or cancelling a booking, inviting families, checking a shop order — a name that fits two households is never guessed, and an invite to one goes out to nobody until you say which family you mean. Because Ida reads the family's record first — the same contacts, dancers, and billing the Families page shows — you can also simply ask about a household. Pausing a family's billing or resuming it works from chat too, under the same rules as the Billing tab — a resume's first month bills the way a new family's first month does, and the card says so. And Undo on a resume genuinely puts the money back: the family returns to Paused, the tuition bills the resume opened are taken back, a bill it re-priced returns to its earlier amount, and a bill it had closed reopens along with its late fees — while a bill the family paid in the meantime is never touched (Ida points out a refund may be due), and any bill left as it stands is named with the reason, so you always know exactly what the family owes. Portal logins answer to chat now too, each on its own card: ask for a contact's login link — 'make a login link for Sarah' — and the link shows once on the card with a QR code, ready to copy, share on WhatsApp, or let the parent scan on the spot; ask Ida to reset a contact's password and it picks a fresh, easy-to-read one — the same generator as the family's record — and shows it once with their login email and your studio's sign-in address. Either one creates the contact's login if they don't have one yet, a contact needs an email on file first (it's their username), and resetting a password signs that login out of its other devices, exactly as from Manage family. Nothing is ever emailed — sharing stays with you — and the link or password truly shows once: hide the card or reload and it's gone, so ask for a new one if you need it again. The rest stays yours alone: Ida never changes the email a parent signs in with, never removes a login or a contact who signs in, and never deletes a family that has a login. And deleting a family or dancer — like marking a fee paid — cannot be undone, so Ida only proposes it after you have said so plainly, quotes your words on the card, and archives instead when there is history to keep. Merging one household's duplicate rows into one works the same way: ask in your own words — 'the Perez family is registered twice, combine them' — and the merge arrives with the Families page's own preview and refusals, quoting you, since a merge can't be undone. A family that shouldn't be billed at all — a staff family you comp, say — is one plain request too: Ida sets a $0 family rate and a $0 registration fee together on a single card, so nothing bills and nothing reads as owed.

The registration form and your booking forms are in reach too. Ask Ida to add or reword a question, show, hide, or reorder fields, add a policy or waiver — including one shown only for certain answers, levels, plans, or trial packages — offer a shop add-on at registration, set the rules that place dancers on programs from their answers, adjust a booking form's contact fields, build a trial offer or a class package, or add another booking form. Ida reads the form as it stands before proposing, the card shows exactly what changes — a reworded question shows the text it replaces, and a policy keeps the wording families have signed: asking Ida to make one required or optional never touches its text, and a rewrite always shows the saved wording it replaces before you apply — and Undo puts a deleted question, policy, or trial offer back exactly where it was.

Competitions run through chat with the same rules as the Competitions page. Ask Ida to set up or update an event, enter a dancer with their fees, add a fee to an entry, keep a fee's notes current, record that a family paid you back — in full or in part — or take a fee or an entry off, and it can keep the catalogs behind your money tidy too: your competition fee types and the named one-off charges you bill, added, edited, reordered, hidden, or deleted from chat. The card names the dancer and the family, says who is billed how much, and warns when a receipt email will go out; undoing an entry or a fee takes its bills back out only while nothing has touched them. Removing an entry or a fee, deleting an event, and marking a fee paid cannot be undone, so Ida asks you to say so plainly and quotes your words on the card — and a fee a family has paid, even partly, stays on the books, exactly as the page itself insists. You can also just ask: which dancers are entered where, and what each family has paid back or still owes.

Your library and your words reach through chat now, too. Documents: ask what's in the library or who has accepted a policy, have Ida write or rewrite a document, add a file from the chat, change who sees something, move it, tidy the folders, or delete what's outdated. The shop: edit products and their options, adjust stock with the reason recorded, and mark orders ready or picked up — never charging, refunding, or cancelling a subscription. Announcements: draft a letter, send or schedule it, test it on yourself first, retry failed addresses, and keep your saved email groups current. And Messages: have Ida summarize a conversation, post to a family's thread or a group chat, or set up and run a group chat. Drafts and lookups cost nothing, but nothing reaches families on Ida's say-so alone: a send or a post only happens after you've named who gets it in your own words — the card quotes you, shows the audience and its count, and checks that count again as you apply.

How your studio looks and reads is chat's to change as well. Ask Ida to switch your color scheme, change the logo — a photo attached in chat works — show or hide the studio name beside it, redo the login screen, or reword what families read about Competitions, autopay, and your cancellation policy. Ida can recolor the calendar by event type or dance level, rename or hide the built-in event types, set the week start and how long after a class starts a family can still join, change your booking prices and approval rules, flip studio switches like cross-level enrollment or Birthdays on Home, tune your admin email and push alerts, set your GST/HST number, and rearrange your staff sidebar — sections renamed, hidden, moved, or put back. Your places answer too: hide, reorder, bring back, or delete a location, room, or level, rename a room, or delete a season — a delete is refused, with the reason, while anything still uses it, and Undo brings back what it took.

When your studio needs attention — dancers with no tuition plan, classes with no teacher, families who never joined — a fresh Ida chat suggests it under 'Worth a look'. Tap one to ask. Changes like these are for studio owners only — asked for by anyone else, Ida says to bring them to the owner.

These studio-wide change cards are being turned on studio by studio. Until your studio has them, Ida still handles families and classes as described above — for everything else it answers your question and points you to the exact page where the change is made.

Ida at the front desk

Front desk staff have an Ida of their own, on the web and in the iPhone app alike. It answers from what the desk's screens already show: families, dancers, and contacts; one family's charges, payments, and balance; each family's tuition — the same amount the Families page shows; the schedule with its bookings and requests; class rosters and attendance; who has and hasn't registered for the season; and the studio's documents, shop orders, and messages. 'What's on the schedule today?', 'What does the Marlowe family owe?', 'What's the Marlowe family's tuition?', 'Which shop orders are waiting to be picked up?' — all one message away. The studio's books stay closed here as everywhere: revenue, tuition plans and prices, and studio settings are for owners, and Ida says so rather than guessing.

At studios where Ida's change cards are on, front desk can make changes too — exactly the ones their role already makes on the pages, arriving as the same card they apply and can undo: classes and events on the calendar, including removing one; attendance and class rosters; declining or cancelling booking and practice requests, and booking a trial; adding and editing families, dancers, and contacts; a contact's portal login link or a new password, shown once on the card and never emailed; recording and fixing payments and marking a bill paid; a family's billing day, trial status, and registration fee; documents and folders; shop products, stock, and orders; and messages and group chats. Owner actions — tuition plans and prices, studio settings, announcements, the team, imports, voiding or deleting payments, archiving or deleting families — are never proposed: Ida asks you to bring those to the studio owner. A fresh chat lists exactly what Ida can look up and change for your role, and a change is checked against your own access again the moment you apply or undo it. Undo keeps to those lines too: you can undo the cards you applied yourself — the studio owner can undo any card at the studio — and a line whose undo would itself take an owner action (taking back a recorded payment voids or deletes it, the owner's move on Payments) says so on the card before you apply; undo the card later and that line stays in place with what to ask the owner for, while the rest is taken back as usual.

Ida for instructors

Instructors have their own Ida too, on the web and in the iPhone app. It answers from what a teacher's screens show: the schedule and its classes, class rosters and attendance, families and students, waiting booking and practice requests, the studio's documents and messages, and the calendar's own setup — the week start, event types, levels, locations, and rooms. Money never appears: no tuition amounts or billing status, no prices anywhere, and a booking request shows everything but its dollar amount. Asked about money, Ida says it is for the studio owner and front desk rather than guessing.

At studios where Ida's change cards are on, instructors can make changes from chat as well — exactly what their screens already let a teacher do, on the same cards they apply and can undo: a class or event's details and who teaches it, attendance and class rosters, declining a booking request, and documents and messages. Ida never adds or deletes a class, a date, or a price for an instructor — those asks are refused in the calendar's own words, with a pointer to the studio owner or front desk.

Import a roster from chat

Chat can take a whole roster, too. Paste the list straight into the message box, drag a file onto the conversation or the box, or use the paperclip to attach what you have — a spreadsheet, CSV, PDF, photo of a printed list, or plain text file — and Ida reads it into a proposed roster of families, contacts, and dancers. Ida never adds anyone by itself: you always review the proposal before a single family is saved, and anything doubtful — a possible duplicate of an existing family, a dancer with no level, a family with no email — arrives flagged for your attention.

On the web, the chat reports how many families it found with a Review button: clicking it opens the Import families panel beside the chat, already on the review step, where you check each family, fix levels, untick anyone you do not want, and save — the same review you get from Import on the Students and Families page. In the iPhone app, the parsed families are listed right in the chat; look them over and tap Save to roster to add them.

At studios where Ida's studio-wide change cards are on, an attached roster arrives the same way any other change does: Ida reads the file, shows what it found, and lays the import out on a change card — matched against the families you already have so nobody is duplicated — which you apply, and can undo, like any other change.

See what Ida is doing for your studio

Studio owners can watch Ida work. Ida AI in the sidebar — or More → Ida AI in the iPhone app — opens a page of every question staff and parents have asked Ida: how many were answered and by whom they were asked, how many parent questions never needed the front desk, what Ida did (classes created, families updated), and how many answers were rated helpful, with a chart of questions over time and a ranking of what people ask about. A date range up top narrows everything from the last 7 days out to all time.

Below the numbers sits every conversation, newest first. Search them, filter to staff or parents, a topic, or how the answer was rated, and open one to read it in full — each message, what Ida looked up, what it changed, any attached files, and any thumbs-up or thumbs-down with its reason. The page is read-only and for studio owners only: front desk, instructors, and families never see it.

Owners see every Ida conversation at the studio, parents' included. What never appears here: each family's private Help from Ida thread, Report a problem chats, and the studio setup conversation.

You don't have to open the page to know, either — ask Ida itself. 'What are parents asking Ida?', 'What couldn't Ida answer?', 'How is Ida doing this month?' all answer with the page's own numbers: how many questions staff and parents asked, how many parent chats got a real answer, which chats needed the studio and on what topics, the changes Ida made for staff (and any that didn't go through), and how answers were rated. Ask for the chats themselves — 'show me the parent chats about tuition', 'find the chat about the recital costume' — and Ida lists them with the page's own filters and search, and reads any one back in full. The same rule applies in chat as on the page: these answers are for studio owners only, and a chat Ida hasn't read yet is reported as not sorted yet — never guessed.

Rate Ida's answers

Every answer Ida gives has thumbs up and thumbs down buttons beneath it, on the web and in the mobile app. A thumbs up tells us the answer landed. A thumbs down opens a quick 'What went wrong?' prompt where you can pick a reason and add a note — both optional — so we know exactly what to fix. Tap a thumb again to withdraw your rating.

Your ratings go straight to the team behind Ida and shape how the assistant improves, so a moment of feedback on a bad answer makes the next one better.

Talk instead of type

Wherever you can message Ida — the assistant on the web, Ask Ida in the iPhone app, and the Report a problem chat — a microphone button sits beside the message box. Tap it and speak: your words appear in the box as you talk, and you still press send yourself, so you can fix a misheard name before it goes. Tap the microphone again (or just start typing) to stop listening.

Dictation uses your browser's or phone's own speech recognition — your voice is never sent to Ida. The button only appears where your device supports it, and you may be asked to allow microphone access the first time.

Opening Ida on the webWeb dashboard

On a computer, where the Ida AI button sits depends on who you are — staff find it at the top of the sidebar, families in the bottom-right corner of the portal — and either way the assistant opens in a panel beside your work, with the conversation staying with you as you move from page to page. On a phone's browser, Ask Ida holds the same center spot in the bottom tab bar as it does in the iPhone app: tap it and the assistant slides up over the page as a sheet, with the tab bar still in reach underneath.

On the iPhone appiPhone app

Ask Ida has the center spot in the app's tab bar. Tap it to chat — suggested questions and a list of what Ida can do for your role get you started, the clock icon reopens past conversations, the compose icon starts a fresh one, and a swipe down over the conversation tucks the keyboard away. Answers arrive formatted for reading — headings, bold text, lists, and links you can tap. Every answer can be rated with a thumbs up or down (a thumbs-down lets you say what went wrong), and your feedback goes straight to the team.

For families, Ask Ida in the app helps the same way it does on the web: it answers from your studio's shared documents and from your family's own records — your dancers' schedule and attendance, your charges and autopay, your bookings, practice requests, and trials, and your dancers' competition entries — makes your family's booking and class changes with the same show-you-first confirmation as the web, walks you through using the app step by step, lists the registration policies your family needs to accept (or has already accepted), tells you whether your family needs to register for the coming season, and shares your studio's web address when you want to use the browser instead.