Admin Guide
Plan, launch, and govern Siesta AI for an organization: identity, teams, access, connections, tools, agents, workflows, monitoring, and audit evidence.
Use this guide as an operating manual for running Siesta AI inside an organization. It is written for owners and admins who need to make access, identity, connection, tool, agent, workflow, and audit decisions before teams start using production assistants.
The important rule is simple: configure the tenant before inviting broad usage. Siesta AI can keep resources private, share them with selected teams, allow organization-wide use, require write permissions, disable connection types, force tool functions into confirmation mode, and record operational changes in audit logs. Admin work is the process of choosing those defaults deliberately.
Browse by Outcome
Prepare the organization
Assess readiness, set realistic expectations, and establish accountable ownership before configuration begins.
Plan the rollout
Select initiatives, govern the lifecycle, run an executable kick-off, and establish the delivery cadence.
Configure access and data
Define teams, connections, source ownership, permissions, and the boundary between use and administration.
Secure and govern AI
Apply threat modelling, tool governance, approval, auditability, safety, incident, and model controls.
Deploy the platform
Review deployment models, reference architecture, networking, identity, secrets, IaC, and lifecycle controls.
Operate and review
Monitor production behavior, report outcomes, own blockers, and make evidence-backed improvement decisions.
What Admins Actually Own
| Area | Admin decision | Failure if skipped |
|---|---|---|
| Organization | Plan, API keys, SSO, security switches, public features, recordings, and Entra sync | Users join the wrong way, public features are enabled without review, or keys remain unowned |
| Teams & users | Who belongs to each access boundary and who can administer it | Agents and connections get shared too broadly |
| Connections | Which providers are enabled, who owns credentials, and which functions need confirmation | Agents can read or write through the wrong external account |
| Data | Which systems are authoritative, what is ingested, who can use collections, and how sources are tested | Stale, confidential, or irrelevant content becomes agent context |
| Access policies | Private, team, organization, use, and edit/write permissions | Users cannot find resources, or too many users can change them |
| Agents & workflows | Production behavior, data, tools, prompts, approvals, and rollback path | Workflows change records or agents answer from the wrong context |
| Monitoring | Tool Executions, Audit Log, conversations, feedback, usage, and token limits | Incidents have no clear owner or evidence trail |
Backend Rules To Plan Around
- Access-controlled resources are effectively private unless an access mode or policy shares them.
- Creators can access their own resources; Owner/Admin mode can review organization resources where the role allows it.
- Team access distinguishes use from write/edit. Give edit rights only to people who can safely change prompts, tools, workflow logic, or access.
- Connection type governance can disable a provider for the whole organization.
- Function governance uses the strictest effective setting: enabled, enabled with confirmation, or disabled.
- REST and MCP tools can expose custom functions. Treat their schemas, headers, and write behavior as production contracts.
- Token limits are managed per model connection at organization, team, and user level.
- Tool executions record function status and approval state. Audit logs record configuration changes with entity, user, timestamp, correlation ID, and changed properties.
Recommended Setup Order
- Configure Organization: General, Api Keys, Settings, and Security. SSO and Entra synchronization are under Security.
- Choose an onboarding method: manual invitations, Microsoft Entra synchronization, SSO, approved domains, or a combination.
- Create pilot teams and assign users who need the same agents, data, and tools.
- Add and govern the required connections, including function confirmations and token limits.
- Create and govern data collections, verify documents/chunks, and define collection access.
- Prepare agents for the pilot team with explicit prompts, data, Shared Tools, Private Tools, access settings, and Platform Tools.
- Publish workflows after safe testing of read and write actions on non-production records.
- Monitor Tool Executions, Audit Log, conversations, feedback, and usage after rollout.
Common Admin Problems
| Problem | Check first | Usually fixed by |
|---|---|---|
| A user cannot see an agent or workflow | Team membership, access mode, organization access, and team policy | Add the user to the right team or grant team Can Use access |
| An agent cannot call a tool | Connection sharing, organization connection policy, function access mode, and private connection ownership | Share the connection, enable the provider, or assign the user's private connection |
| A write action waits for approval | Function access is set to confirmation | Approve the execution, or intentionally lower the function access if the action is safe |
| A shared model connection burns too many tokens | Connection token limits and agent/workflow usage | Set org/team/user limits and split high-volume automations into a reviewed connection |
| SSO users land in the wrong tenant | SSO config, domain linking, invitation state, and Entra group sync | Fix SSO metadata/domain ownership before inviting more users |
| A workflow changed the wrong record | Arguments recorded in Tool Executions, workflow node parameters, previous node output, and approval status | Pause sharing, tighten parameters, require approval, and retest |
| Public chat or sharing is unavailable | Organization Security feature flags | Enable the feature intentionally, then review privacy and retention settings |
Rollout Phases
Start with one pilot team, one or two approved connections, and one production-quality agent. Do not start with every integration, every department, and organization-wide access. After the pilot, expand by team and reuse the same review loop: access, tools, approvals, test data, Tool Executions, audit evidence, and owner sign-off.
Move advanced work into a second phase: REST/MCP tool design, external API automation, workflow webhooks, realtime agents, detailed token economics, evaluation loops, and connection-specific governance.
Admin Readiness Checklist
- Identity: SSO, manual invitations, Entra sync, and approved domains have a clear owner.
- Teams: every production team has a business owner and a defined access boundary.
- Connections: credentials are named, scoped, and owned; unused keys are deleted.
- Data: each production collection has an owner, approved selectors, tested chunks, an access policy, and a sync/retirement plan.
- Function approvals: write, delete, publish, permission, and customer-data actions require confirmation unless explicitly approved.
- Agents: every production agent has a purpose, prompt, model connection, data sources, tools, access policy, and test conversation.
- Workflows: write-capable workflows are tested on safe records and have a rollback path.
- Monitoring: admins know where to review Tool Executions, Audit Log, conversations, feedback, usage, and token limits.