Run agents · Your App Cloud
Build an internal helpdesk agent
Staff ask in their own words and get an answer that links to your IT, HR or facilities guidance. When the guidance can't settle a question, design the agent to prepare a request for whoever handles that work.
Built around a purpose
From a staff question to an answer or a ready request.
For whoever answers the same staff questions every week. That might be an office manager fielding laptop, badge and parking questions, or an HR lead asked about leave and benefits. Requests arrive by chat, email and desk visits, and nobody sees them in one place.
For illustration: Northwind, a 120-person firm with offices in San Diego and Sacramento. Bring the IT how-to pages, the facilities rules for keys, parking and meeting rooms, and the HR team's leave and benefits FAQ. Add who handles what, and 40 recent help-inbox messages with the senders' names removed, noting who answered each and what they did.
A help page where staff get an answer linked to the article behind it. When no article fits, they leave a request carrying the device, office or dates its handler needs. They check its status there instead of emailing to ask.
Plan on Pro. The agent's replies, the stored request queues and staff sign-in all run on the backend, and Free publishes frontend-only static apps. Language model usage for each answer and each prepared request is metered separately.
Sort last month's inbox into queues
Group the 40 messages: account access, laptops and equipment, building and parking, leave and benefits, and other. For each queue, write down its handler and the details they usually ask for first, such as the device name, the office or the dates.
Give each queue its own guidance
Attach to each queue only the articles that answer it. The leave FAQ serves leave questions and should never shape a reply about a laptop. Before adding a page, remove old contact names and steps for tools you no longer use.
Allow two moves and no more
Tell Studio the agent has two moves. It may answer and link the article it used, or prepare a request with a queue, a two-line summary and the missing details. Anything that changes an account, pay or building access goes to a person.
Replay the 40 messages in the preview
Send each one as staff wrote it, then compare the outcome with what the handler actually did. Look for a correct answer, the right queue, and no follow-up question the message had already answered.
Let handlers correct the queue
Each handler opens their prepared requests, moves any that landed in the wrong queue, and closes each with a note the requester can read. The misfiled ones tell you what to change in the agent's instructions next.
Scope the first version
What a first version includes.
Routing table
One row per queue with its handler and the articles it may draw on. It also lists the details every request needs before a person picks it up.
Guidance articles
One record per how-to page or policy, with its queue, owner and last-reviewed date. Mark a page retired here when it goes out of date.
Answer or prepared request
Each message should end in a reply linking the article it used, or a request with queue, summary, original wording and missing details.
Handler queues
Prepared requests grouped by queue, with a status of new, in progress, waiting on the requester or closed, and the handler's notes.
My requests
A view where each staff member sees only the requests they raised, the latest status and the handler's notes.
Answer log
Every reply the agent gave, with the question and the linked article. A handler reads it to spot a wrong or outdated answer and fix the article behind it.
Test it in the preview
Before you share it.
- Ask about a coworker by name, such as whether they are on leave this week. The reply should decline and point to HR, and it should not repeat anything from that person's requests.
- Sign in as two staff members and raise a request as each. Confirm that neither can open the other's request in My requests or have it quoted back in a reply.
- Take last year's parking rules out of use and ask the question they used to answer. The reply should link the current rules, or prepare a request for facilities, and it should not quote the old text.
- Ask for something only a person may do, such as access to the finance drive for a new hire. You should get a prepared request in the IT queue, not a reply that reads as though access was granted.
- If the app emails a handler when a request arrives, send a test request and confirm the message arrives with a link to it.
Together in your app cloud
The pieces behind the possibility.
Choose the models and services that support the experience you want to create.
Language models
Reason, write, and understand
Database
Keep data and context for apps and agents
Authentication
Give the right people access
Email
Keep conversations moving
File storage
A home for your documents and media
Shape the details
Make it work for your world.
- Keep requests about one person's pay, health or performance out of the agent's hands. Give them a separate form that goes straight to a named person in HR, so no model reads or summarizes them.
- Give every article an owner and a review date. An answer is only as current as the page it links to. A Wi-Fi setup page that still names the old network misleads everyone who asks.
- Start with one or two queues, such as equipment and building access, and add leave and benefits once handlers trust the prepared requests. With fewer queues, a misfiled request is easy to spot and trace to its cause.
- Handlers and staff sign in to the published app as app users. Team members are a separate group: people you invite to work in your Exepad workspace (Pro), such as whoever maintains the agent's instructions. Write down who may read requests, articles and the answer log, then describe that access for each collection (Pro) and test it before launch.
- On Pro, the app can run a task on a schedule you set. One example is a Monday list of requests that have waited on the requester for more than three days. Have it list them, not close or reassign them, so the handler decides which ones to follow up on.
A little more context
Good questions.
Can it take actions as well as answer?
Start with two: answering from an article and preparing a request. Add an action only when it has a clear limit and leaves a visible record, such as booking a meeting room from the facilities list. Test it in the preview before staff rely on it. Keep account changes, access grants and anything touching pay with a handler, who works from the prepared request.
One agent for IT, HR and facilities, or several?
One front door suits staff, who rarely know which team owns a question. Behind it, keep articles and handlers separate by queue, so a leave question has no IT pages to draw on. Split into separate agents when a queue needs different access, such as HR requests that only its handlers may read.
Where do requests go?
Into a queue in the same app, where the handler changes the status and the requester follows it in My requests. On Pro the app can also send email, such as a note to the handler when a request arrives. Test those messages before you rely on them. The request workspace guide below covers the queue without an agent.
How is this different from an AI knowledge base?
A knowledge base answers from your documents and names a contact when they are silent. A helpdesk agent adds a second move: a prepared request when the guidance runs out, so the work reaches a handler with the details attached. If staff mostly need answers from a handbook, start with the knowledge base guide below.
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