PPM Administrator Help System

Ask Dela

Ask Dela is Deltek’s AI-powered chat assistant.

With Ask Dela, you can ask natural language questions about PPMA to find information and navigate the product more efficiently. Ask Dela follows the context of your conversation and remembers the subject of your questions. It is powered by Dela, Deltek’s underlying AI platform for in-application, chat-based assistance

Installing PPMA also installs Ask Dela, but you can choose whether to use or enable it for your product. After installation, Ask Dela remains unavailable until you apply the required database script and complete the setup enable it.

Attention: If you are using EPM SA, run the standalone Ask Dela installer to add Ask Dela to your PPM product. For more information, see the Deltek PPM Ask Dela Installation Guide.

Running Database Scripts

After you install Ask Dela, the Ask Dela Chat Web Service is installed in the C:\Program Files\Deltek\PPMDelaChat\ folder. The installation adds the database scripts required to enable Ask Dela in PPMA.

Attention: This feature is available for both SQL Server and Oracle database connections. For more details, see the Run Database Scripts topic.

Enabling Ask Dela

You can enable Ask Dela by configuring the Chat Service URL field on the Ask Dela tab of the Communication menu and the Deployment and Model settings in the Embedding section of the AI tab on the System form.

Ask Dela Chat Window

After Ask Dela is enabled, the Ask Dela icon displays in the upper-right corner of the PPMA, before the Settings and Help icons. The icon is consistent across supported PPM products.

When you click the Ask Dela icon, the Ask Dela chat window displays in the bottom-right corner of the PPMA screen. The chat interface is uniform in layout and design across all PPM products.

When you open the chat window, Dela greets you with: "Hi, I'm Dela. How can I help?"

If you are not satisfied with Dela's response, you can click the Regenerate icon to prompt a different answer. If no better response is available, Dela replies with: "I wasn't able to generate a better response. Want to try rephrasing?"

The following table describes the fields available in the chat window.

Field Description
Expand or Dock Click this icon to expand the Ask Dela chat window or dock it back to its default right location.
Close Click this button to close the chat window.
New Chat Click this icon to clear the current conversation and start a new chat.
Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down Click the corresponding button to send feedback on Dela's AI-generated responses directly within the chat interface. Each response includes a thumbs up and thumbs down option, allowing you to indicate whether the response was helpful.

When you click thumbs up, your positive feedback is recorded, indicating that the response was helpful.

When you click thumbs down, you are prompted to select one or more reasons from the following predefined options:
  • Incorrect or inaccurate
  • Incomplete or missing details
  • Unclear or difficult to understand
  • Not relevant to my question
  • Lacks sufficient detail or guidance
  • User-defined response

You can select multiple options before submitting your feedback. This helps identify areas where Dela's responses can be improved.

Your feedback is saved for review and improvement purposes:
  • For thumbs up, the feedback is recorded with no additional message.
  • For thumbs down, the feedback is recorded along with your selected reason(s).
Regenerate If you are not satisfied with Dela's response, you can click this icon to prompt a different answer. If no better response is available, Dela displays the previous response.
Copy Each chat message includes a Copy icon, allowing you to copy message text directly to your clipboard. Copied content is formatted for easy pasting into Word documents without formatting issues. A check icon briefly displays to confirm the copy was successful.
Delete Click this icon to delete individual conversations. Deleting a conversation removes both the question and the response from the message box. A confirmation prompt displays before deletion to prevent accidental removal.
Message Box Enter your message.
Submit Click this button to submit your message to Dela, prompting it to generate a response based on your input.
Disclaimer At any point during your session, you can click this link at the bottom of the chat window to review the full About Ask Dela information, which outlines the AI-generated nature of the chat and the applicable product terms. Use the back button to return to your conversation at any time.