Meet Emma - your AI Assistant in Applicaa

What you can do from launch — Monday, 15 June 2026

Ask anything, get grounded answers. Emma answers how-to and "where do I find…" questions using the Applicaa help centre, now powered by an upgraded AI model hosted in the EU.

Check your school's setup. Emma can read any of your school-wide settings and tell you how something is currently configured; no more hunting through menus.

Make documented changes, safely. Emma can change around 150 school settings and 188 application-form options — but only ones documented in a help article, and only after showing you exactly what will change and getting your confirmation.

Tell us how she's doing. Every answer has a thumbs up / thumbs down; your feedback goes straight to the team improving Emma.

Rolling out over the next three weeks

We're releasing Emma's hands-on skills in waves, so there's something new to try each week:

Wave	What unlocks	What you'll be able to do	Release date
Meetings & Interviews	Full meeting management	Set up meeting sessions and time slots, add students, allocate slots automatically, send invitations and reminders, manage notes and exports.	Thursday 18 June 2026
Reporting & analytics	Ask your data questions	Ask questions like "how many applicants chose Biology this year?" and get answers from your school's data.	Thursday 18 June 2026
Events	Open days, tours & registration	Create and publish events, build registration forms, manage tickets and waiting lists, email or remind guests in bulk, track attendance and analytics.	Thursday 25 June 2026
Application Form (AI builder)	Build forms in plain English	Describe the form you need and Emma drafts the sections and questions for you to review.	Thursday 25 June 2026
Communications	Inbox, campaigns & comms settings	Work with the new Communications area — connected inbox, campaigns and settings.	Tuesday 30 June

What Emma can see and do — the capability guide

Emma works in two modes:

Look it up — reading your configuration and data to answer questions. Always available, read-only.

Do it for me — taking an action on your behalf. Emma describes the change and asks you to confirm before anything happens.

Area	Emma can look up…	Emma can do…
School settings	The current value of any school-wide setting.	Change ~150 documented settings (e.g. application open and close dates, which application form phases are active) — confirmation-first, documented settings only.
Application form	How your admissions form is configured.	Update 188 documented form options — confirm-first (e.g. which phases are active, which questions are active, filters on phases and editing questions within steps)
Events	Your events calendar, registrations, guest lists, waiting lists, ticket status, event analytics.	Create, clone, publish or cancel events; build registration forms; create tickets; register guests; promote from waiting lists; send reminders; bulk-email guests; export guest lists.
Meetings & interviews	Sessions, time slots, allocated students, question templates, interview notes.	Create interview sessions and slots; add or move students; auto-allocate available slots; send invitations and reminders; import/export notes; manage templates.
Enquiries & leads	Your enquiries pipeline.	Flag at-risk enquiries, group them, create follow-up tasks, draft (not send) emails, add notes.
Results-day embargo	Current embargo status.	Set up or change the embargo window, notify staff, cancel.
Email templates	Your template library and the full content of any template.	Edit template content (with your confirmation).
Reporting	Answers to plain-English questions about your school's student and application data — breakdowns by year group, status or subject choice, and how applications are progressing. Emma can also build student filters and export lists to CSV/PDF.	Read-only; Emma never changes your data through reporting.

What you can ask Emma — real examples

A few of the kinds of requests Emma handles, in plain English:

Getting support

“How do I add a new dashboard tile for a specific list of students?”

“How do I configure my courses step to display as blocks?”

“Are we currently automatically collecting references on application submission?”

“What are the current settings for our system embargo?”

“I’m stuck — can you please pass me to a person?” (Emma hands you straight to our support team)

Reporting

“How many applications did we get over the last year, broken down by year group?”

“Generate some reports to show me how our applications are currently progressing.”

“How many applicants chose Biology this year?”

Operating meetings & interviews

“Set up a 20-minute interview meeting for Year 12 next Tuesday, 9am–12pm, in Room 1 and Room 2, assigned by staff, one student per slot.” (Emma builds the full schedule — staff assignments, break times and all — for you to confirm)

Operating events

“Create a Year 7 Open Evening for 15th October, 6–8pm, max 200 places — we only want to collect details of the person registering.” (Emma creates the event and offers to set up confirmation and reminder emails)

“Send a reminder to everyone registered for Thursday’s open morning.”

Operating the application form

“I need help adding specific requirements to my subjects.”

“Which application phases are currently active on my system?”

“Activate the Sixth Form phase and update the application close date to 31 August.” (Emma shows you the exact change and waits for your confirmation)

Privacy, GDPR and our updated terms

Alongside Emma’s launch we’ve updated our Privacy Policy and Data Processing Agreement to reflect the new AI assistant, and added Anthropic (via AWS Bedrock, hosted in the EU) as a sub-processor.

Your data stays in the EU. All AI processing happens in the EU region.

Never used for training. Your school’s data is not used to train AI models.

Not retained. The AI provider does not retain your data.

For Data Protection Leads: our AI Data Governance Pack includes a DPIA summary and ready-to-use ROPA and AI-register entries to help you update your records.

Questions? Email dpo@applicaa.com • Review the updated terms

What Emma deliberately cannot touch (yet)

Changing student records or processing enrolments (enrolling or withdrawing a student), courses and study programmes, payments and bursary billing, MIS sync runs, offers and contracts, timetabling, user permissions, and bulk SMS are not operable by Emma today. Emma can see student and application data for reporting, student filters and exports — she just can't change it. She can still answer how-to questions about them from the help centre.

Safety, privacy and control

You confirm every change. Emma never alters your setup silently — she shows the exact change and waits for your yes.

Documented changes only. Emma will only change a setting that has a published help article describing it. Anything else she'll explain how to do, but won't touch.

Your data stays in the EU. Emma's AI model is hosted in the EU region.

School isolation. Emma only sees your school's data, with full audit logging behind the scenes.

How to get started:

Open your Applicaa system and look for the Emma panel in the bottom right corner.

Try: "What are my current email sending settings?" or "How many completed applications have I had in the last two weeks?"

Rate the answers; your thumbs up/down genuinely shapes what we improve next.

Pricing — simple, transparent, fair

Available now

Support Agent — Free

Emma answers questions, reads your settings, and hands off with full context. No extra cost. No setup. Just works.

Knowledge base answers
Settings awareness
Smart handoff
Voice input
Feedback voting

Included with your subscription.

Coming Summer 2026

Your Assistant

Emma takes actions on your behalf — creates events, generates reports, drafts communications, imports data.

Everything in Support Agent
Event and meeting creation
Report generation
Communication drafts
Data import/export

Usage-based pricing. Every school gets an included monthly allowance, with a transparent per-interaction rate beyond that.

Coming Later 2026

Proactive Team Mate

Emma monitors your pipeline, spots patterns, and acts before you notice — stalled applications, conversion insights, compliance gaps.

Everything in Assistant
Stalled application detection
Conversion analytics
Personalised follow-up drafts
Compliance monitoring

Premium tier. Pricing details shared before launch.

Pricing for Tier 2 and Tier 3 will be shared before each phase launches. The goal: predictable and fair, so you always know what you’re paying.

Frequently asked questions

1. Where is my data processed, and who can see it?

All AI processing happens in the EU, via AWS Bedrock. Emma only ever sees your own school’s data — schools are fully isolated from one another, and every action is audit-logged.

2. Is our data used to train AI models?

No. Your data is not used to train any AI model, and it is not retained by the AI provider after processing.

3. What do we need to update in our GDPR records?

Our AI Data Governance Pack includes a DPIA summary plus ready-to-use ROPA and AI-register entries you can drop into your records. Your DPO can email dpo@applicaa.com with anything else.

4. Have your terms changed?

Yes — the Privacy Policy and Data Processing Agreement have been updated to cover Emma, with Anthropic (via AWS Bedrock, EU-hosted) added as a sub-processor. Review the updated terms here.

5. Can Emma make changes without my approval?

No. Emma always shows you exactly what will change and waits for your confirmation before doing anything. Every action is logged.

6. Can Emma contact students or parents directly?

Never on her own. Emma can draft emails and prepare reminders, but nothing is sent to a family without a member of staff reviewing and confirming it first.

7. Why won’t Emma change certain settings?

Emma only changes settings that have a published help article describing them (around 150 school settings and 188 application-form options). For anything else she’ll explain how to make the change yourself.

8. What if Emma gets something wrong or doesn’t know the answer?

Emma tells you when she’s unsure rather than guessing, and you can ask her to pass you to a person at any time. Use the thumbs up/down on any answer — that feedback goes straight to the team improving her.

9. Does Emma replace the support team?

No — she’s the fastest first step. The same support team is behind her, and Emma will hand you over whenever you ask or whenever she can’t resolve something.

10. Can Emma see or change student records?

She can see student and application data to answer reporting questions, build filters and export lists. She cannot change student records, enrol or withdraw students, or touch payments, MIS sync, timetabling or user permissions.