Part 1 of 3 · Next: Creating Roleplays · Managing Roleplays and Tracking Usage
What are Roleplays?
Roleplays give your users a realistic counterpart to practice high-stakes conversations against, such as a frustrated customer, a skeptical stakeholder or a direct report, in voice or text. After each attempt, users get private, specific feedback on how they did. As an admin, you build the roleplays, decide who can access them, publish them, and track overall usage.
Roleplays (also called role plays, role-play, AI roleplay or AI conversation practice) are made of three building blocks:
Roleplay — the scenario: the setting, the stakes, the user's role and goal, and who they are talking to.
Persona — the AI character the user talks to. Each persona has a name, role, company, background, demeanor, voice and avatar. Personas live in a reusable library, so one persona (for example, a skeptical CFO) can appear in many roleplays.
Objectives — what the attempt is evaluated on: Skills, Behaviors, Frameworks or Qualitative. Objectives also live in a reusable library and make up each roleplay's scorecard.
You can build roleplays from scratch or start from the Chronus template library. Templates bring their own personas and objectives, and you can edit all of it to match your organization's language.
Show each roleplay to the right people
You choose who sees each roleplay: the whole organization, specific programs, or specific member views (across the organization) or user views (within a program). People outside those views don't see the roleplay, so one roleplay library can serve different roles, levels, functions and regions. For example:
Give mentors and mentees separate practice in the same program.
Show manager scenarios only to managers.
Start with one group, such as first-time managers, and widen the view once it's working.
See Managing Roleplays and Tracking Usage for how to set this up.
How to turn on Roleplays
The Chronus team turns it on for you. Reach out to your Customer Success Manager and let them know whether you want it for:
Your whole organization — Roleplays is on for every program and can't be turned off for a single program.
Specific programs only — a good fit for a pilot.
Once it's on, you'll see the Roleplays card on the global-level Chronus AI page. Its Enabled For line shows whether it is on for everyone or for specific programs.
Requirements for Roleplays
Chronus AI must be enabled at the global level, with the AI terms accepted. See Getting Started with Chronus AI Settings.
AI access to the "Name" profile field must be allowed in global-level Profile Permissions. Roleplays use the user's name in the conversation, so Roleplays can't be turned on while this field is withheld from AI.
How to show or hide the roleplay readiness score
Directly under the Roleplays card, Show readiness score (Yes / No) controls whether users see a readiness level after each practice. It applies across the organization, including all programs, and is on by default.
Yes: users see Keep practicing, Almost there or Ready, and readiness figures appear in admin reporting.
No: users see an encouraging message instead, and readiness figures are hidden from reporting.
Each roleplay attempt keeps the readiness setting it was scored under. A roleplay whose objectives are all Qualitative never shows a readiness score, whatever this setting is.
Where admins find Roleplays in Admin Hub
Once Roleplays is on, click Admin Hub in the left navigation and go to Catalog → Roleplays.
From the organization level, Admin Hub opens straight onto the Roleplays page.
From a program, Admin Hub opens the program's manage page. Click Back to reach the Roleplays page.
The Roleplays page has three tabs: Roleplays (every roleplay you manage), Personas (the characters users talk to) and Objectives (what roleplays are evaluated on). Until you create your first roleplay, the page suggests Chronus templates to start from.
What users see in Roleplays
How users find roleplays
Users with access to at least one published roleplay see a Roleplays item in their navigation (marked "new" until their first visit) and Practice with roleplays cards on their home page. Both lead to Discover → Roleplays, which lists every roleplay they can access, ordered by relevance. Each card shows the category, difficulty, who they'll be talking to and their progress.
The first time a user opens Roleplays, a short introduction explains how it works and that practice is private by default.
If you are an admin and also a user, you'll see a Manage roleplays button on this page that takes you to Admin Hub.
How users practice a roleplay
Opening a roleplay shows the scenario, who they'll be talking to, their role and goal, and how scoring works. Start practice lets them choose Voice (recommended) or Text when both are allowed. The persona opens the conversation and stays in character. Users can restart or end the session at any time.
Roleplay attempts are unlimited, up to 20 sessions per hour and 100 per day per user.
Very short roleplay sessions (fewer than three replies, or about 50 words from the user) aren't scored and leave no record.
Roleplay voice conversations are in English only. If the voice connection drops, users can continue in text.
What users see after a roleplay: results and readiness score
When a session ends, the user first sees their readiness score: Keep practicing, Almost there or Ready. It is a level, not a percentage, calculated from the scored objective results.
See full results opens the private results page for that attempt:
Key highlights: what went well and what to work on, each tied to something the user said.
Skills, Behaviors and Frameworks: the result for each scored objective on the scorecard, with specific feedback on how to improve.
Qualitative: written feedback on each Qualitative objective, with no score.
Delivery insights (voice only): pacing, word choice and brevity.
Full transcript, and Practice again to track progress across attempts.
Users can rate each roleplay result as Helpful or Not helpful.
How users share their roleplay results
Roleplay results are private by default. With the Share button, a user can share their results for a roleplay with mentors, connected peers or other members of the organization. The recipient sees all of that user's attempts on that roleplay, including future ones, and is notified by email (and Slack or Teams where set up). Users can stop sharing at any time. You can reword the subject of the Roleplay results shared notification email, or turn it off, under the Roleplays email category.
Roleplays privacy: who can see results
Results are private to the user. Admins never see an individual user's results or transcripts, and reporting is aggregate only.
Sharing is always the user's choice, and limited to members of the same organization.
Results are labeled as AI-generated. No automated decisions are made from them.
Don't include personal or sensitive information about real people in roleplay, persona or objective fields. This text is sent to the AI provider to run the conversation.
Roleplays FAQs for admins
How do we get Roleplays?
Reach out to your Customer Success Manager. The Chronus team turns it on for your whole organization or for specific programs.Can we pilot Roleplays with just one program?
Yes. Ask your Customer Success Manager to turn it on for that program only.Can we show a roleplay to only some of our users, such as managers?
Yes. Limit it to specific member views (across the organization) or user views (within a program). Only people in those views see it.Can admins or managers see a user's results?
No. Results are private unless the user shares them. Admin reporting shows aggregate numbers only.Can we hide the readiness score?
Yes. Set Show readiness score to No on the Chronus AI page.Can users create their own roleplays?
No. Roleplays are created by admins.What languages are supported?
English only.Is there a difference between voice and text?
Scoring is the same. Delivery insights (pacing, word choice, brevity) are available for voice sessions only.Is Roleplays available on mobile or in Microsoft Teams?
Practice is web-only and isn't available in the mobile app. Roleplays are supported in the Chronus app for Microsoft Teams.
Roleplays pricing and access
💲 Roleplays is a paid add-on. Reach out to your Customer Success Manager to learn more.