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AI Program Manager - Introduction

Sebastian Salla
Updated

Design, publish, and manage a complete security awareness training program for your organization through a guided conversation with an AI assistant.

Beta: The AI Program Manager is currently in Beta. Functionality and wording may change as the feature evolves.

Note: The AI Program Manager is an Enterprise subscription feature, available to Platform Admins and Super Admins. If your tenant is not on an Enterprise plan, the launcher in the navigation bar will appear locked.

Contents

What is the AI Program Manager?

The AI Program Manager is a conversational assistant that builds an entire security awareness training program for you. Instead of configuring campaigns one by one, you describe your goals in a chat window and the AI recommends a complete program - a set of objectives and the phishing and training campaigns needed to achieve them - tailored to your organization.

The AI Program Manager already knows your organization from your AI Knowledge Source, including your industry, the systems your employees use, and the compliance frameworks that apply to you. Because of this, the conversation focuses on scoping your program and capturing any specific directives you have, rather than asking you to re-enter information the platform already holds.

The experience is split into two panels:

  • AI Chat (left): where you talk to the AI Program Manager and answer its questions.
  • Program (right): where your recommended objectives and campaigns appear and update in real time as the conversation progresses, and where you complete each step required to publish.

Once your program is published, the AI Program Manager can take ownership of it - keeping recurring campaigns running, maintaining cadence, and adapting the program as your organization changes.

Requirements and access

Access to the AI Program Manager is governed by three rules, all enforced on the server:

  • Subscription: Your tenant must be on an Enterprise subscription.
  • Role: Only Platform Admins and Super Admins can use the AI Program Manager. Report-only and other restricted roles will not see the launcher.
  • White-label tenants: When the platform is accessed through a white-label domain, only the Platform Super Admin can open the AI Program Manager.

Before you can publish a program, two AI prerequisites must also be in place: an AI Knowledge Source and AI-Powered Employee Profiling. Both can be deployed or enabled directly from within the AI Program Manager (see Step 2 - Program prerequisites).

Opening the AI Program Manager

The AI Program Manager is launched from the robot icon in the top navigation bar, available on every platform page.

  • If your tenant has Enterprise functionality, the icon is highlighted in blue and opens the AI Program Manager when clicked.
  • If your tenant is not on an Enterprise plan, the icon appears greyed out and locked.
  • Once you have published a program, the icon turns green to show that a program is currently live.

Click the icon to open the AI Program Manager modal. The first time you open it, the AI greets you and the conversation begins. If you have a saved draft or an active published program, it is restored automatically so you can pick up where you left off.

Step 1 - Scoping your program

The program is built through a short wizard shown across the top of the window. Step 1, Program Recommendations, is where you describe what you want and the AI assembles a recommended program.

To get started, the AI asks whether you would like a program that combines phishing and training, training only, or phishing only. You can answer using the quick-reply buttons or by typing your own message. Press Enter to send, or Shift+Enter to add a new line.

As you chat, the right-hand panel fills in two sections:

  • Objectives: the goals the AI recommends your program should achieve.
  • Campaigns: the phishing and training campaigns that make up the program.

Each campaign is shown as a card with a type badge - Phishing, Training, or Phishing + Training. Click a card to expand it and review its details:

  • Frequency: how often the campaign runs, and how content is chosen each time it occurs.
  • Scope: who the campaign is intended to reach.
  • Expected outcome: what the campaign is designed to improve.
  • Phishing content / Training content: the emails or modules used. Where you see "AI-powered selection (auto-phish)" or "AI-powered selection (auto-train)", the platform intelligently selects the most appropriate email or module for each employee at the moment of delivery. To learn more, see Auto-Phish & Auto-Train - Introduction.

Keep refining the program through conversation until you are happy with the recommended objectives and campaigns. You can ask the AI to add, remove, or adjust campaigns at any time. When at least one campaign has been recommended, click Next to continue.

Tip: To start over at any point during setup, click Reset chat at the top of the chat panel. This clears the conversation and your saved draft, and returns you to a fresh greeting.

Step 2 - Program prerequisites

This step confirms that the conditions needed for your campaigns to run reliably are in place. Each item appears as a card showing whether it is satisfied or needs attention.

  • Email allowlisting: Allowlisting tells your mail provider to let CanIPhish simulations through, so they reach inboxes instead of being blocked or sent to spam. If allowlisting cannot be confirmed, follow our allowlisting guidance and then tick the confirmation box.
  • Directory syncing: A Google or Microsoft 365 directory sync keeps your employee lists current automatically as people join and leave. This is optional - if no sync is found, you can acknowledge that you will manage employees manually and continue.
  • AI Knowledge Source (required): This is a profile of your organization that lets the AI tailor simulations and training to you. If one is not deployed, click Deploy Knowledge Source to start an AI-powered scan of your organization. The scan runs in the background, so you do not need to wait for it to finish - once it has started, you can continue with setup.
  • AI-Powered Employee Profiling (required): This lets the AI factor individual employee risk into your program. If it is off, click Enable AI Employee Profiling to turn it on with a single click. To learn more, see AI-Powered Employee Profiling.

When every requirement is met and any acknowledgements are ticked, click Next.

Note: If all prerequisites are already satisfied when you reach this point, the prerequisites step is skipped automatically and you move straight to employee mapping.

Step 3 - Mapping employees to campaigns

Next, you decide who each campaign targets by assigning one or more employee lists to it. Each campaign card includes a "Should contain" hint, based on the campaign's scope, to guide your choice.

There are two ways to assign a list:

  • Drag and drop: drag a list from Available Employee Lists at the top of the panel onto a campaign.
  • Dropdown: pick a list from the "Or add a list" dropdown on the campaign card.

You can assign multiple lists to a campaign, and remove a list by clicking the x on its chip. Every campaign must have at least one employee list assigned before you can continue.

If you do not yet have the lists you need, create them in the Employees area. Your progress in the AI Program Manager is saved, so you can create lists in another tab and then click the Refresh button next to "Available Employee Lists" to pull them in - there is no need to reload the page.

Tip: If your program includes a new-employee onboarding campaign, assign a list of new starters (or everyone, if you want all employees treated as new to begin with). When directory syncing is configured, date-based directory filters can keep a new-starter list current automatically.

Once every campaign has a list, click Next.

Step 4 - Program management and schedule

The final step is where you confirm how the AI Program Manager should operate your program and when it should run. It has two parts: Management Settings and the Program Schedule. A Program Summary tab is also available so you can review the full program - objectives, campaigns, and their assigned employee lists - before publishing.

Management settings

  • Let the AI Program Manager run this program: When enabled (the default), the AI Program Manager takes ownership of day-to-day operations - keeping recurring campaigns active, maintaining cadence, and making sure simulations and training stay on schedule. While this is on, the campaigns owned by the program are protected from manual edits.
  • Let the program adapt as your organization changes: When enabled (the default), the AI Program Manager keeps learning about your organization and can adjust existing campaigns and configure related platform settings as your context evolves. Significant changes still require your approval. This option requires program ownership to be enabled.

Important: Turning off "Let the AI Program Manager run this program" when you publish or update is permanent. Once the AI hands the program back, its campaigns can be changed manually in ways the program manager cannot track, so it will not be able to resume managing the program afterwards.

Program schedule

Expand the Program Schedule panel to control when the program runs, so campaigns are delivered during business hours:

  • Start date: the day campaigns begin delivery on or after. This defaults to tomorrow.
  • Program length: run indefinitely, for 1, 2, or 4 years from the start date, or until a custom end date you choose. A custom end date must be at least one month after the start date.
  • Time zone: used to keep campaigns within business hours.

When your program contains phishing campaigns, those campaigns are automatically spread across several business days rather than all landing at once.

Publishing your program

When you are happy with everything, click Publish Program on the final step.

After publishing, campaign creation begins immediately. It may take 1-2 minutes for the campaigns to appear in your campaigns table, and you will need to refresh the page to see them. The status indicator at the bottom of the window changes from Draft to Published, and the robot icon in the navigation bar turns green.

The AI Program Manager then follows up in the chat to confirm the program is live, explain the changes it can still help you make, and recommend a sensible next step from your setup checklist.

Note: You must have a sender mail service configured before publishing, so that campaigns can be delivered. If one is missing, you will be prompted to add it.

Managing a published program

When you reopen the AI Program Manager after publishing, it opens in its published view: the chat remains on the left, and the right panel shows two tabs - Management Settings and Program Summary. The setup wizard is no longer shown.

Making changes through chat

You can continue to refine your live program through conversation - for example, by agreeing changes to a campaign's training content. Changes discussed in chat are not applied immediately. When a change is pending, an Update Program button appears, and the change is applied to your live campaigns only when you click it.

Updating management settings

Adjusting your management settings or schedule in the published view also surfaces the Update Program button. Clicking it records your changes against the stored program. Management updates adjust the program's settings - they do not re-create your campaigns.

Deactivating a program

To stop a live program, click Deactivate Program. This archives all AI-managed campaigns and resets the AI Program Manager back to a fresh conversation so you can design a new program. Archival happens in the background and may take several minutes to clear from your dashboard.

Important: Deactivating a program cannot be undone.

Saving and resuming drafts

Your progress is saved automatically as you work. The AI Program Manager remembers your conversation, the recommended program, the step you reached, your employee mapping, and your management and schedule selections.

This means you can close the window and return later - even on a different page or after reloading - and continue exactly where you left off. When you reopen the AI Program Manager, it restores your in-progress draft, or your active published program if you have one. To discard a draft and begin again, use Reset chat.

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