Finding answers for user queries through Employee Navigator

Use Employee Navigator to get targeted answers to your questions. You can ask questions about service requests, approvals, to-dos, people data, and service health items. Employee Navigator also provides answers from referenced knowledge articles. You can interact with Employee Navigator through text, voice, or image, and access it on any device. If needed, you can escalate your request to live agents. For details on agent capabilities, see Agentic AI capabilities in BMC Helix Digital Workplace.

By using Employee Navigator, you get the following benefits:

Get reliable answers from specific knowledge articles, not from the internet or LLM's general knowledge.
Find information from multiple sources—service requests, approvals, to-dos, people data, and service health—in one place.
Experience a natural, human-like conversation that is easy to follow.
Avoid dead ends because Employee Navigator offers clarification and fallback options, such as connecting to live agents or submitting general requests.

As a result, you will resolve issues faster, improve self-service, and reduce your reliance on support teams.

Scenarios

The following scenarios illustrate user interactions with Employee Navigator, showing how it responds to queries by using knowledge articles and finding answers related to service requests and approvals.

Getting answers from knowledge articles

Britney, the end user, wants to install a VPN client on Mac, so she enters her query in the Employee Navigator chat panel. A summary of the procedure for Mac is provided, along with related knowledge article links.
While following the procedure, Britney encounters an error. She shares the screenshot of the error message with Employee Navigator. The system identifies the context and shares troubleshooting steps with her. After that, Britney can install the VPN client on her computer.

Finding answers related to service requests

Britney is an end user who has submitted service requests for the following two items:

IT peripherals—docking station and wireless mouse
Access to the common SharePoint location

Britney goes on an urgent PTO for two days after submitting these requests. Upon her return, she doesn't see any updates on these requests. Instead of looking at these requests separately, she asks Show my requests from past week. She notices that these requests are in the Open state. She adds comments to her open requests directly from the chat for an expedited closure of the requests.

Difference between search, chatbot, and generative AI retrieval of answers by using Employee Navigator

To understand the difference between BMC HelixGPT, BMC Live Chat, and BMC Helix Virtual and explore their unique functionalities and use cases, see Chatbots and BMC HelixGPT.

The following table presents the difference between using the search, BMC Helix Virtual agent and Employee Navigator within BMC Helix Digital Workplace end-user console:

Criteria	Search	BMC Helix Virtual Agent	Employee Navigator
How it works	When a user enters search keywords, the results (defaulting to up to 25 entries) that are the closest match to the search text are displayed, regardless of their source or type.	When an end user enters a question, BMC Helix Virtual Agent understands the intent of the user and provides an answer based on the configured knowledge sources. The chatbot also asks questions required to submit a service request on behalf of the end user.	When a user enters a question, the system understands the question and generates a summary of the relevant answers from all the available knowledge sources, which is presented as a human-like text response. If the user cannot self-service, Employee Navigator provides options to connect with a human agent or raise a generic service request.
Underlying technology	Search engines index and retrieve data by using keyword-based indexing.	The Catalog services are imported into BMC Helix Virtual Agent, which are then provided as suggestions to the end users.	Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) uses large language models (LLMs) to understand the intent, context, and semantics of human language.
Access	In BMC Helix Digital Workplace, end users can use full-text search from the following areas of the end-user console: Global search bar on the Catalog and My Activity pages. Active and past events on the Catalog and My Activity pages. Social section of the user preferences page. Studio page, which has a search bar.	In BMC Helix Digital Workplace, end users can click the chatbot icon available on all screens to start interaction. Important: You can enable only one self-help application, either chatbot or Employee Navigator, for the end users.	In BMC Helix Digital Workplace, end users access Employee Navigator to ask questions from the following areas of the end-user console: Employee Navigator chat panel on all end-user screens. Global search bar on the Catalog and My Activity pages. Studio page (in the Search Bar components and the search block in the Content block component). Important: You can enable only one self-help application, either chatbot or Employee Navigator, for the end users.

Workflow for setting up Employee Navigator to deliver answers for user queries

The following image provides an overview of the workflow to configure Employee Navigator with BMC Helix Digital Workplace:

	Task	Product	Description	Reference
1	Complete the prerequisites	BMC HelixGPT	Add data sources, ingest data into BMC HelixGPT, and set up the AI provider.	Setting up and going live
		BMC Helix Innovation Studio	Enable integration between BMC Helix Virtual Agent and BMC Helix Digital Workplace.	Enabling integration with BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced and BMC Helix Business Workflows
		BMC Helix Digital Workplace Admin console	Specify the knowledge provider and search filters. Important: If you want to use dynamic tags in search filters, make sure that you have created the search filters in BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround. To learn more, see Creating search filters for BMC applications.	Defining knowledge search settings
		BMC Helix ITSM	(For configuring in Studio pages only) Assign the HGM Client IS Persona to the administrator in the CTM:People form. Important: Define this IS Persona for the com.bmc.dsom.hgm application.	Assigning IS Personas to People data
2	(Agentic approach) Set up the agentic skill and configure the Employee Navigator Supervisor agent.	BMC HelixGPT	Configure the Employee Navigator Supervisor agent by using the OOTB skill or creating a custom agentic skill.	Configuring Employee Navigator Supervisor agent
2	(Chained-prompt approach) Set up the prompt-based skill.	BMC HelixGPT	Create a skill for Employee Navigator using the chained-prompt method. Out-of-the-box (OOTB) sample skills and prompts are available for multiple models. For more information, see Out-of-the-box skills in BMC Helix Digital Workplace	Creating and managing skills Creating and managing prompts
3	Configure the Employee Navigator chat panel on all end-user screens.	BMC Helix Digital Workplace Admin console	Specify the skill that you want to use with the Employee Navigator panel.	To set a skill for the Employee Navigator panel
	Configure Employee Navigator in studio pages		Specify the skill that you want to use with one or more studio pages.	To configure BMC HelixGPT in a Studio page
	Configure Employee Navigator in the My Activity or Catalog pages		Specify the skill that you want to use with Employee Navigator chat bar in the My Activity and Catalog pages.	To configure the BMC HelixGPT capabilities in the Catalog and My Activity pages

Difference between chat bot and Employee Navigator in capabilities beyond search

The following table shows the differences between chatbot and Employee Navigator in capabilities beyond search.

Feature	BMC Helix Virtual Agent	Employee Navigator
Handoff when raising a request	Users can create requests, but earlier conversations might not be included.	Automatically submits a service request and includes the full chat transcript as an attachment. A summarized version of the conversation is sent as a comment. This behavior is controlled by parameters that can be configured by administrators. For more information, see To update the configuration parameters of a skill. If your environment includes existing custom prompts created before the upgrade, you must manually add the following flags to those prompts after the upgrade to ensure proper functionality of raising a request via chat: addTranscriptInServiceRequest addChatSummaryInServiceRequest serviceRequestSummarizerUser
Support agent escalation	In BMC Helix Digital Workplace, it supports manual escalation to a support agent. The agent might not have full visibility into the earlier conversation context.	Automatically shares the full chat transcript and a BMC HelixGPT-generated summary with the support agents.

FAQ

What is generative AI answer retrieval by using Employee Navigator

Generative AI answer retrieval is a process that uses large language models (LLM) to understand the meaning of text in the knowledge articles. Employee Navigator utilizes this text to match user queries and generate answers in a human-like, natural language.

How is my data protected and which security protocols are applied by Employee Navigator?

You can choose to use one of the supported providers for generative AI retrieval of answers. Depending on which model you choose, your data resides in that model and the security compliance of that model is applied.

Which other use cases can be achieved with Employee Navigator?

To learn more, visit Generative AI: The Next Wave of ServiceOps Intelligence on bmc.com.

Why do some links provided with the answers do not open the knowledge articles?

Most likely because the skill you are using does not have filters to limit access to external articles or to a certain company. To learn how to use search filters, see Defining knowledge search settings in the BMC HelixGPT documentation.

For more frequently asked questions, see FAQ in the BMC HelixGPT documentation.

Where to go from her

Employee Navigator agent

Agentic AI capabilities in BMC Helix Digital Workplace

Using Employee Navigator to find AI-generated answers