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Windy contacts your team in Slack to collect feedback, send Pulse surveys, assist with 1:1 preparation, and help run performance reviews. You can also start conversations with Windy in Slack or the Windmill Dashboard. This article explains how to interact with Windy.

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Where you can talk to Windy

You always talk to the same Windy, independent of where you start the conversation. Windy has the same product knowledge, the same access to your connected systems, and the same ability to take actions on your behalf in every surface. Your permissions and your company’s enabled features control this access. Today, you can chat with Windy in:
  • Slack — DM Windy directly
  • The Windmill homepage — Use the Ask Windy a question box at the top of your homepage
  • Ask Windy — Start a new chat or open your chat history from the left navigation
  • Employee profiles — Chat with Windy in context about a specific teammate
  • Pulse pages — Ask Windy about pulse results and trends
The main difference between surfaces is where the conversation starts. Use Slack for an ongoing conversation or to reply to a Windy message. Use a platform chat when you are in the Windmill Dashboard and want an answer or action without a change of tools. You can chat with Windy in your direct-message conversation with the Windy app. To start a new conversation, mention @Windy in that direct message. Add the Windmill Slack app to public or private channels only when you want Windmill to read channel context. Windy does not respond to mentions or questions in those channels.

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What you can ask Windy

In any chat surface, you can ask Windy to:
  • Answer Windmill product questions (“How do peer reviews work?”)
  • Look up information about your people and team (recent feedback, 1:1 history, performance review status)
  • Pull from your connected systems and Windmill context (meetings, conversations, documents, tasks, calendar, code)
  • Take actions on your behalf, such as giving or collecting feedback, adding 1:1 agenda items, or working through performance review tasks
If you are not sure whether Windy can do something, ask Windy.

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Always reply in threads in Slack

When Windy sends you a message in Slack, reply in that message thread. This keeps your response with the correct request or task.
1

Open the message actions

Move the pointer over Windy’s message.
2

Open the thread

Select the Reply in thread icon.
3

Write your response

Enter your response in the thread.
4

Send your response

Send the message from the thread.
Do not send a top-level message as a response to an earlier Windy message. The top-level message does not answer the earlier request. Windy will ask you to return to the correct thread.

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What to expect from Windy

Depending on which features your team has activated, Windy will reach out for different things:

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Feedback requests

Windy asks you for feedback on teammates you worked with recently. These requests can reference specific meetings, projects, or activities that you completed together. Windy prompted feedback usually runs once or twice per week. The amount of outreach can vary.

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Recaps

Windy generates a weekly list of your activities from connected systems such as GitHub, Jira, and Google Drive. If your company enables recap confirmation, Windy sends the recap to you for review before the recap is final. Frequency: Weekly. The default schedule is Friday at 3 PM in each employee’s local time. An admin can select a different day and time.

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Pulse surveys

Windy asks about your work, team, and company. A Pulse can contain one or more questions. Windmill recommends two to five questions for a focused Pulse. Frequency: The Pulse schedule can be manual, one-time, recurring, or based on an employee start date. Recurring schedules can use daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly intervals.

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Agenda requests

Windy can contact you before 1:1s to ask for agenda items. Windy can also give you a summary of items from previous 1:1s. If you enabled last-minute reminders, Windy can send a short reminder approximately 10 minutes before the meeting. This reminder identifies recent agenda changes.

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Performance reviews

Windy can assist with performance reviews — particularly self reviews, upward reviews, and peer reviews. You can also ask Windy about your tasks for an active review cycle. For example:
What do I need to do for my current review cycle?
Windy returns a complete list of your pending and completed performance review todos—self reviews, upward reviews, peer nominations, peer feedback, manager reviews, and calibrations—with clickable links to each task in Windmill.

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Language support

Windmill’s interface is only available in English. However, Windy is powered by leading LLMs and works well in most languages. When Windy reaches out, questions will be in English—but you can respond in any language you want.

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How often Windy reaches out

The number of messages depends on the features and schedules that your company enables. Feedback requests, recaps, Pulse surveys, 1:1 notifications, and performance reviews can each cause separate messages. An Admin or HR Admin can enable or disable Windy prompted feedback and select the employees who receive prompts in Settings > Feedback. You can manage your personal 1:1 notification settings in Windy features.

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Starting conversations with Windy

You do not have to wait for Windy to contact you. You can start a conversation in a direct message with Windy or from a Windmill Dashboard chat. The examples below show Slack phrasing, but the same requests work in the Windmill Dashboard.

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Give unsolicited feedback

Open a direct message with Windy and send this type of request:
@Windy, I want to give feedback to [person’s name].
Windy will guide you through providing feedback to your teammate.

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Request feedback

You can ask Windy to collect feedback about you. If you are a manager, you can request feedback about anyone in your reporting line, including skip-level reports. You can also limit the request to a specific topic.
@Windy, request feedback about me from [person’s name].
@Windy, request feedback about [report’s name] from [person’s name].
@Windy, request feedback about [report’s name] from [person’s name] about [topic].
Windy records the request and uses it to prioritize future outreach. The request is best effort and does not guarantee an immediate message or completed response.
You can give feedback to multiple people at once. Ask Windy. They can assist with that.
In addition to feedback, Windy can answer questions about your connected systems:
  • Research across meetings
  • Conversations
  • Documents
  • Tasks
  • Calendar
  • Code
  • Connected data

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Add agenda items for 1:1s

You can ask Windy to add an item to an upcoming 1:1. You can also ask about previous 1:1s, notes, or action items.
@Windy, add [topic] to my next 1:1 with [person’s name].
See 1:1s for more information about agendas, notes, and meeting history.

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Use skills

Skills give Windy reusable instructions for common workflows. You can create a skill in the Windmill Dashboard and ask Windy to use it in a chat. See Skills for setup instructions and examples.

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Reference people, Pulses, and documents

In the Windmill Dashboard, type @ in the chat box to reference a specific person, Pulse, or Company Knowledge document instead of describing it in words. Pick a result from the list to insert it as a chip in your message. Mentioning a Company Knowledge document tells Windy to read that document in full before responding. Windy already knows every document’s title and “When to use” note without a mention, so only mention one when you want to guarantee it gets read in full rather than leaving that choice to Windy. See Sharing and access for how a document’s folder controls who can mention it. This is separate from / for Skills, which trigger a saved set of instructions instead of referencing a specific person, Pulse, or document.

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Next steps

Learn how to add Slack channels as context for recaps, feedback workflows, 1:1s, and reports.