Counsel is your organisation's compliance assistant and staff portal. You ask it information-security and compliance questions, and it answers from the shared compliance knowledge base and your own documents. It is also where you read the policies your compliance team publishes to you and answer their requests for evidence.
Who uses it
Who
What they do here
Staff
Chat with Counsel, upload their own documents, read published policies, answer evidence requests and set up phishing reporting from Outlook.
Admin
Everything staff do. An admin also downloads the Outlook add-in file and deploys it for the organisation.
Your compliance team
Works in Command, not in Counsel. From Command they publish policies to you and send you evidence requests.
Your role is shown under your name at the top right of every page.
Before you begin
You sign in with your normal work account through the Soveryne sign-in page. Most staff get access automatically through your organisation's email domains. See Single sign-on and Domains.
Policies reach you only after your compliance team publishes them from Command to your organisation's email domain.
Evidence requests appear only in a Counsel that is linked to your compliance team's Command, either through your Soveryne partner or within your own organisation. A Counsel that stands alone has no Requests tab.
Getting around
Counsel has two tabs at the top of the page. Select the Counsel logo at any time to return to Chat.
The Counsel chat page with a list of saved chats on the left and an empty conversation
Chat: ask questions and keep your conversations. See Chat with Counsel.
Knowledge: choose which sources ground your answers, and find what has been sent to you. It has these tabs:
Policies: the policies your compliance team has published to you. See Policies.
Requests: evidence your compliance team has asked you to provide. See Evidence requests.
When you switch from Knowledge back to Chat, Counsel opens a new, empty chat. Your saved chats stay in the list on the left.
Watch: getting around Counsel (about 1 min)
The profile menu
Select your name at the top right to open the profile menu. It shows your name and email address, and these options:
Appearance: Theme (Light, Dark or Auto, which follows your device) and Language (EN or NL). Counsel remembers the theme in this browser. Your language choice is saved with your account, so it follows you to other devices.
Manage profile: opens Your profile, where you change your display name and set up phishing reporting from Outlook.
Return to portal: takes you back to the Soveryne portal, the list of your applications.
Log out: ends your session.
The profile menu with the Appearance, Manage profile, Return to portal and Log out options
Change your display name
Anyone can do this.
1
Open the profile menu and select Manage profile.
2
In Display name, type the name you want others to see.
3
Select Save.
Counsel shows "Profile saved.". Your Email and Role are shown for reference and cannot be changed here.
Choose your default knowledge
Anyone can do this. Your choice is the default for every new chat. You can still change it for a single chat from the chat screen; see Choose the knowledge for one chat.
1
Select Knowledge. The Documents tab opens.
2
Find a framework: the cards are grouped by family, for example ISO/IEC, NIS2, DORA, GDPR or NIST. Type in Search documents… to narrow the list.
3
Turn a whole family on or off with its switch, or select the arrow on a card to expand it and turn individual documents on or off.
4
To change everything at once, select Enable all or Disable all.
The Knowledge page, Documents tab, with one framework family expanded
Each change is saved straight away. Counsel shows "Saved — this is your default for new chats." Chats you already have keep the knowledge they were started with.
Select a document's name to open it in a new tab.
Assistants
Counsel has one assistant, also called Counsel.
What it answers: information security, cybersecurity and regulatory compliance. That covers controls, risk, audits and evidence, incident response, policies, data protection and privacy, and frameworks such as ISO 27001, NIS2, DORA and GDPR. If a question is outside that scope, or it cannot find support for an answer, it says so.
Where its answers come from: the shared compliance knowledge base, your own uploads and the policies published to you. It never uses another person's uploads. When it needs to, it also reads public web pages, for example to check whether a standard is current.
What it can change: nothing. Counsel only reads. It never changes your documents, policies or requests, so it never needs to ask for your confirmation.
Clarifying questions: sometimes Counsel asks you a question back, with options to choose from. See Answer a question from Counsel.
Learning your preferences: Counsel learns from your Helpful and Not helpful ratings. What it learns applies to you only.
Language: when you choose NL, Counsel answers in Dutch.
Reports and exports
Policies: download each published policy as PDF or Word, in English or Dutch, where your compliance team provided that version. See Policies.
Answers: copy any message with Copy.
Documents: cited documents and your own uploads open in a new tab, where your browser can save them.
Outlook add-in: an admin can download the add-in file with Download Outlook manifest. See Report phishing from Outlook.
Counsel has no export of a whole conversation.
How Counsel protects you
Your work is private. Your chats, uploads, evidence files and feedback are private within your organisation. No other user can see them.
Uploads are checked. Every upload is scanned for malware and stored encrypted.
Evidence goes only to the team that asked. You can send evidence only for requests addressed to you, and only to the compliance team that sent the request.
Counsel cannot change anything. The assistant reads; it has no way to change your data.
Counsel will not open addresses on internal networks when it reads the web.
Answers carry a reminder. Under the message box: "AI agents can make mistakes. Check important info." Check the cited sources before you rely on an answer.
Troubleshooting
Message
What it means
What to do
"Could not open a chat session."
Counsel could not start the conversation.
Reload the page and send your question again.
"The assistant could not answer: …"
Counsel failed to produce an answer. The reason follows the colon.
Select Retry on the answer, or ask again later.
"(no answer)"
Counsel returned an empty answer.
Select Retry, or rephrase your question.
"Could not save: …"
Your knowledge choice or profile change was not saved.
Try again. If it keeps failing, reload the page.
If there is no Requests tab on the Knowledge page, your Counsel is not linked to a compliance team's Command, through your Soveryne partner or within your own organisation. Ask your compliance team or Soveryne partner.
