What this article helps with: Using Live preview to play the client and talk to Lia yourself, with your firm's real settings, without touching an enrolled client.
Who this is for: Firm admins tuning Agent Settings, and anyone who wants to see what a client actually receives before a real one does.
When not to use this article: Live preview shows you what your settings do. It does not change them. To edit what Lia says or when it escalates, see Agent Settings: teaching Lia about your firm.
What Live preview is
Live preview lets you text with Lia as if you were a client. The subtitle on the page says it plainly: "Test Lia conversations without affecting enrolled clients."
The important word is live. This is not a mockup or a canned script. You are talking to the same agent your clients talk to, running your firm's real settings: your firm context, your introduction, your FAQs, your escalation rules. If you change something in Agent Settings and then open Live preview, you are seeing the change, not a preview of it.
It lives in your left-hand navigation under Lia.
Running a preview
The page runs as three steps, shown across the top: Phone, Ready, Demo.
Phone. Enter a test phone number in the Phone number field. The helper text says "Enter a phone number to find or create a demo contact". Press Look Up.
Ready. Live preview finds or creates the demo contact behind that number and gets the session set up.
Demo. Texts arrive on the phone you entered. Answer them the way a client would, and watch what Lia does.
Use your own mobile number, or a spare firm phone. Whatever you pick, the messages are real text messages, so the experience is exactly what a client gets.
An Agent settings button in the top right takes you straight to your settings, which is where you will spend most of a tuning session anyway. The reverse trip exists too: Agent Settings has a Live preview button in its top right.
Two safety behaviors worth understanding
Live preview is deliberately fussy about phone numbers, for a good reason.
It only touches contacts it created
Live preview operates only on demo contacts it provisioned itself, and it refuses a number that belongs to a real client. That refusal is a feature. Starting a preview performs a reset on the contact behind the number, and that reset is destructive. Pointing it at a real client would wipe their conversation.
So if you enter a number and Live preview will not take it, that is almost always the reason. Try a number your firm does not have on a client record.
Every run starts clean
Each preview run begins from nothing. You never open a session and find yourself halfway through the last person's conversation, and Lia never answers you based on something a colleague typed yesterday.
This is what makes Live preview trustworthy for testing. When you change one setting and run the preview again, the difference you see is the setting, not leftover history.
The 15 minute timeout
A run ends itself after 15 minutes of inactivity. Step away mid-test and come back to a session that has already closed.
One piece of practical advice, especially if you are showing Lia to your team or to a partner: start a fresh run at the top of the demo. Do not open a preview, take ten minutes on introductions, and then try to type into it. Starting clean takes seconds and it always works.
What to actually test
Most people open Live preview, type "hello", read one reply, and close it. You learn more from four specific checks.
The introduction a new client receives. This is the first thing anyone on Lia sees from your firm. Read it as a client would. Does it sound like your firm, name the right people, and ask for what you want to know?
A question your FAQs cover. Pick something clients actually ask and see whether the answer matches what your team would say. If it comes back generic, your FAQs are the place to fix it.
A question your FAQs do not cover. This is the more useful test. Ask something off the map and confirm Lia hands it to a person rather than improvising an answer.
Whether an escalation fires where you expect. Say you want to talk to a human. Mention a symptom nobody is treating. Then check the client page for the escalation, and confirm it went to the right person.
That last one is where firms find the gap between the rule they wrote and the behavior they wanted. It is much better to find it on your own phone than on a client's.
Live preview and Agent Settings go together
Settings pages are easy to fill in and hard to judge. You write a paragraph of firm context or a new escalation rule, save it, and have no real idea what changed for the person on the other end.
Live preview closes that loop. Make one change in Agent Settings, run a preview, ask the question that should be affected, and read the answer. If it is still wrong, go back and adjust. That loop takes a couple of minutes and it is the fastest way to get Lia sounding like your firm.
It is also the right way to check work before a real client sees it. New FAQs for a phase, a rewritten introduction, a change to the escalation rules: test each one before it goes out to the caseload.
Who can open it
Live preview sits in the Lia section of the navigation, so Admins, Users, and Team Users can reach it. Followers cannot use Lia at all and will not see the section.
Anyone who can see the page can run a preview. Changing the settings you are testing is Admin-only, so a non-admin can confirm behavior and then hand the change to an Admin.
If there is no Lia section in your navigation at all, Lia is not enabled for your firm yet. Contact Hona Support or your account team.
Where to go next
What is Lia?: the hub article, and how the pieces fit together.
Lia Respond: answering your clients' inbound questions: what you are rehearsing, and the answer boundary you are testing against.
Agent Settings: teaching Lia about your firm: firm context, the introduction, FAQs, and escalation rules.
Escalations and drafts: how Lia hands work back to your team: where an escalation lands once it fires.
Enrolling clients on Lia: putting your first real client on, once the preview looks right.
Conclusion
Live preview is the surest way to find out what your settings actually do, and it takes about five minutes. Run one before a change reaches your caseload. If you have questions, chat with our support team or email [email protected].