Web search

Web search lets Strata pull live information from the public web mid-conversation — news, current prices, documentation, anything published online.

Turning web search on

Web search is a per-conversation toggle in the chat composer:

• Click the plus button (+) on the left of the input and toggle Web search.
• When it is on, the Web search row in the plus menu is blue, with a tick. The plus button itself looks the same either way, so open the menu to check.
• Your most recent choice is saved as your default for new chats, so you only set it once.

Your organization sets the starting default for web search; a new organization starts with it on. If your admin has it on, new chats begin with web search enabled; you can still turn it off for any single conversation from the composer. If your admin has also pinned the default with its padlock, the default decides every answer, in chat, in voice mode and in Strata for Outlook: the Web search row in the plus menu shows your organization's value with a padlock and Set by your organization, and can't be changed. Settings > Capabilities says the same: Search the web carries a Managed by badge with your organization's name and reads Your organization has turned this on for everyone. (or off). In the Outlook add-in, the Search the web switch under the pane's Settings > General shows your organization's value, can't be moved, and reads Set by your organization: on for everyone. (or off); the pane checks your organization's setting again each time you open its Settings. The choice you had saved before the padlock is kept, and applies again if the padlock is removed.

When web search is on, every message you send is eligible to trigger a web query. The AI decides whether the question needs one — it does not search for every message.

How Strata uses web search

When the AI determines a web search would help, you see:

• An action step in the trail that reads Searching the web with the query the AI ran, then Searched the web with the query once it returns.
• Open the step to see the top results: titles, sites, and each site's icon. The icons are fetched by Strata's own server, never by a third-party icon service, and only for sites your organization's web policy allows.
• After the search, the AI reads the results and incorporates them into its reply.

Web citations are always on. Every factual claim the AI draws from the web carries an inline citation chip — a small numbered badge tied to the exact source (its page title and URL). Hover a chip to see that source; the link opens in a new tab. Where the AI links a source by name in the text, that link is clickable too. With a mouse or trackpad, hovering it (or reaching it with Tab) shows a preview card with the site name, page title, and a short snippet. On a touch screen, where nothing hovers, a small chip naming the site follows the link instead, and tapping either one opens the source. A web-grounded sentence with no citation is treated as a defect, so you can trust that sourced claims trace back to a page you can open and verify.

When a reply used the web, a Sources button also appears in the message's action row, showing the icons of the top sources (fetched the same way). Click it to open a side panel listing every source the answer drew on.

Image results

For visual queries Strata may also return a contextual gallery of related images alongside the answer. Each web query automatically fetches related images, and the AI places small image sets inline next to the topic they illustrate. Image results stream into the final answer just like text — they do not appear during the action steps.

Two rules keep a gallery relevant, so an answer either shows pictures that belong to it or shows none:

• The AI decides where they go. Images appear where the AI places them, beside the paragraph they illustrate. When a picture would teach you nothing — an answer whose subject is a rate, a price, a count or a date, where image search returns portraits of the people who announced the figure — the answer carries no images at all.
• A picture has to come from a source of the answer. Only images whose page is one this answer retrieved or cites are shown; anything else the image index returned is dropped. Each set is tied to the search that fetched it, so one topic's pictures never illustrate another topic's paragraph.
• If you ask to be shown something, you are shown it. When your message asks for pictures — "show me what it looks like", "photos of…" — and the AI does not place a set itself, Strata puts the one relevant set at the end of the answer rather than leaving you with nothing. It only does this when a single set qualifies; with two or more it leaves the placing to the AI, because only the AI knows which paragraph each belongs beside.

When the AI uses web search vs. other sources

Strata draws on multiple sources for each answer:

• Database (SQL Server) data — for live data questions when a connection is active.
• Connected files — uploaded attachments, OneDrive content, Outlook emails, and your organization's Knowledge Base.
• AI's training knowledge — for general explanation, code, definitions, history.
• Live web — for current events, recent prices, today's news, rapidly-evolving information.

With web search off, the AI relies on training knowledge for anything that is not in your data — which means it may be out of date for time-sensitive topics. When a question needs the live web (prices, stores, opening hours, news), it says so and tells you where to turn search on: Web search in the + menu under the message box. With web search on, the AI prefers live results for questions where freshness matters.

Prices. When you ask what something costs or where to buy it, the AI gives only prices it saw in a search result or on a page, each with its store, and says they were found today and can change. It reads the product details a store page publishes (name, price, currency, availability), and when a store's site will not let it in, it uses that store's search result instead or reads another store's or the maker's page, and tells you which sites it could not open.

Note

Web search is a property of the conversation, not the model. It works the same whichever model from your organization's catalog you are using.

Domain restrictions

Your organization can limit which sites may appear in web results. The control is Organization > Data and privacy > What can leave your organization > Web pages and search results, and it governs both web search and opening a link:

• Any public site — the default. Results are unfiltered.
• Only approved domains — results from a domain outside the Approved domains list are removed before the AI sees them, and a link outside the list cannot be opened. A domain also covers its subdomains, so python.org covers docs.python.org.
• No web pages or search — neither capability is offered, so the Web search toggle has nothing to switch on.

When results are trimmed, Strata says so: it tells you your organization limits which sites it may use rather than reporting that it found nothing. Your Settings > Capabilities page names the approved domains, so you can see the list without asking an admin.

Privacy and routing

• Web searches happen on the server, not in your browser.
• Search queries are logged as part of the action-step trail for the conversation. If Save AI responses to history is off for you, the trail is discarded along with the rest of the chat.
• Web search also works in voice mode when it is available on your deployment — the AI can look something up mid-conversation and read you the answer.

Usage accounting

A web search itself is a lookup, not an AI model call, so it does not consume tokens. But the results the AI reads back are part of its tool-use loop, which does count toward the token usage your organization sees in the admin Usage page. There is no separate "web searches" meter.

Tips

• Ask for a date. If you want the freshest source, say "as of this week" or "most recent". The AI biases the search query accordingly.
• Ask for citations explicitly. If you want every claim sourced, say "cite sources for each claim." Strata adds more citation chips.
• Disable for confidential work. If you do not want any prompt-derived query going to a search engine, leave web search off for that chat.

Related

• Chat overview — the chat interface
• Models — the model catalog your organization enables
• Incognito — web search still runs in incognito (but nothing is saved)
• Voice — real-time AI voice mode, which can also run web searches