Get started with Optimizely Opal for administrators

Optimizely Opal is an agent orchestration platform that helps you work smarter across Optimizely One. Opal is automatically available and works by default, but you can configure it based on your organization's needs. You must add users to Opal before they can use it.

Add users and set permissions

Add and manage users and their permissions for Opal in the Opti ID Admin Center. See manage users for instructions.

Give users one of the following roles:

• Opal Administrator – Ability to manage and configure users, skills, tools, agents, and connected product instances in the Optimizely Opal app. Can also access Opal Chat within the Opal app and any connected Optimizely products. See Get started with Optimizely Opal for administrators.
• Agent Builder – Ability to create skills, build agents, and access the Agent Directory. Can also access Opal Chat within the Opal app and any connected Optimizely products. See Get started with Optimizely Opal for agent builders.
• Opal User – Ability to use Optimizely Opal from individual Optimizely products, with access to Opal Chat within the Opal app and any connected Optimizely products. See Get started with Optimizely Opal for users.

If the available system roles do not provide the specific access you want to grant users, you can create a custom role in the Opti ID Admin Center. See Custom roles for Optimizely Opal for what roles are available.

Access the Optimizely Opal app

The Optimizely Opal app is Opal's configuration dashboard, accessible through the product switcher in the global navigation.

1. Log in to Optimizely.
2. Select your organization.

3. Click Opal.

   

Customize Opal

Customize Opal to tailor its behavior, responses, and integrations to your organization's goals. Configure skills, agents, and tools to shape how Opal works with your team. This gives you a personalized experience tailored to your needs.

Customizations ensure that Opal understands your brand voice, can access the right data, and performs actions that align with your workflows.

Ways to customize Opal

Opal supports several customization options, depending on the level of control you need.

• Connections – Link Opal to your Optimizely product instances so it can take action using real data and features. See the Product connections section.
• Skills – Provide context that tells Opal how to behave and when to run. Skills guide how Opal interprets requests and ensures consistent results. See Skills overview.
• Agents – Build and add agents tailored to your organization’s unique processes. You control which tools they use, how they respond, and what workflows they execute. See the Agent directory overview, Specialized agents overview, and Workflow agents overview.
• Custom tools – Extend Opal’s capabilities by connecting it to your internal systems or third-party services through tools your organization creates. See Tools overview.

Why customize Opal

Customizing Opal is optional but provides more control and makes the platform more effective. The following are ways that customizing Opal empowers you: 

• Ensures Opal understands your organization’s terminology, tone, and priorities.
• Automates common tasks with consistent, repeatable outcomes.
• Connects to the exact systems and products your team uses.
• Scales workflows without adding manual steps or complexity.

Opal app UI

The Opal app provides a centralized interface where you can access Opal's capabilities in one place. The Opal app UI supports everything you need to configure, customize, and use Opal effectively. Each page helps you focus on outcomes while Opal handles the technical details behind the scenes.

Opal Chat

Chat is the conversational interface for Optimizely Opal. It lets you interact with Opal using natural language to complete tasks, get insights, and automate workflows without needing to know the underlying systems or commands.

Ask Opal questions, make requests, or give instructions. Opal determines the right tools and agents to use to deliver accurate, actionable results. Whether you need to generate content, analyze data, or manage experiments, Opal Chat provides a simple, intuitive way to work directly within the Opal platform.

See Optimizely Opal Chat for information.

Skills

Skills are the foundational context, rules, and behavioral guidelines that shape how Opal creates output and tailors it to your organization's unique needs.

See the Skills overview for information.

Agents

Agents complete tasks for you in Opal. They interpret your requests, decide which tools to use, and deliver consistent results. The Agents page of the Opal App is where you can browse and install agents from the Agent Directory or create and manage specialized and workflow agents tailored to your organization’s needs. By configuring the right agents, you can streamline workflows and automate common tasks across your connected Optimizely products and external services.

See Agent overview for information.

Tools

Tools are the actions Opal uses to get work done. Each tool performs a specific task, such as creating a campaign, generating content, or uploading files. View the tools available to your organization, including system tools built by Optimizely and custom tools created by your team. Connect and configure the right tools to let Opal act on your behalf and integrate with your systems and workflows.

See Tools overview for information.

How tools, skills, and agents work together

In Opal, tools, skills, and agents work together to complete tasks. 

• Skills define how Opal shapes its output and how Opal uses tools.
• Tools provide the capabilities, such as accessing data or performing actions. 
• Specialized agents combine tools and skills into a packaged, specialized capability that can carry out tasks on its own. 
• Workflow agents stitch together multiple agents into a complex workflow that a trigger starts.

Understanding how these pieces connect helps you design effective workflows and get the most out of Opal.

Smart home automation analogy

Imagine Opal as a sophisticated smart home system that intelligently manages and automates various functions within a house. Each part of Opal can be divided into different parts of this smart home system. 

Skills – The smart home's core programming and user preferences.

Skills are the fundamental rules, underlying code, and user-configured preferences that govern the entire smart home system. They dictate how all devices and routines behave, ensuring consistency, security, and personalization across the whole house.

• Smart home example – The system's default security protocols, the user's preferred temperature settings, or the general rules for when lights should be on or off.
• In Opal – These are the meta-level guidelines that shape Opal’s overall behavior, tone, and how it process and present information.

Tools – Device interfaces, communication protocols, and core functions.

The tools are the "things" that smart devices and agents use to get things done. These are the capabilities that let devices perform their tasks and interact within the smart home ecosystem, and with external services.

• Smart home example
  • Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
  • Connecting to a music provider API for music playback.
  • Connecting to a local weather service for temperature data.
  • Light emission for a bulb.
  • Temperature sensing for a thermostat.
  • Motor activation for blinds.
  • Brew for a coffee maker.
• In Opal – These are the basic capabilities or resources that specialized agents use to execute their tasks, often involving connecting to and leveraging external systems.

Specialized agent – An individual smart device.

A specialized agent is like an individual smart device (a smart light bulb, a smart thermostat, a smart coffee maker, or a smart lock). Each device has a specific, well-defined function it performs. It receives a command (input) and performs its action (output).

• Smart home example – Each item performs a single, focused task.
  • A smart light bulb turns on or off or changes color
  • A smart thermostat adjusts the heating or cooling
  • A smart lock secures a door. 
• In Opal – A specialized agent performs a specific, well-defined task that often involves interacting with external systems or executing complex, encapsulated logic, with a clear input and output schema.

Workflow agents – A smart home "routine" or "scene".

A workflow agent is like a smart home "routine" or "scene". This is a pre-programmed sequence of actions designed to achieve a larger, multi-step goal. It orchestrates multiple individual device actions in a specific order.

• Smart home example – A "Good Morning" routine with the following steps: 
  • Gradually brightening the bedroom lights.
  • Opening the smart blinds.
  • Starting the coffee maker.
  • Adjusting the thermostat to a comfortable temperature.
• In Opal – A workflow agent orchestrates specialized agents to achieve a larger, more complex goal, interpreting natural language input to manage a sequence of actions.

Get started

Start customizing Opal by connecting your Optimizely products on the Product Connections page.

1. Access the Optimizely Opal app.
2. Click Settings > Product Connections.
3. Expand the Optimizely product.
4. Select the Optimizely instance checkbox.
5. Click Save.
6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for your other Optimizely products.

See the Product connections section for more information. 

Next steps

When connections are in place, you can complete the following in Opal:

• Chat with Opal.
• Add skills to define how Opal should behave.
• Review system tools and create custom tools to integrate Opal with your external systems.
• Configure and run agents to execute tailored, complex tasks.
• Configure workflow agents to stitch together agents into a workflow.

Opal settings

Click Settings to configure your organization's Optimizely Opal instance.

Appearance

Go to Settings > Appearance to configure the Font Size and Theme in Opal. Adjust these settings to improve readability or match your visual preferences. Changes apply to your Opal instance only and do not affect other users in your organization.

Adjust the font size

1. Click the Font Size drop-down list.
2. Select a font size.
   • Default – Standard font size for Opal chat.
   • Comfort – Larger font size and line height for easier reading.

Adjust the theme

1. Click the Theme drop-down list.
2. Select a theme.
   • Light mode – Light background with dark text.
   • Dark mode – Dark background with light text.

Notifications 

Go to Settings > Notifications to configure your preferences. For a description of each setting, see Notification settings.

Chat

Go to Settings > Chat to configure Opal Chat for all users in your Opal instance.

Default model provider

The default model provider determines which AI model family Opal uses to generate responses in Opal Chat. This default model provider is also the default for specialized agents, which can override it with their own provider.

To change the LLM provider, click the Default Model Provider drop-down list.

Each provider has different strengths:

• Google Gemini – Fast, cost-effective responses and creative writing.
• Anthropic Claude – Complex tool orchestration and code generation.

Advanced URL safety checks

Advanced URL safety checks is a built-in security feature that screens every URL before Opal browses it, protecting your organization from malicious websites, including malware, phishing, and unwanted software.

Opal browses webpages on your behalf to summarize articles, extract data, or research topics. Before any content loads, the requested URL passes through a safety check. This check runs automatically on every browse request. Your end users take no action.

As an Opal administrator, choose one of two safety levels per instance, depending on the protection your organization requires.

URL Safe Browsing operates at two levels:

• Standard – Always active and cannot be turned off.
• Advanced – Adds a secondary deep scan on top of the Standard check. Opt-in per instance.

Standard

The Standard level checks every URL against Google Web Risk, a continuously updated database of known threats. It screens for the following threat categories:

• Malware – Sites that distribute malicious software.
• Social engineering – Phishing sites that impersonate legitimate services to steal credentials or personal information.
• Unwanted software – Sites that distribute software that behaves in deceptive or unexpected ways.

Standard checks complete quickly and add minimal latency. Opal enables this level by default for every instance.

Advanced

The Advanced level adds a Cloudflare Radar deep scan in addition to the Google Web Risk check. If either check flags a URL as unsafe, Opal blocks it immediately.

The deep scan provides enhanced detection for sophisticated threats that may not yet appear in Google's database. For URLs that Cloudflare has not scanned recently, the deep scan adds up to 30 seconds of latency.

Safety level comparison

How it works

1. URL validation – Opal validates the requested URL. Only http and https URLs are accepted. URLs using other protocols (such as javascript: or data:) are blocked immediately.
2. Safety check – Opal sends the URL to the configured provider or providers for evaluation. At the Standard level, this is Google Web Risk. At the Advanced level, Google Web Risk and Cloudflare Radar run concurrently.
3. Redirect screening – After the initial page loads, if the page redirects to a different URL, Opal screens the redirect target before returning any content. This prevents circumvention through open redirects.

What happens when a URL is blocked

When a URL is flagged as unsafe, Opal does not load or return any content from the page. Instead, the browse request returns a message that explains the block and names the threat category detected, such as MALWARE or SOCIAL_ENGINEERING.

Blocked URLs do not produce partial results. Opal stops the entire request before any page content is rendered.

Screen email links 

Advanced URL safety checks also applies to links found in email bodies processed through Opal's email trigger system. Opal validates links in incoming emails before the email event is processed, providing an additional layer of protection against phishing and malware delivered by email.

Configure the safety level

Configure the safety level for each Opal instance. The setting applies to the entire instance, so all users within the instance share the same safety level.

1. Go to Settings > Chat.
2. Locate the Advanced URL safety checks toggle.
3. Do one of the following:
   • Toggle the setting on to enable the Advanced level (Google Web Risk + Cloudflare Radar).

   • Toggle the setting off to use the Standard level (Google Web Risk only).

     

Inference level

The inference level refers to how Opal interprets and processes your input to generate a response or complete a task. It is the degree of reasoning, creativity, and interpretation Opal applies to produce output. 

To change the inference level used in Opal Chat, click the Inference Level drop-down list.

Options include the following: 

Email domain

Go to Settings > Email Domain to set the email subdomain prefix Opal uses when it sends emails. Only one email domain is supported per Opal instance.

To configure the email domain, complete the following steps:

1. Enter a valid subdomain prefix. Only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens are accepted. The subdomain must contain at least two characters and not start or end with a hyphen.
2. Review the email address listed in the Preview. The Preview displays how emails are sent by this Opal instance.
3. Click Save Domain. 

Product connections

Go to Settings > Product Connections to manage where Opal is activated in your specific Optimizely products and instances. These connections let Opal access the data, tools, and features it needs to take action on your behalf. If a product instance is not connected, it cannot use Opal features. Configure your connections first to ensure you can customize and fully use Opal across your Optimizely organization.

To add product connections, complete the following steps:

1. Click on an Optimizely product to expand it.
2. Select the product instances you want to connect.

3. Click Save.

   

4. Repeat steps 1–3 for your other Optimizely products.

Enable RAG in Chat

Go to Settings > RAG Configuration to control whether Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is used in direct messages in Opal Chat. Agents can use RAG regardless of this setting.

RAG lets Opal access, understand, and query knowledge sources. With RAG enabled, Opal draws on data such as campaigns, content, and tests to provide more contextual and accurate responses. See Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) overview for more information.

To change whether RAG can be used in Opal Chat, toggle Enable RAG in Chat on or off.

Allowlist Opal (optional)

If your firewall or security settings block Opal from scanning your URLs, add the following IP address to your allowlist:

• 34.173.58.195
• 34.45.81.146
• 34.58.63.97
• 34.63.7.24
• 34.70.231.38
• 35.202.230.252

Best practices

• Confirm with your network or security team before making changes.
• Apply these IPs only to environments where Opal needs scanning access.
• Review your allowlist periodically to ensure it matches current Opal requirements.

Turn Opal on or off (optional)

Optimizely Opal is enabled by default. To disable Optimizely Opal, see Turn generative AI off across Optimizely applications.

View Opal usage

View Opal usage across your organization in the usage and billing dashboards. See the Opal credits section in the Usage and billing dashboards documentation. 

View Opal agent usage 

View Opal agent usage by agent ID (@NAME) in the Opal agent usage dashboard. See the Optimizely Reporting for Opal documentation.