Prompt and user input examples for Employee Navigator
BMC HelixGPT provides predefined prompts for Employee Navigator and other agents, allowing administrators to configure these agents quickly and effectively. These prompts are available in BMC HelixGPT Agent Studio and can be easily customized to meet your organization’s specific business needs. The Employee Navigator agent is built on the Reasoning and Action (ReAct) framework, where prompts serve a critical role—they are not just instructions but define the agent’s mission. These prompts guide the agent to reason about objectives, select appropriate tools, and act autonomously.
When you design prompts for Employee Navigator, we recommend following established best practices. For more information, see Best practices for designing prompts in BMC HelixGPT. To simplify the prompt design process, review examples of well-structured agentic prompts and avoid those with poor structure.
Examples of good and bad prompts
The following table presents examples of good agentic prompts that have well-structured goals and provide clear instructions:
Goal | Instructions |
|---|---|
Assist employees in retrieving knowledge articles by using semantic search. | Use RAG-based retrieval from the knowledge base. If no relevant article is found, ask the user to clarify or rephrase. |
Help users track and manage their service requests. | Retrieve open and closed requests. Allow users to comment, escalate, or close them. |
Enable catalog-based automation for common tasks. | Match user intent to catalog items. If automation is available, execute it. If manual attendance is required, create a ticket. |
Support live chat handover when the agent cannot resolve the issue. | No topic or format. |
Guide users through approval workflows. | List pending approvals. Allow users to approve or reject with comments. Confirm actions before execution. |
Enable image-based troubleshooting. | Accept image uploads. Use OCR and error pattern recognition to interpret messages. Provide guidance or escalate if needed. |
Handle generic requests and route them appropriately. | Classify the request. If it matches a known category, proceed. If not, ask clarifying questions or escalate. |
Provide contextual help based on user role and location. | Use metadata (such as role, department, and location) to tailor responses. Prioritize relevant tools and articles. |
The following table shows bad prompts that are vague, overloaded, or lack actionable guidance:
Bad prompt | Why it isn't good |
|---|---|
Help users with everything. | No clear goal or scope. |
Do whatever is needed. | Lacks boundaries and tool usage guidance. |
Fix all issues. | Too broad and unrealistic. |
Answer questions. | Doesn’t specify how or what tools to use. |
Manage stuff. | Ambiguous and non-actionable. |
Examples of user inputs when communicating with Employee Navigator
The following tables illustrate poorly structured user inputs and their improved versions. Clear, specific inputs help the Employee Navigator agent provide accurate and efficient assistance.
General examples of user input
Bad input | Why it isn’t good | Improved input |
|---|---|---|
Fix my issue. | No context or goal | Help me resolve a login issue with my work email. |
Give me everything about onboarding. | Too broad | Summarize the onboarding steps for new hires in the IT department. |
What’s the policy? | Unclear which policy | Explain the remote work policy for full-time employees. |
Schedule something. | No time, purpose, or participants | Schedule a 30-minute meeting with HR to discuss benefits next week. |
Tell me what to do. | No goal or context | Guide me through submitting a travel expense report. |
Help with the app. | Vague | Help me troubleshoot the mobile app crashing during login. |
Give me a report. | Too generic | Generate a summary report of open IT tickets from last week. |
Explain it. | No subject | Explain how to reset my password by using the self-service portal. |
I need help. | Too generic | I need help accessing the company VPN from home. |
Do it for me. | No task defined | Submit my PTO request for next Friday through the HR portal. |
Employee Navigator-specific examples
Bad input | Why it isn’t good | Improved input |
|---|---|---|
Help me. | No goal or context | Help me find the latest safety training materials for field workers. |
Show me my stuff. | Ambiguous | Show me my pending approvals and open service requests. |
What’s wrong? | No issue defined | Diagnose why my laptop won’t connect to the corporate Wi-Fi. |
Give me advice. | No topic | Give me advice on how to escalate a ticket that’s been open for 5 days. |
Fix my access. | Vague and directive | Help me regain access to the finance dashboard after a role change. |