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AI Features User Guide#

This documentation applies to Piler enterprise edition releases 2.1.0+

Revision #1

Publication date: 2026-OCT-16

Piler can use a language model (LLM) to help you find and read archived email:

  • AI Search: ask for emails in plain language, Piler turns your question into a search
  • AI Summary: a short summary of an email
  • Summarize Thread: the participants, decisions, action items and timeline of a conversation

The language model runs on a server of your organization (typically Ollama). The content of your email is not sent to an outside service. Your administrator sets it up, see the AI Features Setup Guide. If you don't see the buttons described below, the AI features are not enabled on your archive.

The AI features work with the same access as the rest of the archive: they only use the emails you can see.

Asking a question#

  1. Click the Try AI Search button (the magic wand) next to the search box.
  2. Type your question, e.g. emails from Sarah last week with PDF attachments.
  3. Press Enter, or click the search button.

Piler asks the language model to turn your question into a regular search, runs that search, and lists the emails as usual. The search it ran is shown next to the results (Translated: from:sarah date1:2026-10-09 a:pdf), so you can check what it understood.

Questions that work well:

You ask Piler searches for
emails from sarah last week from:sarah date1:<a week ago>
invoices in December subject:invoice date1:<1 Dec> date2:<31 Dec>
emails with any attachments from john from:john a:any
large PDF attachments from vendors from:*vendor* size:>5M a:pdf
emails about budget OR finance from sarah from:sarah (subject:budget OR subject:finance)

The exact search depends on the language model, which is why Piler shows it.

Name the things you look for: people, addresses, subject words, dates, attachment types. Words like "emails", "about" or "problems" are left out of the search.

Ask a follow-up question, e.g. only the ones with Excel files, and Piler narrows the previous search instead of starting a new one. It remembers your last 10 questions for 30 minutes.

To start over, click Clear conversation (the ⓧ button). The arrow button returns to the regular search box.

When Piler is not sure#

If the language model can't tell what you mean, Piler doesn't guess: it shows a message asking you to rephrase the question, and runs no search. Add a name, a date or a subject word, and try again.

Good to know#

  • AI Search is a shortcut to the regular search. Anything it finds, you can also find with the search box and the advanced search. Click the arrow button to go back to the search box: it has the translated search, which you can edit.
  • It searches by words, like the regular search. To find emails by their meaning, use semantic search (the ✨ button), if your archive has it, see Semantic search.

AI Summary of an email#

  1. Open an email.
  2. Click Insights in the toolbar of the email, then AI Summary. (The magic wand among the icons of the email does the same.)

A panel opens with a summary of the email in three bullet points, focusing on the key information, action items and deadlines. It usually takes a few seconds, longer if the language model runs without a GPU.

Before the email is summarized, quoted replies, signatures and legal disclaimers are removed, so the summary is about what the email itself says. A very long email is summarized from its beginning (about 8000 characters).

A summary is kept for about 15 minutes. Opening it again in that time shows the same summary at once, marked Cached summary.

Summarize Thread#

For an email that is part of a conversation:

  1. Open the email.
  2. Click Thread in the toolbar, then Summarize Thread. (Or the speech bubble among the icons of the email.)

The panel shows:

  • Participants: who took part in the conversation
  • Decisions: what was agreed
  • Action items: tasks, and who should do them
  • Timeline: the main steps of the conversation

The summary is made from the emails of the thread that you can see, from the first part (about 1500 characters) of each one. A thread summary is kept for an hour.

Things to keep in mind#

  • Check what matters. A summary is written by a language model: it may leave out details or get something wrong. Each summary panel says so. For anything important, read the email itself.
  • Language. How well the summaries and the AI Search work in your language depends on the model your administrator chose. Removing quotes, signatures and disclaimers works best for English and German email.
  • Audit log. Using the AI features is recorded in the audit log, like viewing an email: AI Search (llm_search), AI Summary (llm_summarize) and Summarize Thread (llm_summarize_thread).

Troubleshooting#

I don't see the AI Search button, AI Summary or Summarize Thread. The AI features are not enabled on your archive. Summarize Thread is only shown for emails that are part of a thread.

"No permission to view message". Your account can't view the content of emails, or this email. Ask your administrator.

An error instead of a summary, or AI Search fails. The language model server may be down or busy. Try again later, and tell your administrator if it persists. The setup guide has the steps for them.

The AI Search found the wrong emails. Look at the translated search shown next to the results, and rephrase your question with a name, a date or a subject word. Or go back to the search box with the arrow button, and edit the translated search there.