Overview

Review Mode lets you turn on Answer Assist in your community without posting any AI answers to members. Answer Assist still runs in the background and generates answers as usual, but instead of replying to the original poster, those answers can be previewed exclusively by community admins without ever being visible in the community. 

It is the recommended way to evaluate AI answer quality on your real community content before flipping the switch to Live Mode.

Why use Review Mode?

• Build confidence before going live. See how well Answer Assist responds to questions on your specific boards before any member sees an AI answer.
• Zero impact on members. No answers are posted, no experts are notified, and the AI components are not rendered for end users.
• Per-board control. Test AI on a few boards or categories at a time and leave the rest of your community untouched.
• Easy promotion to Live. Once you trust the quality on a given board, switch it from Review Mode to Live Mode in a single click.

Configuring Review Mode

Review Mode is configured inside your existing Answer Assist settings. You set a community-wide default and, optionally, add overrides for specific boards or categories.

Step 1 — Find the setting

1. Go to Admin → Settings  → AI Settings → Answer Assist
2. Confirm Enable Answer Assist is turned on.
3. Scroll to the Review Mode section.

Step 2 — Set the community-wide default

The Review Mode toggle controls what every board does by default. There are two states:

• Off (Live Mode default): Generated answers are posted automatically. You will see "Generated answers are posted automatically (Live Mode)." in the description.
• On (Review Mode default): Generated answers are routed to the Answer Queue for admin review. You will see "Generated answers are sent to the Answer Queue for review before posting." in the description.

Underneath the toggle, the line "343 boards inherit this default" tells you exactly how many boards are currently following the community-wide setting.

Step 3 — Add overrides for specific boards or categories

You will often want a different setting on a few specific boards — for example, "everywhere defaults to Live, but keep the new Developers board in Review Mode while we evaluate it."

1. Under Board and category overrides, click the Select boards or categories dropdown.
2. Pick one or more boards, categories, or group hubs. Selecting a category applies the override to every board inside it.
3. In the Select mode dropdown, choose either Live Mode or Review Mode.
4. Click Add.

Once added, each override appears in the list with its own mode dropdown. You can change a mode at any time — it takes effect immediately on the next question posted to that board.

What happens when Review Mode is on

When a board is set to Review Mode, Answer Assist runs exactly as it does in Live Mode — the same retrieval, the same model, the same confidence scoring. Only the final delivery is different.

What members see

Nothing. From a member's perspective, the board behaves as if Answer Assist were turned off. Specifically:

• No AI-generated reply is posted to the thread.
• No expert notifications are triggered.
• No AI Answer Assist UI components render for members.
• Members cannot tell the AI ran in the background at all.

What admins see

Admins viewing a post that triggered an AI answer in Review Mode see a clearly labelled preview card below the original question. The card shows the full generated answer and the citations the AI used, so you can evaluate quality in context.

Reviewing answers in the AI Answers queue

Every answer Answer Assist generates, Live or Review, is logged in Admin → Settings  → AI Answers. This is the central place to evaluate AI response quality, spot failure patterns, and decide when a board is ready to graduate from Review to Live.

How to read the queue

Each row is one answer. The column that tells you the mode is the Answer column itself:

• "Answer" (linked) — the answer was posted live to the thread. Click through to see the live post.
• "Review Mode" — the answer was generated but held back from members. It’s only visible in the Review Mode Preview on the original post.

What to look at on each entry

• Confidence vs. Threshold: Confidence is what the AI gave the answer; Threshold is the minimum needed to post in Live Mode. An answer with 57% confidence and a 50% threshold would have been posted live — useful information when deciding whether your threshold is right.
• Source Types: Where the answer was drawn from (Knowledge Base, Blog, Forum). Helps you see whether the AI is leaning on the right content for that board.
• Embedding Model / Generation Model: Which AI models produced the answer, useful for tracking quality differences across model upgrades.

Switching a board from Review Mode to Live Mode

Once you are comfortable with the quality of answers on a board, you can promote it to Live Mode at any time.

1. Open Admin → Settings → AI Settings → Answer Assist → Review Mode.
2. In Board and category overrides, find the board you want to promote.
3. Change the mode dropdown from Review Mode to Live Mode.
4. The change takes effect immediately. The next qualifying question on that board will receive a posted AI answer.

To revert, switch the same dropdown back to Review Mode. There is no migration or data loss either way.

Best practices

• Start with one board. Pick a single high-traffic board where Answer Assist would clearly help, run it in Review Mode, and review the queue before adding more.
• Review Mode is not a long-term home. It is a testing tool. Once you trust a board's answers, move it to Live Mode so members get the benefit.
• Watch the failure reasons. Patterns in the Reasons column in AI Answers often point to a CLM gap, a knowledge area where you need more articles before Answer Assist can answer well.
• Coordinate with your experts. Let your subject-matter experts know which boards are in Live Mode so they understand why AI replies are appearing.

Frequently asked questions

Does Review Mode use any of my AI tokens?

Yes. Review Mode runs the full Answer Assist pipeline, so it consumes the same processing and tokens as Live Mode. The only thing it skips is posting the answer.

Can a member ever see a Review Mode answer by accident?

No. Review Mode entries are filtered out of every member-facing surface — the thread, notifications, search, and the Answer Assist UI components themselves. Only admins with access to the AI Answers queue and the Review Mode Preview can see them.

What happens to in-flight answers if I switch a board from Live to Review (or vice versa)?

The new mode applies to the next answer generated on that board. Answers that have already been posted in Live Mode stay posted; entries already in the queue remain in the queue.

Can I edit or approve a generated answer from the queue?

Not in this release. The current Review Mode focuses on evaluation. Approval, edit, and regenerate actions are tracked separately and will be added in a future release.