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City unveils ‘Jet the Jack Rabbit’ chatbot and rebrands civic reporting app as Team Odessa
Summary
Communications staff demonstrated a new municipal chatbot called Jet the Jack Rabbit and a rebranded reports app, Team Odessa, explaining backend site crawling, training, and pending app‑store approvals; staff plans a phased rollout with staff training first.
Communications staff briefed council on a new municipal chatbot and the rollout plan for a rebranded citizen‑reporting app at the June 24 workshop.
Monica, who led the presentation, said the chatbot "Jet the Jack Rabbit" was soft launched and will answer common public questions by crawling selected city web pages and by using pre‑trained answers for frequently asked items, such as "when is the next council meeting." She noted the chatbot is not a general search engine and requires curated site content to provide reliable responses.
Monica also explained the city purchased a Civic ClickFix product but encountered app‑store naming and icon restrictions that prevented use of the vendor's default naming and required a rebrand; the city will market the service as "Team Odessa." App‑store approval issues delayed public listing in the App Store and Google Play; staff said they had received approval from their vendor team but still awaited store publication, expecting it "by the end of the week."
Monica emphasized a phased launch: department staff will be trained first, and communications staff will monitor incoming tickets and analytics so the city can refine answers and workflows before broad public promotion. She said team members are feeding Jet curated URLs (for example, "Discover Odessa" and "Odessa Arts") and working with partner agencies where site crawlers are blocked.
Monica told council the city will use backend analytics to track what the chatbot is asked and to prioritize training of answers. Council asked about rollout timing; staff said they hope to train employees and launch publicly within about a month.
No formal action was taken; staff requested continued feedback and indicated they will return with metrics after initial rollout.
