Ratals AI is not a separate application that connects to your business after the fact. It is the intelligence layer built directly into the Ratals platform, allowing artificial intelligence to work with the same website, products, customers, orders, inventory, purchasing, accounting, financial reporting, and analytics your business already manages every day. Instead of exporting information into disconnected AI tools or relying on third-party integrations, Ratals AI works directly from the same shared data model that powers Ratals CMS, Ratals Commerce, and Ratals ERP.
Because AI understands the relationships between your business records, it can provide assistance using the context that already exists throughout your organization. Whether you're creating website content, optimizing product pages, answering customer questions, researching inventory, reviewing purchasing activity, explaining accounting transactions, or analyzing business performance, Ratals AI works with the information already stored within your Ratals installation instead of requiring you to manually assemble the context behind every request.
Ratals AI also gives your business complete control over how artificial intelligence is used. Rather than routing requests through a proprietary hosted service, Ratals connects directly to your own AI provider using your API credentials. Your organization controls the provider, models, API usage, costs, permissions, and business instructions while your Ratals installation remains self-hosted and under your management.
Every AI feature described throughout this guide builds on the same core foundation. Whether you're generating website content, optimizing SEO, researching inventory, analyzing business performance, or answering operational questions, Ratals AI uses the same AI Workspace, AI Assistant, Business Instructions, configured AI provider, conversation history, and permission system to deliver a consistent experience across the entire platform.
This guide walks through every major component of Ratals AI, from configuring AI providers and business instructions to creating content, optimizing websites, generating product information, and using AI to answer questions across Commerce and ERP. By integrating artificial intelligence directly into the platform, Ratals AI helps businesses work more efficiently while continuing to operate from the same trusted data that already runs the rest of their organization.
Table of Contents for Ratals AI:
Artificial intelligence is most valuable when it understands your business. Most AI tools don't. They can answer questions, write content, and summarize information, but they have little knowledge of your products, customers, inventory, orders, purchasing, accounting, or the countless relationships that exist between them. Businesses are often left copying information from one system into another simply to provide enough context for AI to generate a useful response.
Ratals was designed differently. Ratals CMS, Ratals Commerce, Ratals ERP, and Ratals AI all operate on the same shared platform and the same underlying data model. Website content, ecommerce operations, customer accounts, inventory, purchasing, accounting, financial reporting, and analytics are all connected from the beginning rather than being assembled through plugins and third-party integrations. Because every module works with the same data, Ratals AI already understands the relationships between your business records before you ask a single question.
That shared architecture allows Ratals AI to become part of your daily workflow instead of another application your team has to manage. Whether you're writing content, creating product descriptions, researching inventory, reviewing purchasing activity, explaining accounting transactions, analyzing business performance, or answering operational questions, AI can work directly with the information already stored throughout your organization.
The result is an AI experience that feels less like chatting with a generic language model and more like working alongside someone who understands how your business operates. Rather than asking you to manually assemble the context behind every request, Ratals AI uses the relationships that already exist throughout the platform to deliver faster, more accurate, and more relevant assistance across your entire business.
Every AI request in Ratals follows the same process. Instead of simply sending your question to an AI provider, Ratals first gathers the business context needed to produce an accurate response. That context may include your Business Instructions, the page or record you are currently viewing, related data from throughout the platform, and the permissions assigned to your user account.
Rather than maintaining a permanent copy of your business data inside the AI provider, Ratals assembles only the authorized context required for the current request. Once that context has been prepared, the request is securely sent to your configured AI provider.
Once the AI provider generates a response, Ratals returns the results directly within the interface you are already using. Whether you are editing website content, managing products, reviewing customer accounts, researching inventory, or analyzing financial reports, AI works alongside your existing workflow instead of requiring you to switch between disconnected applications.
Because Ratals AI is built into the platform rather than connected through external integrations, it understands how information is related across your business. A customer is connected to orders, orders are connected to products, products are connected to inventory, inventory is connected to purchasing, and purchasing flows into accounting and financial reporting. Those relationships allow AI to provide answers using the same business data your organization already relies on every day.
Every request is also governed by your organization's security settings. Ratals AI only has access to the information your user account is permitted to view, and every interaction can be recorded in the AI audit history for accountability and future reference. The result is an AI experience that is contextual, secure, and integrated into the daily operation of your business rather than functioning as a standalone chatbot.
Ratals AI connects directly to your organization's AI provider using your own API credentials. Rather than routing requests through a proprietary Ratals-hosted service, your installation communicates directly with the provider you configure. This gives your business complete control over API usage, billing, available models, and future provider selection while allowing Ratals to remain fully self-hosted.
Ratals AI currently supports OpenAI, which can be configured by entering your API key within the AI settings. Once configured, every AI feature throughout CMS, Commerce, and ERP uses the same provider connection. The platform is designed to support additional AI providers over time without changing how users interact with AI throughout Ratals.
Because the provider connection is managed at the platform level, administrators only need to configure it once. Users throughout the organization can then access AI features based on their assigned permissions without needing individual API keys or separate AI accounts.
The AI provider is intentionally separated from the Ratals platform. As support for new providers and models is added, organizations can adopt them while continuing to use the same AI Workspace, AI Assistant, Business Instructions, permissions, and business workflows already built into Ratals.
AI Settings allows administrators to configure how Ratals AI behaves across the entire platform. Rather than requiring every user to configure AI individually, these settings establish the default model, business instructions, and platform-wide AI behavior used whenever AI features are accessed throughout Ratals CMS, Ratals Commerce, and Ratals ERP.
Enable or disable AI throughout your Ratals installation with a single setting. This allows administrators to configure AI providers, business instructions, and model settings before making AI features available to users. If AI is disabled, requests cannot be submitted until the feature is re-enabled while all configuration settings remain intact.
Select the AI model Ratals should use by default when processing requests. The selected model is shared throughout the platform, allowing administrators to balance response quality, response speed, and API costs while maintaining a consistent AI experience for all users. As additional models become available through your configured AI provider, they can be selected here without changing how users interact with Ratals AI.
Business Instructions provide permanent context that Ratals AI automatically includes with every request. Instead of repeatedly explaining your company, products, services, writing style, terminology, policies, or preferred tone, administrators can define that information once and have it consistently applied throughout the platform.
Business Instructions can include information such as your company's background, target audience, products and services, brand voice, formatting preferences, industry terminology, writing guidelines, customer service policies, or any other information that helps AI better understand your organization. Because this context is automatically included, users can focus on what they want to accomplish instead of spending time providing the same background information with every conversation.
This approach also improves consistency across your organization. Whether AI is generating website content, creating product descriptions, answering business questions, or assisting with day-to-day operations, every response begins with the same understanding of your business and how you want AI to communicate.
Example Business Instructions
You are assisting employees of Evergreen Home Furnishings, a company that designs and manufactures high-quality residential furniture for homes throughout North America. Write in a professional, knowledgeable, and approachable tone using U.S. English. Avoid exaggerated marketing language, unsupported claims, or unnecessary filler. When creating product descriptions, emphasize craftsmanship, material quality, comfort, durability, available finishes, dimensions, and long-term value. When writing website content or blog articles, educate customers first while naturally incorporating search engine optimization best practices. When answering operational questions, prioritize accuracy and base responses only on the business information provided within Ratals.
Additional model settings allow administrators to fine-tune how AI generates responses. Depending on the selected provider and model, these options may include settings such as temperature, maximum response length, reasoning level, or other provider-specific parameters. These defaults create a consistent AI experience throughout the platform while still allowing individual AI features to optimize settings when appropriate. Administrators can also configure how many AI conversations are retained for each user. When the configured limit is reached, the oldest conversations are automatically removed as new ones are created, helping control long-term database growth without requiring manual cleanup.
The AI Workspace is the central location for working with Ratals AI. While AI features are integrated throughout Ratals CMS, Ratals Commerce, and Ratals ERP, the workspace provides a dedicated environment where users can ask questions, brainstorm ideas, create content, research topics, and work through tasks without leaving the Ratals platform.
The workspace uses the AI provider, default model, model parameters, and Business Instructions configured by your administrator. This gives every user a consistent AI experience while automatically applying your organization's preferred writing style, terminology, and business context to each conversation.
Starting a conversation is as simple as entering a question or instruction into the prompt field. Ratals sends the request to your configured AI provider and displays the response directly within the workspace, allowing you to continue the discussion through follow-up questions, additional instructions, or refinements until you achieve the desired result.
Because Business Instructions are automatically included with every request, users do not need to repeatedly explain the company, its products, target audience, preferred terminology, or writing style. Instead, they can focus on the task at hand while Ratals supplies the consistent business context defined by the administrator.
Every conversation is automatically saved, allowing you to return to previous discussions at any time. This makes it easy to continue projects over multiple work sessions, reference earlier responses, or build upon previous ideas without starting over.
Conversations can be renamed to make them easier to organize and quickly identify later. When a conversation is no longer needed, it can be deleted to keep your workspace organized.
A Familiar AI Experience
The AI Workspace is intentionally designed to be simple and familiar. Instead of introducing complex agents, workflows, or automation tools, Ratals provides a straightforward conversational interface that users can begin using immediately. More specialized AI assistance is integrated directly into CMS, Commerce, and ERP where users are already working.
While the AI Workspace provides a dedicated place for general conversations, the AI Assistant is available throughout Ratals wherever users perform their daily work. Instead of opening a separate application and manually providing context, the AI Assistant remains available as you move throughout the platform, allowing the conversation to continue while automatically understanding the page you are currently viewing.
Whether you are viewing a webpage, product, inventory item, customer account, purchase order, sales order, or another business record, the AI Assistant can answer questions, explain information, generate content, and provide recommendations without requiring you to repeatedly describe what you are looking at.
The AI Assistant automatically includes the context of the page you are working on with each request. As you navigate throughout Ratals, the conversation continues while the current page provides additional context for your next question. For example, you might begin discussing a customer's order, move to the associated inventory item, and then open the related purchase order - all within the same conversation. Ratals automatically provides the appropriate context for each request without requiring you to manually explain what you are viewing.
Every request combines the current page context with your organization's Business Instructions and the permissions assigned to your user account. This allows AI to deliver responses that are relevant to your business while ensuring users only receive information they are authorized to access.
The AI Assistant is designed to remain with you as you work throughout Ratals. Conversations are automatically saved, allowing you to continue discussing a task across multiple pages without losing your progress. When you're ready to begin a different topic, simply start a new conversation while your previous discussions remain available in your conversation history.
One Assistant. Every Module.
Ratals uses a single AI Assistant throughout the entire platform. Instead of opening separate AI windows for products, customers, inventory, purchasing, and accounting, one continuous conversation follows you as you work, automatically adapting to the page you're viewing.
Creating high-quality content is one of the most common uses of artificial intelligence, and Ratals AI brings that capability directly into Ratals CMS. Whether you are building a new webpage, publishing a blog post, writing a service page, creating a knowledge base article, or managing another content type, AI can help produce well-structured content while remaining consistent with your organization's Business Instructions.
Instead of switching between your website and an external AI application, content can be generated directly where it will be published. This keeps the entire writing process inside Ratals, making it easier to draft, review, edit, and publish content without copying information between multiple systems.
Provide AI with a topic, objective, or brief description of what you would like to create, and Ratals can generate a first draft that serves as the foundation for your content. Because your organization's Business Instructions are automatically included with every request, the generated content follows your preferred writing style, terminology, and communication guidelines from the beginning.
AI can assist with pages, blog posts, landing pages, service descriptions, frequently asked questions, announcements, knowledge base articles, and any other content type managed through Ratals CMS. The generated content remains fully editable, allowing users to add business-specific knowledge, adjust the structure, and review every part of the draft before publishing it.
Ratals AI is integrated directly into the Ratals WYSIWYG editor. Because the editor is built and maintained as part of Ratals, AI writing tools can work directly with the content being edited without relying on an external editor, plugin, or third-party integration.
Users can select existing text within the editor and choose an AI action based on what they want to accomplish. Available actions include:
The generated revision can be reviewed before replacing the selected content. This gives the user control over every change and prevents AI from modifying published content without approval.
Existing content can be improved without starting over. Whether you want to simplify technical language, improve readability, expand a section, shorten a lengthy explanation, correct grammar, or adjust the tone for a different audience, Ratals AI can make targeted revisions while preserving the purpose of the original content.
This makes it easier to refresh older website pages, improve consistency across content types, and bring outdated material in line with your current brand and communication standards.
Write Where You Publish
Ratals AI works directly inside the editor used to manage your website. Generate a complete first draft, select individual passages for improvement, review the suggested changes, and publish the finished content without moving between disconnected applications or installing another editor plugin.
Creating content is only the beginning. Over time, website pages can become outdated, difficult to read, incomplete, repetitive, or no longer answer the questions your customers are looking for. Ratals AI helps users review existing content and identify practical ways to improve its clarity, structure, usefulness, and overall effectiveness.
Unlike the individual writing tools available inside the Ratals editor, Content Optimization evaluates the page as a whole. AI can review the title, headings, paragraphs, lists, calls to action, and supporting information together, allowing it to identify weaknesses that may not be obvious when editing one paragraph at a time.
Users can request an analysis of the content currently being edited and receive recommendations based on the full page. Ratals AI can identify unclear explanations, weak introductions, repetitive sections, missing information, overly long paragraphs, inconsistent terminology, and areas where the structure could be improved.
Because the analysis takes place inside Ratals CMS, the user does not need to copy the page into a separate AI application. The current content, page context, and Business Instructions are included automatically, giving AI the information it needs to provide recommendations that are more relevant to the organization and the purpose of the page.
Ratals AI can review how information is organized and suggest ways to make the page easier to understand. This may include recommending clearer headings, breaking long sections into smaller paragraphs, converting dense explanations into lists, moving important information higher on the page, or improving the flow between sections.
AI can also help simplify complicated wording, reduce unnecessary repetition, and identify sentences that may be difficult for the intended audience to follow. These recommendations help users create content that is easier to scan while still preserving the detail necessary to explain the topic accurately.
Content can appear complete to the person who wrote it while still leaving important customer questions unanswered. Ratals AI can evaluate the subject of the page and identify information that may be missing, such as product details, service expectations, pricing explanations, implementation steps, common questions, limitations, next actions, or other supporting information that would make the page more useful.
These recommendations are presented for review rather than being added automatically. The user decides which suggestions apply and can provide the business-specific knowledge required to complete the content accurately.
Optimization recommendations can be reviewed individually before changes are made. Users can ask AI to rewrite a specific section, improve a heading, expand an incomplete explanation, shorten repetitive content, or generate a proposed replacement for part of the page.
The original content remains unchanged until the user approves a revision. This keeps the editing process controlled and transparent while still allowing AI to accelerate the work required to improve larger pages.
Optimize the Entire Page, Not Just a Paragraph
The AI tools inside the Ratals editor help improve selected text, while Content Optimization evaluates how the complete page works together. This allows Ratals AI to identify structural problems, missing information, and opportunities that may be overlooked when each section is reviewed independently.
Ratals AI helps optimize every piece of content that can be published on your website. Whether you are editing a page, blog post, product, category, author biography, or another content type with its own URL, AI can assist with improving both the content itself and how it is presented to search engines.
Because search engine optimization is built directly into Ratals, AI works with the same information already managed by the platform. Instead of copying content into external SEO tools, users can generate recommendations and update SEO settings without leaving the page they are editing.
Ratals AI can analyze any record that has a public URL on your site and identify opportunities to improve its search visibility. This includes reviewing page titles, headings, descriptions, body content, product information, keyword usage, readability, content organization, and the overall relevance of the page to its intended audience.
Supported content includes website pages, blog posts, products, product categories, author pages, custom content types, and other records that are published to your website.
With a single click, Ratals AI can generate optimized SEO titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph titles, Open Graph descriptions, Twitter titles, and Twitter descriptions based on the current content, your organization's Business Instructions, and SEO best practices.
Because these fields already exist within Ratals, AI can populate them directly without requiring users to copy and paste information between multiple applications. Every suggestion can be reviewed, edited, or replaced before saving.
Ratals AI can also assist with creating and improving product information. Product names, descriptions, feature lists, specifications, and marketing copy can all be generated or refined directly within the product editor. AI can expand brief descriptions, rewrite existing content, simplify technical information, highlight product benefits, and maintain a consistent writing style across an entire catalog.
Whether you are adding a single product or maintaining thousands of products, AI helps reduce the time required to create informative, customer-focused product pages while ensuring the content remains editable and fully under your control.
Successful search engine optimization is about answering the questions people are actually searching for. Ratals AI can evaluate whether content satisfies the likely search intent behind a topic and recommend opportunities to expand explanations, answer common questions, improve headings, reorganize information, or provide additional details that make the page more useful.
Rather than assigning an arbitrary SEO score, AI explains why improvements are recommended and how they can help both visitors and search engines better understand the content.
Because Ratals manages your website's pages, posts, products, categories, and other published content, AI can identify opportunities to strengthen your internal linking strategy. Recommendations may include linking to related products, supporting articles, service pages, categories, or other relevant content that helps visitors continue exploring your website while providing additional context for search engines.
Optimize Every Published Page
Ratals AI works directly with the content and SEO settings already managed by your website. Generate optimized metadata, improve product descriptions, refine URLs, strengthen internal linking, and optimize search intent without leaving the CMS. Everything happens within the same publishing workflow, allowing you to create, optimize, and publish content from a single integrated platform.
Ratals AI extends beyond website content by assisting users with the day-to-day operation of their business. Working directly within Ratals Commerce and Ratals ERP, AI helps employees understand records, answer operational questions, explain settings, and complete common tasks without leaving the page they are already working on.
Because Ratals AI has access to the current page context, it can provide assistance that is specific to the inventory item, order, customer, warehouse, vendor, or setting currently being viewed. This eliminates the need to repeatedly explain what record is being discussed or switch between multiple applications to find answers.
While viewing an inventory record, Ratals AI can explain inventory settings, answer questions about product configuration, summarize purchasing information, review stock availability, and help users understand attributes, variants, vendors, brands, pricing, and warehouse assignments. AI can also explain how different inventory settings affect purchasing, fulfillment, and customer orders, making it easier for employees to understand how the system works.
As users learn the platform, they can ask questions directly from the inventory page without searching through documentation or leaving their workflow.
When working with customer orders or customer accounts, Ratals AI can summarize activity, explain order history, answer questions about purchased products, shipping methods, taxes, discounts, subscriptions, and payment information. This allows customer service representatives to quickly understand an order without manually reviewing every section of the record.
AI can also assist with drafting customer communications, including shipping updates, follow-up emails, responses to common questions, and other customer service interactions while remaining consistent with your organization's preferred communication style.
Ratals AI also serves as an intelligent assistant for learning and using the platform itself. Users can ask questions about Commerce and ERP features, receive explanations of settings, understand recommended workflows, and get assistance while navigating the software. Because AI knows which page the user is currently viewing, responses can be tailored to the task at hand instead of providing generic documentation.
Every conversation automatically includes the context of the page being viewed. Whether working with inventory, purchasing, customer accounts, orders, warehouses, shipping settings, or another administrative screen, Ratals AI understands what record the user is looking at and can provide more relevant answers, explanations, and guidance without requiring additional context from the user.
This context-aware approach allows AI to function as an integrated business assistant rather than a standalone chatbot, helping employees understand information and complete their work more efficiently throughout the platform.
Assistance Throughout Your Business
Ratals AI is available throughout Commerce and ERP, providing contextual assistance wherever work is being performed. Whether managing inventory, reviewing customer orders, researching purchasing activity, or configuring business settings, help is available directly within the page being viewed, keeping employees focused on their work instead of searching for answers elsewhere.
Every action performed throughout Ratals contributes to a single business data model. Customer activity, inventory levels, purchasing, sales, accounting, website traffic, product performance, and other operational data are stored together rather than being scattered across disconnected applications. Ratals AI uses this information to help users understand what is happening throughout their business using natural language instead of manually building reports.
Rather than searching multiple dashboards or exporting spreadsheets, users can ask questions in natural language and receive answers based on the information available to them through their assigned permissions.
Business Intelligence allows users to ask questions the same way they would ask another employee. AI can summarize information, identify trends, compare time periods, explain changes, and present the results in an easy-to-understand format without requiring knowledge of reporting tools or database queries.
Example questions might include:
Because Ratals stores business information within a single platform, AI can analyze relationships between different areas of the business. Instead of viewing sales, inventory, purchasing, customer activity, accounting, analytics, and marketing as separate reports, Ratals AI can connect information across modules to provide broader business insights.
For example, AI can explain how inventory shortages affected sales, identify which vendors supply your most profitable products, compare purchasing costs against product margins, or show how marketing campaigns influenced customer purchasing behavior over time. These insights come from connecting information that already exists throughout the platform rather than treating each department as an isolated system.
Ratals AI can generate summaries for specific time periods, departments, products, customers, vendors, or other areas of the business. These summaries help managers quickly understand what changed, why it changed, and which areas may require additional attention without manually reviewing dozens of reports.
Business Intelligence respects the same user permissions used throughout Ratals. Employees only receive information they are authorized to access, allowing managers, sales teams, customer service representatives, purchasing agents, warehouse staff, and executives to ask business questions appropriate to their role without exposing sensitive information.
Ask Questions Across Your Entire Business
Traditional business intelligence tools often require users to know where information is stored before they can find answers. Ratals AI allows users to ask questions naturally while connecting information across inventory, purchasing, accounting, analytics, customers, and sales to deliver insights that would otherwise require multiple reports and disconnected systems.
Understanding what happened is only part of running a successful business. Ratals AI helps identify trends, recognize seasonal patterns, and provide planning recommendations based on the historical information already stored throughout your business. Rather than simply reviewing past reports, AI helps managers understand where the business appears to be heading so they can make more informed decisions.
Business Forecasting is designed to support planning, not replace it. AI analyzes historical business activity and presents observations and recommendations that business owners and managers can use alongside their own experience and knowledge.
Ratals AI can review historical sales activity, compare time periods, identify seasonal buying patterns, and highlight products or categories that are gaining or losing momentum. These insights help businesses better understand how sales have changed over time and prepare for upcoming periods.
Managers can ask questions such as "How does this quarter compare to previous years?" or "Which products consistently perform best during the holiday season?" and receive answers based on historical business data.
AI can help identify products with increasing or declining demand, highlight slow-moving inventory, and summarize purchasing trends that may influence future inventory decisions. These insights help purchasing teams recognize patterns earlier and make more informed stocking decisions.
Based on historical activity, Ratals AI can suggest areas that may deserve additional attention. Recommendations might include reviewing declining product categories, investigating changes in customer purchasing behavior, monitoring inventory levels, evaluating pricing trends, or identifying operational patterns that may impact future performance.
Business conditions constantly change, and historical trends are only one part of the decision-making process. Ratals AI helps managers interpret historical data and recognize emerging patterns, providing additional context that supports planning while leaving business decisions in the hands of the people who know the organization best.
Plan Using Your Business History
Business Intelligence explains what has already happened. Business Forecasting helps identify trends and patterns that can support future planning. Together they give business owners a better understanding of where the business has been and where additional attention may be needed next.
Like every major component of the Ratals platform, Ratals AI is designed to be extensible. Developers can integrate AI into custom modules, extend existing workflows, and customize AI behavior using the same APIs and hook system available throughout the rest of the platform. This allows organizations to build AI-powered functionality without modifying the Ratals core.
Whether integrating AI into existing business processes, building custom administrative tools, or extending platform functionality, Ratals provides a consistent foundation that developers can build upon.
Ratals exposes its configured AI services through platform APIs, allowing developers to submit prompts, receive responses, and build custom AI-powered features using the organization's existing AI provider, Business Instructions, and platform configuration. This eliminates the need for every custom module to manage its own provider configuration or AI integration.
Developers can extend AI behavior using the same hook system available throughout Ratals. Hooks can modify prompts before they are submitted, inspect or process responses, add additional business context, or integrate AI into existing workflows while keeping customizations separate from the core platform.
Using hooks allows AI behavior to be customized while maintaining compatibility with future Ratals updates.
Every organization has unique business processes. Developers can incorporate Ratals AI into custom workflows, administrative pages, reports, or business-specific tools, combining AI responses with existing business logic to create solutions tailored to their organization's needs.
Because AI operates within the same platform as the rest of Ratals, custom solutions can leverage inventory, customers, orders, purchasing, accounting, analytics, and other business information while continuing to respect the user's assigned permissions.
Ratals separates the platform from the underlying AI provider. As support for additional providers is introduced, organizations will be able to adopt them without redesigning their custom modules or business workflows, helping protect long-term development investments as AI technology continues to evolve.
Build on the Same AI Foundation
Ratals AI is built on the same extensible architecture as the rest of the platform. Developers can integrate AI into custom modules and business workflows using familiar APIs and hooks while keeping customizations separate from the core software, making future updates simpler and easier to maintain.
Ratals AI follows the same permission system used throughout the rest of the platform. Every AI request is evaluated using the authenticated user's existing administrative permissions, ensuring AI only has access to the same areas of the software the user is already authorized to use.
Because Ratals permissions are managed at the administrative page level, AI automatically inherits those permissions. If a user has access to an administrative page, AI can assist with the records and information available on that page. If access to a page is restricted, AI cannot retrieve or expose information from that area of the platform.
When AI is used from within an administrative page, the current page and record are automatically included with the request. This allows AI to provide more accurate, context-aware assistance without requiring users to repeatedly explain what they are working on, while remaining limited to the information available through that page and the user's assigned permissions.
While user permissions determine what information AI can access, Business Instructions define how AI responds. This allows organizations to establish a consistent writing style, terminology, and business-specific guidance while ensuring AI only works with information users are authorized to access.
AI Uses the Same Permissions You Already Trust
Ratals AI does not introduce a separate security model or permission system. It simply inherits the existing administrative permissions already configured within the platform, allowing AI to provide contextual assistance while respecting the access rights assigned to every user.
Ratals maintains a detailed audit history throughout the platform, recording changes made to business records over time. Rather than simply showing the current state of a record, Ratals AI can help users understand what changed, when it changed, and who made the change by analyzing the platform's audit history.
Because audit history is stored as part of the business data, AI can answer questions that would otherwise require manually reviewing change logs or comparing historical records.
Users can ask AI questions about the history of a specific record, and Ratals AI can summarize the changes that have occurred over time. Whether reviewing an inventory item, customer account, order, product, purchasing record, or another business object, AI can explain what changed and present the information in a clear, easy-to-understand format.
Example questions might include:
Every audit entry records the affected record, the field that changed, the previous value, the new value, the user who made the change, and when the change occurred. Ratals AI can summarize this information, identify significant updates, and help users quickly understand the history of a record without manually reviewing individual audit entries.
When unexpected issues occur, audit history often provides valuable clues. Ratals AI can help identify configuration changes, inventory updates, pricing modifications, or other record changes that may be related to the problem being investigated. This allows administrators and managers to spend less time searching through audit logs and more time resolving the issue.
Audit history follows the same administrative permissions used throughout Ratals. Users can only access audit information for records they are authorized to view, ensuring historical information remains protected by the platform's existing security model.
Ask Your Audit History Questions
Instead of manually reviewing audit logs, simply ask Ratals AI what changed. AI can summarize historical activity, explain modifications, identify who made changes, and help connect events across your business while continuing to respect the same administrative permissions already configured within the platform.
Ratals AI is built into the same platform that manages your website, customers, inventory, orders, purchasing, accounting, analytics, and other business systems. Because AI may work with sensitive business information, privacy and security are treated as part of the underlying architecture rather than optional features added afterward.
AI access is controlled by the authenticated user's administrative page permissions, and only the information required to complete an authorized request is included in the AI context. Connecting an AI provider does not give AI unrestricted access to your business or direct access to your Ratals database.
Ratals AI follows the same administrative page permissions used throughout the platform. If a user is not authorized to access an administrative page, AI cannot retrieve or return the records and information managed through that page.
This allows organizations to make AI available across multiple departments while keeping customer information, inventory costs, accounting records, administrative settings, and other sensitive data limited to the employees who are authorized to access them.
Ratals sends the configured AI provider only the context needed to respond to the current request rather than automatically exposing every record stored within the platform. Depending on the feature being used, this context may include the current page, the record being viewed, selected content, Business Instructions, conversation history, or authorized business data required to answer the question.
AI providers never establish a direct connection to your Ratals database. Ratals prepares each authorized request, automatically excludes protected credentials, customer addresses, and other sensitive information that is not required to fulfill the request, then sends only the information necessary for the configured AI provider to generate a response.
Users should review the privacy, security, retention, and data-processing policies of each AI provider before enabling it for their organization. Because Ratals supports configurable AI providers, businesses can select the provider and model that best match their operational, privacy, and compliance requirements.
Ratals automatically excludes sensitive credentials from every AI request before it is sent to an AI provider. API keys, authentication tokens, payment gateway credentials, shipping carrier credentials, email service credentials, and other protected configuration values are never transmitted, regardless of the user's request or assigned permissions.
Ratals AI operates within a platform that already includes security controls for monitoring and protecting both administrative and customer activity. Ratals records recent IP activity used for DDoS protection and provides tools for managing blocked and allowed IP addresses.
The platform also tracks failed login attempts and declined card attempts, helping administrators identify suspicious activity, repeated access failures, and potential payment abuse. IP addresses retained for DDoS monitoring are automatically removed from the temporary tracking table after the configured retention period, which is limited to the previous 24 hours by default.
Security is not limited to preventing unauthorized access. Ratals also maintains an audit history of changes made throughout the platform, including the affected record, field changed, previous value, new value, user, and date. This gives administrators a historical record of activity and allows Ratals AI to help explain authorized changes without bypassing the permissions protecting the underlying data.
Ratals is self-hosted, allowing businesses to control the infrastructure and database where their operational information is stored. The configured AI provider is used only to process individual requests. Your business data remains in your Ratals database, and only the information necessary to answer an authorized request is sent to the configured provider.
Your Business Data Stays Under Your Control
Privacy and security are built into every AI interaction. Ratals keeps your business data under your control, respects existing administrative permissions, automatically protects sensitive credentials, prevents AI providers from directly accessing your database, and sends only the information required to fulfill an authorized request to the configured AI provider.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of nearly every business application. The difference is not simply which AI model is being used, but how well that AI understands the business it is supporting. Ratals AI was built to work from within the platform rather than alongside it, giving organizations an AI assistant that understands their content, data, workflows, and business processes without requiring employees to constantly provide additional context.
Instead of switching between separate AI applications, documentation, spreadsheets, reporting tools, and disconnected business systems, Ratals brings AI directly into the software employees already use every day. The result is an assistant that can help create content, optimize websites, answer business questions, explain historical changes, support customer service, and provide operational guidance from a single conversation.
Ratals AI is not an add-on that only answers general questions. It works throughout the platform, understanding the current administrative page, the record being viewed, the authenticated user's permissions, Business Instructions, and the organization's configured AI provider. This allows AI to provide assistance that is directly relevant to the work being performed instead of relying on users to manually describe their situation.
Because Ratals stores website content, ecommerce, inventory, purchasing, accounting, analytics, and customer information within a single platform, AI can connect information across the business without relying on complex integrations or disconnected databases. Rather than viewing each department independently, Ratals AI helps users understand how information relates across the organization.
As organizations expand, AI should become more valuable rather than more fragmented. Whether managing a website, operating an online store, tracking inventory, analyzing business performance, or forecasting future demand, Ratals AI grows alongside the platform, providing a consistent experience as additional modules are adopted.
Businesses are free to choose the AI providers that best meet their requirements while continuing to own their website, business data, and infrastructure. Because Ratals separates the platform from the AI provider, organizations retain the flexibility to adopt new models as technology evolves without redesigning the software that powers their business.
AI That Understands Your Business
Ratals AI isn't designed to replace your employees or your business expertise. It's designed to give every employee faster access to the knowledge, tools, and information already stored within your business. By combining a unified platform, a single data model, context-aware assistance, and configurable AI providers, Ratals transforms artificial intelligence from a standalone chatbot into an integrated part of how your business operates every day.
Getting started with Ratals AI begins with the same foundation as the rest of the platform. Install the free Ratals CMS to build and manage your website, then upgrade to Ratals AI whenever you're ready to add AI-powered content creation, business intelligence, and operational assistance. Because AI is built directly into the Ratals platform, there's no migration, no separate application to integrate, and no need to rebuild your website as your business grows.
To compare editions and see which Ratals products are included at each level, visit our pricing page.