Collaborative Orion
Shared Orion sessions where your team asks questions, adds context, and gets one synthesized answer that streams to everyone live.
When to use it: Decision meetings, incident reviews, or any moment where several people need to look at the same question and one answer at the same time.
Where to find it: Suite → Govern → Collab (the
/collab page).Who can use it: Luminary, Weaver, and Tracer. Lens (read-only) does not see Collab in the navigation.
Collaborative Orion turns a one-on-one chat with Orion into a shared room. Everyone in the session sees the same thread, can add a question or a piece of context, and when someone runs Orion, the answer is written into the thread and streamed live to every person who has the session open.
It is built for the moment when a question needs more than one head. The CEO asks "Why did CAC jump last week?", the marketing lead drops in "We paused the email nurture campaign on Tuesday," and when someone clicks Ask Orion, Orion reads the question and that context together and replies once, for everyone.
Overview
A collaborative session is a thread of three kinds of messages:
- Questions (the Ask mode) — what you want Orion to answer.
- Context (the Add Context mode) — facts, caveats, or data the team wants Orion to take into account.
- Orion responses — Orion's answers, written back into the thread as they are generated.
You create a session from the Collab page, share the work by having teammates open it from the same in-app list, and drive the conversation with two input modes plus an Ask Orion button. New messages appear for everyone in real time over a live stream, so there is no need to refresh.
When to use it
Reach for Collaborative Orion when more than one person needs to be in the loop on the same question:
- Decision meetings — keep the question, everyone's context, and Orion's answer in one shared thread so the room is literally looking at the same screen.
- Incident or anomaly reviews — one person asks what changed, others paste in what they know happened, and Orion synthesizes a single explanation.
- Cross-functional questions — when the answer depends on context only certain people have (a campaign that was paused, a pricing change, a data backfill), Add Context lets each person contribute their piece before Orion runs.
For a private, single-person conversation with Orion, use the standard Orion chat instead — see Asking questions. Use Collaborative Orion when the value is in the shared thread.
Concepts
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Session | A titled, workspace-scoped thread. Created by one person; visible to everyone in the workspace who can open the Collab page. |
| Ask | The input mode that posts a question to the thread. Questions are what Orion answers. |
| Add Context | The input mode that posts a context note to the thread. Context appears as a small "added context" marker and is fed to Orion when it runs — it does not trigger Orion by itself. |
| Ask Orion | The button that runs Orion against the whole session: every question, prior Orion answer, and piece of context. |
| Orion response | Orion's reply, saved into the thread and labeled "Orion." |
| Live stream | A server-sent event stream that pushes every new message to all open clients, so the thread stays in sync without refreshing. |
Sessions are scoped to your workspace. Anyone in the workspace with a Tracer, Weaver, or Luminary role can open the session list and join an existing session — there is no separate invite step and no external-guest concept.
Getting started
Prerequisites- A Tracer, Weaver, or Luminary role. Lens users do not see Collab in the navigation.
- Orion must be configured for your workspace (an Anthropic API key set in the Admin Console). Without it, running Orion fails with an "AI not configured for this workspace" message.
Go to Suite → Govern → Collab, or navigate to /collab. You land on the session list, where you can create a new session or open an existing one.
Step-by-step
Open the Collab page
From the Suite navigation, choose Govern → Collab. The session list shows every session in your workspace, most recently active first, each labeled with who created it and when it was last active.
Create a session
Type a title into the New session title… field and click Create. The session is created and you are taken straight into it. Give it a clear name like "Why did CAC jump last week?" so teammates can recognize it in the list.
Bring teammates in
There is no separate invite flow. Any teammate with a Tracer, Weaver, or Luminary role opens the same Collab page and clicks your session in the list. Once inside, everyone sees the same thread and new messages stream in live.
Ask a question
Make sure the input mode is set to Ask, type your question, and click Send. Your question is posted to the thread for everyone to see. You can post several questions before running Orion.
Add context (optional)
Switch the input mode to Add Context, type a fact or caveat the team wants Orion to consider, and click Send. It appears in the thread as an "added context" marker. Context does not run Orion on its own — it is held until someone runs Orion.
Run Orion
Click Ask Orion. Orion reads the whole session — every question, every prior Orion answer, and every piece of context — and writes one answer back into the thread. The answer streams to everyone with the session open. (The button stays disabled until at least one question has been posted.)
Continue the conversation
Add follow-up questions or more context and click Ask Orion again. Orion always answers against the full, up-to-date session, so the conversation builds on everything posted so far.
Examples
A worked example — a CAC investigation run as a shared session:
[Ask] Dana: Why did blended CAC jump ~18% last week?
[Add Context] Marcus: We paused the email nurture campaign on Tuesday.
[Add Context] Priya: Paid social budget was also shifted to a new
prospecting audience on Monday.
[Ask Orion →]
[Orion] Orion: Two changes line up with the CAC increase last week...
(one synthesized answer using both context notes)
When Ask Orion runs, the question from Dana and the two context notes from Marcus and Priya are all sent to Orion together. The context notes are passed with their authors attached, so Orion can use them directly in its analysis. The reply is saved into the thread and appears for Dana, Marcus, and Priya at the same time.
The two Add Context notes do not each trigger a separate Orion run. They sit in the thread until someone clicks Ask Orion, which is what folds them into the single answer.
Best practices
- Name the session after the question. A title like "Why did CAC jump last week?" makes the session easy to find in the list and tells joiners what they are walking into.
- Post context before you run Orion. Orion only sees context that is already in the thread when Ask Orion is clicked. Gather everyone's context first, then run.
- Keep one question per session when the answer matters. A focused thread is easier to read back later than a session that drifts across five unrelated topics.
- Let one person drive the run. Anyone can click Ask Orion, but coordinating who runs it avoids two near-simultaneous runs on the same question.
- Use Add Context for facts, Ask for questions. Context steers the answer; questions request one. Mixing them up ("asking" a fact) just adds noise to the thread.
Tips
You do not need to refresh. The session uses a live stream, so questions, context, and Orion's answers appear for every open participant the moment they are posted. If you opened the session before a teammate joined, their messages will simply start showing up as they send them.
Common mistakes
Clicking Ask Orion with no question posted. The button stays disabled until at least one Ask message exists in the thread. Post a question first.
Adding context after the run and expecting it to count. Orion only uses the context that is in the thread at the moment you run it. If you add context afterward, click Ask Orion again so the new context is included.
Looking for a "share link." There is no copy-URL or invite button. Teammates join by opening the Collab page and selecting the session from the list.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Ask Orion is greyed out | No Ask (question) message has been posted yet | Switch to Ask mode, send a question, then click Ask Orion. |
| Running Orion fails with "AI not configured for this workspace" | No Anthropic API key is set for the workspace | A Luminary sets the key in the Admin Console → AI Settings, then run Orion again. |
| Orion ignored a piece of context | The context was added after Orion already ran | Click Ask Orion again — Orion re-reads the whole thread, including the newly added context. |
| You don't see Collab in the navigation | Your role is Lens (read-only) | Collab requires a Tracer, Weaver, or Luminary role; ask a Luminary to adjust your role if you need access. |
| A session you opened bounces you back to the list | The session could not be loaded (it does not exist in your workspace, or the id is wrong) | Return to the Collab page and pick the session from the list rather than navigating to a URL directly. |
| A teammate's message hasn't appeared | The live stream connection dropped | Reopen the session from the Collab list to re-establish the stream; existing messages reload from the thread. |