teckel: FAQ

Benedict is teckel's AI voice agent for assisting with dental compliance documentation. Your team can retrieve, view, and complete the compliance documents you rely on — consent forms, patient surveys, procedural and cleaning specifications — just by asking, with the conversation and the document shown side by side. Benedict takes the drudgery out of the process: your team provides the answers, Benedict does the rest.

You ask Benedict for what you need in plain language — for example, "show me the crown consent form." Benedict brings the document up in a viewer next to your conversation, so you can read, complete, and submit it in one place. You can speak or type, answer several questions in one breath, and correct anything at any time; when you submit, the finished paperwork is emailed to your practice.

Benedict also keeps track of every document's status and dates — ask "what's due this month?" or "when did I last submit the sharps audit?" and he answers from your practice's own records. Tell him a document's review schedule and he keeps to it, or ask for a status report by email.

Yes. Benedict takes typed messages as well as speech — during a voice session or on their own — so you can type the fiddly things (an email address, a serial number, a reading) and say the rest. Working by text is slower when the answers are flowing, but there is no charge for time, so you can stop and think, get interrupted, and come back to it.

Benedict is browser-based, so it works on any device with a web browser — desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone. There is nothing to install to use Benedict day to day.

You set up your Benedict once using the teckel App (see How do I get started?).

Benedict supports the compliance documents required of dental practices in England today; the other UK nations, each with its own regulator, are on the roadmap (see the next question).

The catalogue covers consent forms, risk assessments, daily and weekly logs, surveys, policies and incident reports — ask Benedict for the whole list, or say "show me my document directory" to see it on screen, traffic-lit by status — plus guidance documents and a library of your practice's own documents: certificates, service records and photographs.

Ask. "What's overdue?", "what's due within a month?", "what haven't I started yet?" — Benedict answers from your practice's own records. Or say "show me my document directory" and the whole catalogue opens on screen with a traffic-light tag on every form — overdue, due soon, in date, never submitted — each tag in words as well as colour.

Forms with no review schedule set are shown as exactly that, so a gap can't hide. Tell Benedict a form's schedule once and the traffic lights keep track from then on.

See the traffic lights for real: Benedict in action — a tour in screenshots.

Today Benedict supports practices regulated in England by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Support for the other UK nations — overseen by Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, and the RQIA in Northern Ireland — is on the roadmap.

Yes. Alongside your forms, your catalogue holds guidance documents — official regulations, guidance leaflets and posters. Ask "what does the guidance say about legionella?" and Benedict reads you the relevant passage word for word, names the document it came from, and offers to email you the whole document.

He quotes; he doesn't interpret. On a compliance question the source's exact words are what you can act on and cite — and the judgement about what applies to your practice stays yours.

Yes. Say "I'd like to attach the fire safety certificate" and a secure upload page opens beside the form; the same link is emailed to your practice, so you can upload from whichever device actually holds the file — usually the phone the photograph is on.

Give each document a name you'll recognise, and use one as the answer to a question where a document says more than a sentence can — a signed staff declaration, a service record, an inspection certificate. The finished form then names the document it relies on.

Yes. Tell Benedict "add a question to the patient survey" — or to any standard form — and confirm when he reads it back. You can also switch off standard questions that don't apply to your practice; regulator-standard questions always stay. Every change is recorded (who, what, when), so your paperwork remains inspection-ready.

No. Benedict helps your practice organise, retrieve, and complete its compliance documentation; it is a documentation tool that supports your compliance process. It does not provide legal, regulatory, or clinical advice, and it does not replace your professional judgement or your practice's responsibility for meeting your regulator's requirements. You remain responsible for the accuracy and completeness of your records.

Benedict is an AI assistant, and AI can make mistakes — he can mishear a word or record an answer against the wrong question — so a person reviews every form on screen before it is submitted, and any form can be corrected afterwards.

Yes. Tell Benedict "open the last Crown consent and change question 27" and he opens a fresh editable copy with the change applied; make any further changes, then say "submit". The original submission stays in the audit trail and the new copy supersedes it.

A submitted form is never deleted — it is your practice's compliance record. A draft you don't want can be removed.

Download the teckel App Store Edition (on the App Store or Google Play) and use it to create your Benedict. Once it is set up, you and your team use Benedict in any web browser. The private link to your Benedict arrives by email when you create it — if you ever lose that email, you can have the link re-sent from the wizard page.

Want to see it first? Watch the full walkthrough.

There isn't one as such — and you don't need one. Benedict is pay-as-you-go: no sign-up fee, no subscription, and no card to register with us — you top up in the teckel App through the App Store or Google Play. Watch the full walkthrough, then set up your Benedict and complete one form for a few pounds. Keep going if it suits you, stop if it doesn't.

When someone needs to use your Benedict, you generate an access code in the teckel App, from the same account that created the Benedict. A code expires about 15 minutes after you generate it — there is no permanent shared password.

teckel is pay-as-you-go. You buy teckel credits (tc) and only pay for what you use — no subscriptions, and teckel never takes a percentage of your revenue.

A session's total is shown on screen when it ends, and Benedict never stops mid-form for billing — if your balance is running low he mentions it once, and you top up in the teckel App.

No. Ask Benedict once for a survey's or a log's web link — he can open it in a new tab or email it to your practice — and hand it to whoever has the answers: patients fill in the survey on any phone or computer, and each entry lands in the same log. The same link keeps working all week, so ask once and reuse it. It is by far the cheapest way to collect repetitive entries — see Pricing for what it saves.

teckel credits are priced at £1 = 500,000 tc, so 1,000,000 tc is £2.00, with bulk discounts of up to 12.5% on larger top-ups. When you buy tc through in-app purchases on the App Store or Google Play, all applicable taxes are included in the price you pay.

Benedict is switched off until you top up — nothing of yours is lost. Your forms, your submitted records and your uploaded documents all stay exactly as they are; he simply stops being available to talk to until there are credits to draw on.

Top up in the teckel App and allow up to about ten minutes for Benedict to come back — the one case where a top-up is not usable the moment it lands. You should rarely meet it: Benedict mentions a low balance once during a session before it becomes a problem, and the App shows your balance at any time.

When you buy teckel credits through in-app purchases, the App Store or Google Play is the seller for tax purposes, so any receipt or VAT invoice comes from the store rather than from teckel.

On Google Play, sign in to your Google payments centre at payments.google.com, open the transaction, and choose "Download VAT invoice or receipt" — you may be asked for your business address or tax ID (in some countries the tax ID must be added before you buy). On the App Store, Apple emails a receipt for every purchase and keeps it in your purchase history; if you need a formal VAT invoice, contact Apple with that receipt and your VAT number.

Because the stores handle the sale and the tax, teckel does not issue a separate invoice for in-app purchases.

No — teckel is pay-as-you-go, so you only ever pay for what you use. To see it working before you spend anything, watch the full walkthrough.

The documents you submit are stored in encrypted form on IPFS (the InterPlanetary File System), a decentralized, content-addressed file system. With content addressing, every file is identified by a cryptographic hash of its own contents — so a stored document is tamper-evident and auditable: if even one byte changed, its address would change.

Your files are held on teckel's private IPFS servers, and they can be downloaded or pinned to other IPFS nodes. What sits on the network is unreadable ciphertext: a record can only be read back through teckel, by the account that created it — nobody who found it could read a word.

Yes. The compliance documents you submit are encrypted and stored with content addressing (see the previous answer), which makes them both secure and tamper-evident; because IPFS lets files be downloaded or pinned to other nodes, you are never locked in to a single provider. Your teckel account is secured by a private identity generated on your device, so teckel never takes custody of your account keys. And your records can only ever be exported to your practice's registered address — so even someone who got hold of an access code could not use it to move your records off-site.

Yes — you always hold your own copy. Every submission is emailed to your practice as it happens, as a PDF plus the original document format, so save those attachments somewhere of your own.

At any time you can also say "email me a list of everything I've submitted" for a manifest with dates and record references, or "email me my complete archive" for every submitted form and evidence file exactly as stored. Both go only to your practice's registered address — there is deliberately no way to send them anywhere else.

No. Personal-identifying fields — a patient's name, date of birth, contact details — can be left blank on every form: say "skip" and Benedict moves on, and the form still submits. Your practice can complete a full compliance record without recording a single patient identifier.

It means your teckel App account isn’t set up yet. Open the App and accept the Terms first — the App automatically creates your account the first time you open it — then tap Create Benedict.

The teckel App Store Edition uses in-app purchases through the Apple App Store and Google Play, so you buy teckel credits (tc) with your local currency, not with ether (ETH).

If you would prefer to buy teckel credits with ETH, please get in touch through our Support page and we will help you arrange it. Note: buying tc directly with ETH is a purchase from teckel rather than through the App Store or Google Play, so the automatic tax handling of those stores does not apply. tc-for-ETH is quoted exclusive of VAT, and where VAT applies in your jurisdiction it is handled separately (contact us for details).

Download the teckel App (or teckel App Store Edition) and open the wallet, then use the "Create" function to generate a new Ethereum Account. The App automatically creates a completely random private key / public key address pair for you.

The resulting public address is your teckel App wallet Ethereum address, which also serves as your account identity. We recommend using the "Create" function rather than importing your own key.

No. BUT, if you delete the teckel App data accessible in the Android app manager settings without first backing up all of your created and imported teckel wallet Ethereum Accounts' private keys in a safe location not on the device, you will forever lose access to all of the Ethereum assets on your device.  This is also the case if you deinstall the teckel App from your device. (Note: Since exporting private keys of imported Ethereum Accounts is currently not allowed on the teckel App, be sure to back up the private keys of your imported Ethereum Accounts BEFORE you import them into the teckel App!) Everything mentioned in this paragraph also applies to the teckel App Store Edition.

No. teckel does not know, handle, or take possession of your teckel wallet Ethereum Accounts' private keys. They are only stored in an encrypted area on your Android device (or Apple device if using the teckel App Store Edition.) Furthermore, only private keys generated by Ethereum Accounts created on (not imported into) the teckel App (or teckel App Store Edition) may be exported from the teckel App (or teckel App Store Edition).

Ethereum addresses are not case sensitive; however, as an added security precaution implemented as an afterthought, Ethereum addresses can be checksum validated in such a fashion to check for potential human data entry errors. For more information please see:

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2045/is-ethereum-wallet-address-case-sensitive

Depending on the wallet from which you are transferring ETH, it may perform this check, thus resulting in a warning.  Therefore, please double-check that your Ethereum address is correct before attempting a transfter of ETH. As a best practice, it is always recommended to transfer a small amount of ETH first to verify your Ethereum address.

Yes, but it is not recommended for security reasons. (We recommend ONLY using the "Create" function within the teckel wallet to allow the teckel App (or teckel App Store Edition) to automatically generate a completely random private key / public key address pair as your new Ethereum Account.) When importing a new Ethereum private key into the teckel App (or teckel App Store Edition) (by first navigating to the wallet icon in the upper right corner of your device screen), you may type in any combination of hexidecimal characters, but the string must be exactly 64 characters.

Ethereum private keys are not case-sensitive because they are simply 256-bit numbers represented in hexadecimal format (64 characters long, using 0-9 and a-f). The hexadecimal system itself is case-insensitive, meaning A-F is equivalent to a-f.

However, Ethereum addresses (derived from private keys) typically use a checksum mechanism when written in EIP-55 mixed-case checksum format, which is case-sensitive. This helps detect typos but does not change the actual underlying address.

There is a danger in generating your own public / private key pair. For example, in manually entering your own private key, if you make a mistake like a typo, or accidentally type a space or use a public key, etc., you could end up with a new public address that has no associated valid private key and therefore any ether (ETH) or NFT transferred into it would be irretrievable.

It is always best practice to only use a completely random set of characters for your private key! Again, we recommend ONLY using the "Create" function within the teckel wallet to allow the teckel App (or teckel App Store Edition) to automatically generate a completely random private key / public key address pair as your new Ethereum Account within the teckel wallet.