Team Collaboration with SecureAI

SecureAI is not just a single-user tool. Your OpenWebUI instance supports team workflows that let colleagues share knowledge, divide work, and build on each other's results. This guide covers how to share chats, assistants, and knowledge bases across your team, plus best practices for getting the most out of collaborative AI use in an automotive aftermarket shop or organization.

Sharing Conversations

Why Share Chats

When a technician figures out the correct cross-reference for a tricky part, or a service advisor gets a detailed diagnostic walkthrough from SecureAI, that result is valuable to the whole team. Instead of repeating the same query, share the conversation.

Common scenarios:

• A parts specialist finds the right aftermarket equivalent for a discontinued OEM part. Share the conversation so other counter staff can reference it.
• A service advisor gets a detailed breakdown of a TSB. Share it with the technician doing the repair.
• A shop manager uses SecureAI to draft a customer explanation of a complex repair. Share it as a template for the rest of the team.

How to Share a Conversation

1. Open the conversation you want to share.
2. Click the share icon in the conversation header (or use the three-dot menu and select Share).
3. Choose your sharing scope:
   • Link sharing: Generates a URL that anyone with access to your SecureAI instance can view.
   • Specific users: Share directly with named colleagues if your admin has enabled user-to-user sharing.
4. Recipients can view the full conversation history, including any uploaded files and model responses.

Tips for Shared Conversations

• Name your conversations before sharing. "2023 Camry Brake Cross-Reference" is more useful than "New Chat 47."
• Pin important shared conversations so they stay easy to find. Your team can build a library of reference conversations over time.
• Do not share conversations that contain sensitive customer data (VINs tied to customer names, insurance claim numbers) unless your organization's data policy allows it. Check with your admin.

Sharing Assistants (Custom Presets)

What Are Assistants

OpenWebUI lets you create custom assistants -- preconfigured chat presets with a specific system prompt, model selection, and parameters. Think of them as specialized tools built on top of SecureAI's general capabilities.

Examples relevant to automotive aftermarket:

• Parts Cross-Reference Assistant: System prompt instructs the model to always format results as a comparison table with OEM number, aftermarket equivalents, brand, and price range.
• Estimate Builder Assistant: Configured to output parts lists in a format compatible with your shop management system.
• TSB Lookup Assistant: Prompt-tuned to search and summarize technical service bulletins for a given vehicle.

How to Share an Assistant

1. Go to Workspace > Assistants (or Models, depending on your OpenWebUI version).
2. Find the assistant you created.
3. Click Edit or open its settings.
4. Under Visibility, change from Private to Team or Public (if your admin allows public sharing).
   • Private: Only you can see and use it.
   • Team: Available to everyone in your organization's SecureAI instance.
   • Public: Visible to all users (use this for organization-wide tools).
5. Save the changes. Team members will see the assistant in their model/assistant selector.

Best Practices for Team Assistants

• Use clear, descriptive names. "Mitchell 1 Estimate Formatter" tells your team exactly what it does. "My Helper" does not.
• Write a description. The description field shows up in the assistant selector. Use it to explain when and why to use this assistant.
• Version your system prompts. If you update an assistant's prompt, note what changed and why. Other team members may depend on the previous behavior.
• Limit the number of team assistants. Too many assistants creates clutter. Consolidate similar ones and retire assistants that are no longer useful.
• Test before sharing. Run your assistant through the common queries your team would use. Make sure the output format and behavior are consistent before making it available to everyone.

Sharing Knowledge Bases

What Are Knowledge Bases

Knowledge bases in OpenWebUI let you upload documents -- PDFs, text files, spreadsheets -- that the AI can reference when answering questions. This is how you give SecureAI access to your organization's proprietary data: parts catalogs, fitment guides, internal procedures, price lists.

Team Knowledge Bases vs. Personal Knowledge Bases

• Personal knowledge bases are visible only to you. Use these for work-in-progress documents or personal reference material.
• Team knowledge bases are shared across your organization. When a team member asks SecureAI a question with a team knowledge base selected, the AI searches those documents for relevant context.

How to Create and Share a Knowledge Base

1. Go to Workspace > Knowledge.
2. Click Create Knowledge Base (or the + button).
3. Give it a clear name: "2026 Brake Parts Catalog" or "Shop Procedures Manual."
4. Upload your documents. Supported formats typically include PDF, TXT, CSV, and DOCX.
5. Set Visibility to Team or Public to share it.
6. Save. Team members can now select this knowledge base when chatting.

How to Use a Shared Knowledge Base in Chat

1. Start a new conversation or open an existing one.
2. In the message input area, look for the knowledge base selector (often a book or document icon, or accessible via the + button).
3. Select the relevant knowledge base(s).
4. Ask your question. SecureAI will search the selected knowledge base documents and use matching content to inform its answer.

Best Practices for Team Knowledge Bases

• Keep documents current. An outdated parts catalog is worse than no catalog -- it gives confident but wrong answers. Assign someone to refresh knowledge base documents on a regular schedule (monthly or quarterly).
• Organize by function, not by file. Instead of one giant knowledge base with everything, create focused ones: "Brake Parts," "Transmission Fluids," "Shop Procedures." This lets users select only the relevant context for their query.
• Name files descriptively before uploading. The file name helps SecureAI (and your team) identify what a document contains. "dorman-brake-catalog-2026.pdf" is better than "scan001.pdf."
• Check retrieval quality. After uploading a knowledge base, test it with a few real queries. If the AI is not finding the right sections, the documents may need better formatting or splitting into smaller files.
• Set access intentionally. Not every knowledge base needs to be shared with the whole organization. Price lists with margin data or internal procedure documents may need restricted access. Work with your admin on visibility settings.

Team Workflow Patterns

Pattern 1: The Reference Library

Build a shared collection of high-value conversations and knowledge bases that your team uses as a living reference.

1. When someone gets a particularly good result from SecureAI, they share the conversation and tag it (e.g., "reference," "cross-reference," "diagnostic").
2. Pin or bookmark shared conversations that become go-to references.
3. Periodically review the library: archive outdated conversations, update knowledge bases with new catalogs.

Works well for: Parts counter teams that handle similar queries repeatedly.

Pattern 2: The Specialist-and-Generalist Split

Different team members create assistants for their area of expertise.

• The transmission specialist creates a "Transmission Fluid Cross-Reference" assistant with a detailed system prompt.
• The brake specialist creates a "Brake Pad Compatibility Checker."
• Everyone on the team uses whichever assistant matches their current query.

Works well for: Shops with specialized technicians who want to share their domain knowledge through AI.

Pattern 3: The Shift Handoff

Use shared conversations to hand off work between shifts.

1. At the end of a shift, share any in-progress SecureAI conversations with the incoming team.
2. The next shift can continue the conversation -- the context is preserved.
3. Name the conversation with the RO number or customer name for easy identification.

Works well for: Multi-shift operations where work carries over between teams.

Pattern 4: The Training Pipeline

Use shared assistants and knowledge bases to onboard new team members.

1. Create a "New Hire Training" assistant with a system prompt that explains common parts lookup workflows in your shop's context.
2. Upload your shop's standard procedures as a knowledge base.
3. New hires can ask the assistant questions about procedures, parts, and workflows -- and get answers grounded in your actual documentation.

Works well for: Organizations with frequent onboarding or high turnover in parts counter roles.

Managing Team Collaboration as an Admin

If you are a SecureAI administrator, you control the collaboration features available to your team.

Key Admin Settings

• User-to-user sharing: Enable or disable direct conversation sharing between users.
• Knowledge base creation permissions: Control who can create and share knowledge bases (all users, or admins only).
• Assistant creation permissions: Control who can create and share assistants.
• Default visibility: Set whether new knowledge bases and assistants default to private or team-visible.

Recommendations for Admins

• Start with team sharing enabled but assistant creation limited to leads. This prevents assistant sprawl while still letting the team benefit from shared knowledge.
• Audit shared knowledge bases quarterly. Remove outdated documents and consolidate duplicates.
• Set naming conventions. Agree on a naming pattern for assistants and knowledge bases so the team can find things quickly. Example: [Category] - [Specific Topic] like "Brakes - Pad Cross-Reference" or "Fluids - Transmission Capacity Guide."
• Monitor usage. OpenWebUI analytics show which assistants and knowledge bases are being used. If something is never accessed, it is clutter -- archive or remove it.

Troubleshooting

"I cannot see a shared conversation"

• The conversation may have been shared via link. Ask the person who shared it to resend the link.
• Your admin may have disabled user-to-user sharing. Check with your administrator.

"The shared knowledge base is not returning good results"

• The documents may be poorly formatted. PDFs with scanned images (not selectable text) do not work well. Re-upload OCR-processed versions.
• The knowledge base may be too large or too broad. Split it into focused collections.
• Try rephrasing your query to match the terminology used in the uploaded documents.

"I cannot create a team assistant"

• Your admin may have restricted assistant creation to certain roles. Contact your administrator to request access or to have them create the assistant on your behalf.

"Too many assistants -- I cannot find the one I need"

• Ask your admin to audit and consolidate assistants.
• Use the search/filter function in the assistant selector if available.
• Pin your most-used assistants for quick access.