How Ask Discourse became Andela’s go-to AI community management assistant

At Discourse, we believe that community builders should always have a place to turn when they have questions. That’s why we created Ask Discourse, an AI-powered assistant that helps community admins solve problems, fine-tune settings, and grow their communities. 

For MC Elias, who leads one of the communities at Andela, Ask Discourse has become an essential part of her toolkit. It’s helped her easily configure her community while learning how to take full advantage of Discourse’s features.

Who is Andela? 

Andela is an ML-powered global talent marketplace connecting companies with highly-skilled technologists from emerging markets like Latin America and Africa. Their platform provides flexible access to technical talent, helping businesses scale teams, accelerate product development, and reduce costs.

Andela’s community journey 

To support their rapidly growing network of global technologists, Andela needed a platform where assessed technologists and staff could connect in a private, trusted environment. While they maintain a public-facing learning community on Circle, they turned to Discourse for their private member-only forum. 

A core differentiator for Andela is its deep investment in community. With learning and development at its foundation, the company believes that a strong marketplace begins with strong talent. Andela supports that talent through certification programs with partners including Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Meta, and AWS. Building and sustaining a thriving global talent community is a key focus, and this effort would not be possible without the infrastructure and flexibility Discourse provides to support their remote HQ. 

After evaluating more than 12 platforms, Andela chose Discourse for its flexibility, SSO integration, and because she saw our commitment to using our own product internally — a decision that MC described as “a major green flag.”

One of the things that was a really great green flag for us, especially when looking at community platforms, was that you guys are dog-fooding, really using your products for everything you guys do internally. When looking at competitors, red flags everywhere, that their support, their knowledge base, none of that was in their community space or in the product that they were selling us. And so that was definitely a big, big contributing factor to us leaning more towards Discourse.

Discovering Ask Discourse

Once Discourse was chosen, Andela’s team got to work building their private community. It was a full-team effort, and MC Elias quickly became a power user, exploring everything Discourse had to offer to make the space welcoming, well-organized, and aligned with Andela’s goals.

That’s when she discovered Ask Discourse.

MC doesn’t remember exactly where she first saw it, but once she tried Ask Discourse, it became part of her regular workflow.

Ask Discourse allows MC to ask technical questions specific to her instance of Discourse, such as reporting, SQL queries, or platform configuration, and get immediate help at any time of day. This meant less time dealing with the admin stuff and more time on doing things that matter - spending time with the community 

With Ask Discourse, it meant never waiting around for help, and that speed allowed her to launch a custom badging program for members, which has been widely successful. As someone who considers herself a “digger,” MC is constantly looking for answers. With Ask Discourse, she has 24/7 support that meets her where she is. Instead of pinging developers or waiting around, she turns to Ask Discourse first, especially for questions that are highly specific or time-sensitive. 

I probably wouldn't have set up a badging initiative on time for the launch of the community if it wasn't for Ask Discourse.

What makes Ask Discourse different?

For MC, using Ask Discourse is not about replacing human support, it’s about adding another layer of self-service that fits into her workflow.

She appreciates that the AI doesn’t require custom setup or configuration — it just works out of the box. She loves that it searches through Meta and relevant documentation to find the best up-to-date answers to all her questions.  It's perfect as she uses it in tandem with our other support resources:

• Meta, Discourse’s own support community, for general knowledge
• Our Customer Success team for bugs or complex issues
• Ask Discourse for quick, technical problem-solving

Using Ask Discourse has opened her eyes to all that Discourse AI has to offer.  As her community grows and evolves, she’s looking forward to exploring more AI-powered features like AI Bot, which is like having Ask Discourse for your community.

Why it matters

MC leads a complex community operation that is core to Andela’s talent strategy. Ask Discourse helps her move faster and stay productive, so she can focus more time on building and supporting a thriving global talent network. Whether it’s writing complex SQL queries, understanding new features, or doing reporting, she can get answers anytime — no waiting required.

“The possibilities are pretty limitless with Discourse,” she said. “And Ask Discourse is just one more way we’re getting more out of the platform.”

Get Ask Discourse for your community

If you’re an admin who wants 24/7 support without slowing down your workflow, Ask Discourse is here to help. Try it today and experience what smarter AI support looks like.

If you haven’t already, get yourself started with a free trial of Discourse so you can have fun using Ask Discourse to configure your community :)