Getting started with AI agents for employee services (EAP)

Employee service (ES) AI agents are knowledge bots that are added to tools employees are already using such as help center, Slack and Microsoft Teams to answer questions and provide suggestions based on connected knowledge sources.


What's my plan?







Employee Service Suite

Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus







Summary: ◀▼
Employee service AI agents help answer employee questions by using connected knowledge sources like help centers, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. You can optimize content, connect various knowledge platforms, and deploy AI agents to channels your employees use. These agents improve access to information and support productivity by providing relevant answers based on your organization's knowledge resources.





This article describes the Employee Service AI Agent EAP. It is on by
default for Employee Service Suite Growth and above accounts, with exceptions noted in
the EAP announcement.
Employee service (ES) AI agents are knowledge bots that are added to tools employees are
already using such as help center, Slack and Microsoft Teams to answer questions and
provide suggestions based on connected knowledge sources.
A default ES AI agent is created automatically when you set up your help center for a
brand. Admins can configure or disable the default ES AI agent and deploy additional ES
AI agents to other supported platforms, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.
This article gives you an overview of how to start using the most important ES AI agent
functionality.
This article includes the following topics:
Step 1: Understand employee service AI agents
Step 2: Optimize your
content
Step 3: Connect and configure knowledge sources
Step 5: Creating and deploying your employee service AI agents


Alternatively, if you're looking for information about customer service AI agents, see
Getting started with AI agents for customer
service.


Step 1: Understand employee service AI agents

Before you create and deploy ES AI agents or set up help centers for brands on
Employee Service Suite plans, understanding how ES AI agents work helps you focus on
how they can be created and deployed for optimal use and maximised productivity
gains in your business. From there, you can develop a deployment plan and work
strategically on Step 2: Optimizing your content.
Learn about employee service AI agents:
Understanding employee service AI agents
(EAP)
Understanding everywhere you can use
employee service AI agents (EAP)
Understanding knowledge source
permissions in employee service AI agents (EAP)





Step 2: Optimize your content

Before you deploy ES AI agents or set up help centers for brands on Employee Service
Suite plans, it's a good idea to identify the services that house the content you
intend to leverage as a resource for the ES AI agents and optimize that content.
During conversations with employees, ES AI agents use content from your knowledge
sources, such as your Zendesk help center and external knowledge bases, to generate
responses to employee questions. The better your content is, the better your ES AI
agents’ responses will be.
See Optimizing your knowledge content for generative
AI.



Step 3: Connect and configure knowledge sources

ES AI agents work by being able to search across connected sources of information to
produce a unified and complete answer to employee questions. Think about all of the
platforms in which your organization uses to store information, procedures, and
process details.
When connecting the knowledge sources, Knowledge admins can configure exactly which
content an ES AI agent may be allowed to access from each knowledge source. This is
referred to as allowed content. Once the allowed content is connected,
Support admins can select it for reference by ES AI agents during the agent creation
step.
Connect to any of the following supported knowledge sources:
Connecting Box as an employee service AI
agent knowledge source (EAP)
Configuring Confluence as an employee
service AI agent knowledge source (EAP)
Connecting Google Drive as an employee
service AI agent knowledge source (EAP)
Connecting Microsoft Teams as an employee
service AI agent knowledge source (EAP)
Connecting Notion as an employee service
AI agent knowledge source (EAP)
Connecting Seismic as an employee service
AI agent knowledge source (EAP)
Connecting SharePoint as an employee
service AI agent knowledge source (EAP)
Connecting Slack as an employee service
AI agent knowledge source (EAP)
Creating a web crawler as an employee
service AI agent knowledge source (EAP)





Step 4: Install the Slack or Microsoft Teams integration

You can deploy employee service AI agents into Slack or Microsoft Teams channels, but
before you can do so, you must install the Slack integration or the Microsoft Teams
integration. The Slack integration also allows users to create tickets and receive
ticket notifications in Slack.
Learn more:
Installing the Slack for Zendesk Support
integration for employee service
Installing the Microsoft Teams for
Zendesk AI agents integration for employee service (EAP)





Step 5: Creating and deploying your employee service AI agents

After you've connected your knowledge sources and configured which content the ES AI
agents are allowed to access, you are ready to create and deploy ES AI agents to the
channels and services your employees use, and communicate with your teams on how to
use the agents.
When a user posts in a channel with an ES AI agent, the ES AI agent generates an
answer based on its connected sources.
See Creating, deploying and editing employee service
AI agents (EAP).




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