This guide explains how to set up, configure, and manage the AI Scenario Assistant for your organization. It covers both supported use cases: Refi and Purchase.

Before you begin

Make sure the following are in place before you configure the AI Scenario Assistant:

• An active Total Expert subscription with AI Assistant features enabled.
• The AI Scenario Assistant enabled for your organization. A single enablement covers both the Refi and Purchase use cases — there's no separate step for Purchase. Contact your Total Expert representative to confirm this is turned on for your org.
• Product and Pricing Engine (PPE) integration configured for each loan officer who will use the assistant.
• One of the following, depending on your use case:
  • Customer Intelligence enabled, for Journey-based automation that uses rate alert triggers (Refi).
  • Purchase-readiness or lead signal configuration (Purchase).
• Engage SMS integration configured, if you want to deliver presentations by SMS.
• Office 365 connected for any loan officer who should be bookable from the presentation. For more information, see "Appointment booking" in the Feature Capabilities documentation.

Set up permissions

Before anyone in your organization can use the AI Scenario Assistant, provision the following two Total Expert permissions.

Note: The display names for these permissions use the "AI Scenario Assistant" name. However, the underlying permission names retain a legacy "Refi" prefix (for example, RefiAgentAdmin). This naming is intentional — both permissions apply to the Refi and Purchase use cases, and no separate permission set exists for Purchase.

AI Scenario Assistant: Admin (RefiAgentAdmin)

AI Scenario Assistant: User (RefiAgentLoanOfficer)

Related permissions

Depending on which features you use, you may also need to provision these permissions:

To provision permissions

1. Add both the AI Scenario Assistant: Admin (RefiAgentAdmin) and AI Scenario Assistant: User (RefiAgentLoanOfficer) permissions to your organization's Super Admin role.
2. Add the AI Scenario Assistant: Admin permission to any Admin or Marketing Admin user roles that should view Scenario Assistant runs (Refi and Purchase) across the organization and manage configuration settings.
3. Add the AI Scenario Assistant: User permission to any user roles that should be able to run the assistant and edit results for their own contacts, for either use case.

Note: Users with the AI Scenario Assistant: User permission see only their own runs and can't access the configuration view.

Configure the AI Scenario Assistant

Configuration settings apply at the organization level, across both the Refi and Purchase use cases. Only users with the AI Scenario Assistant: Admin permission can access these settings.

To configure the assistant, go to AI Assistants > Configuration.

Note: Configuration changes take effect immediately on existing presentations — you don't need to re-run a scenario for a change to appear.

Turn Consumer Chat on or off

Consumer Chat is a widget that appears on consumer-facing presentations. It's turned off by default.

To make it available to consumers, an admin must explicitly turn it on for the organization. This setting applies only to your organization and doesn't affect other organizations.

Set presentation disclaimers

You can override the built-in legal footer copy on presentations with your own disclaimer text. There are two separate fields: one for Refi and one for Purchase.

• Each field accepts up to 5,000 characters.
• If you leave a field unset (the default), the presentation uses the built-in footer copy.
• If you set a field, your organization's text replaces the built-in footer copy for that use case, and takes precedence over the legacy branding-snippet disclaimer.

Supported formatting:

• Bold text, using **bold**.
• Hyperlinks, written as [anchor text](https://url). Only http:// and https:// links are supported.
• Merge tags: {company}, {borrower_name}, {nmls_id}, and {loan_officer_name}.
• Multiple independent links in a single field — for example, a pipe-separated row of legal links.

HTML markup isn't supported.

To enter formatting, use the editor's Bold button, the Link button (which prompts you for a URL), and the Insert tag dropdown.

Note: Disclaimer text is retrieved each time a presentation loads, based on the run's use case. If the configuration can't be read for any reason, the presentation falls back to the built-in footer copy instead of showing an empty footer.

Important (v1 limitation): You can set only one disclaimer field per use case. Per-state disclaimer variants aren't supported.

Configure the Equal Housing logo

The Equal Housing logo isn't configured from this screen. Instead, go to Organization Settings > Marketing Settings > EH Logo and select Equal Housing Lender, Equal Housing Opportunity, or None.

• The selected logo appears in the presentation footer, using official platform artwork.
• Logo settings are retrieved each time a presentation loads, so a change appears the next time a presentation loads — no additional sync step is required.
• This setting applies to the whole organization; there's no per-user override.
• If you select None, no logo or placeholder appears in the footer.

Configure borrower consent cards

Consent cards control the opt-in prompts shown to consumers on the presentation, including the language consumers agree to when granting SMS or voice AI consent.

To remove consent cards from the presentation entirely, clear both checkboxes.

To apply your changes, select Save configuration. Changes apply across your organization.

Note: When a consumer submits consent, Total Expert stores the exact language shown at the time of consent, so the audit record always reflects what that consumer actually saw. If an admin later changes the disclosure language, that change is automatically applied to any consumer presentation where the associated contact hasn't yet given consent.

Note: The consent prompt appears after a consumer scrolls into the presentation — not when the presentation first loads.

Set a monthly run limit for individual users

You can limit how many Scenario Assistant runs an individual user can generate each calendar month. This is an optional governance control for your team, not a billing mechanism.

• This setting is available on the AI Assistant Settings tab for an individual loan officer.
• By default, users have an unlimited number of runs.
• Only a user with the AI Scenario Assistant: Admin permission can set this limit, by accessing the individual user's account and updating their AI Assistant Settings.

Recommendation: Leave this setting unlimited for most users. Apply a limit only to individual users who appear to be misusing the feature.

When a user reaches their limit, any further run attempts are blocked for that user only — other users in your organization aren't affected.

This limit applies to all three ways a run can be created:

• A single run.
• A batch or bulk run.
• An edit re-run (regenerating a presentation from the edit screen).

Run the Scenario Assistant manually

You can start the Scenario Assistant either from a contact list or from an individual contact record.

To run the assistant from a contact list

1. Sign in to your Total Expert organization at totalexpert.net.
2. Go to Contacts > Contact List (or Leads, for the Purchase use case).
3. Select the checkbox next to one or more contacts or leads.
4. Select AI Assistant in the action bar at the top of the list.
5. Select Scenario Assistant, then select either Refi or Purchase.

   Note: You must select a use case explicitly — the assistant never runs automatically. If you selected multiple contacts, the use case you choose applies to the entire batch.

6. Confirm the run.

The assistant analyzes the selected contacts or leads in the background. You receive an in-platform notification when each scenario finishes generating.

To run the assistant from an individual record

1. Open the contact record or lead you want to generate a scenario for.
2. Select AI Assistant in the record view.
3. Select Scenario Assistant, choose either Refi or Purchase, and confirm.

The assistant starts running for that individual.

Tip: Use the Scenario filter and the Refi/Purchase badge in the runs list to distinguish between use cases. Runs created before the Purchase use case was introduced display a Refi badge.

Review and edit a generated scenario

1. In the AI Assistant management view, go to the Scenario Assistant section.
2. Find the contact or lead whose scenario you want to review. Completed scenarios show the number of scenarios generated and their status.
3. Select the scenario to view its rationale, strategy, priced scenarios, and a preview of the consumer-facing presentation.
4. To make changes, select Open Edit.
5. In the chat panel on the left side of the edit screen, describe the change you want. For example:
   • Refi: a different property value, cash-out amount, or debt to consolidate.
   • Purchase: a different purchase price, down payment amount, or loan program.
6. Submit your prompt.

The assistant regenerates the presentation based on your input, and a progress indicator displays while it works. Review the new version — Total Expert retains multiple versions for comparison, and the consumer's stable link always resolves to the latest version you've sent.

When you're satisfied with the presentation, send it to the consumer by SMS (as a short URL) or by email through a Journey task.

Note: If you ask the assistant a question instead of requesting a change, it answers in the same panel without creating a new version.

Set up Journey-based automation

The Scenario Assistant integrates with Total Expert Journeys to support both human-reviewed and fully automated workflows, for either use case.

Think of a Journey as the orchestration layer: a deterministic trigger or condition starts an AI Scenario Assistant run, which then triggers downstream actions. Consumer engagement with a presentation can itself act as a Journey trigger — for example, to start a follow-up action based on how a consumer interacts with their presentation.

In the Journey builder, the action you'll use is called Run AI Scenario Assistant. This action includes a use-case selector for Refi or Purchase.

Set up a human-in-the-loop Journey

Use this flow when you want a loan officer to review and approve a scenario before it's sent to the consumer.

1. Create or edit a Journey in Total Expert.
2. Set the trigger condition. For example:
   • Refi: Customer Intelligence – Rate Alert Created.
   • Purchase: a purchase-readiness or lead-scoring trigger.
3. Add a Run AI Scenario Assistant step immediately after the trigger, and select the Refi or Purchase use case.
4. Add an Assign Task step after that. Configure the task to instruct the loan officer to review the generated scenario and make any needed edits.
5. Add a Send Email step after the task step. Configure the email to include the presentation link, using {{ refi_agent.report_url }} or {{ purchase_agent.report_url }}.
6. Set the Send Email step to trigger automatically when the task is marked complete.
7. Activate the Journey.

When the trigger fires, the assistant runs, the task is assigned to the loan officer, and the presentation email sends automatically once the task is marked complete.

Note: Task completion is the loan officer's signal that the presentation is approved for delivery. The Journey doesn't advance to the email step until the task is marked complete.

Set up a fully autonomous Journey

Use this flow when you want presentations delivered without loan officer review — typically for high-volume campaigns where speed matters more than individual review.

1. Create or edit a Journey in Total Expert.
2. Set the trigger condition, as described above, for your use case.
3. Add a Run AI Scenario Assistant step, and select the use case.
4. Add a Send Email step immediately after — don't add a task assignment step.
5. Configure the email to include the presentation link.
6. Activate the Journey.

When the trigger fires, the assistant runs and the presentation sends automatically to the consumer, without loan officer review.

Important: Because this flow sends presentations without loan officer review, make sure your organization's compliance review process accounts for automated advertising or solicitation delivery.

Known issues

• Journeys created in the new Journey editor can return an error (HTTP 500) if you open them in the Classic Journey Editor. Build and edit a given Journey in the same editor you created it in.