AI assistant for streamlined HR management at the enterprise level

Exploiting Yalantis’ ready-made AI assistant to save development time and budget

Our AI assistant is domain-agnostic and customizable to each business case. Here are some of its benefits that initially convinced the client to go for this solution:

• Well-trained embedded large language model (LLM)
• Automatic updates of the knowledge base with new data at time intervals set by the administrator on the client’s side
• Customizable interface and functionality to ensure user convenience
• Contextual independence when providing answers, reducing the probability of bias or misinterpretation

Project requirements and client’s specifications

For their custom HR assistant, the client set the following non-functional requirements:

• Scalability. The assistant should be able to process an increasing number of employee requests as the company grows.
• Security. Employee data should be protected and requested only by authorized users.
• Accessibility. The HR assistant should be responsive, easy to use, and accessible to all employees 24/7.
• Reliability. The assistant should be resistant to cyberattacks.
• Accuracy. The HR assistant should provide relevant, accurate, and logical answers to users’ requests.

To achieve the highest level of customization of the HR assistant and align its capabilities with the client’s requirements, our team needed to fine-tune our existing AI assistant solution.

Under the hood: custom AI assistant deployment strategy

To meet the client’s requirements, Yalantis AI software development and DevOps teams:

• followed the 12-factor methodology for building software as a service (SaaS) web solutions to easily deploy, scale, and maintain the AI assistant, ensuring faster time to market, enhanced reliability, and a better user experience
• deployed the solution in the AWS cloud and set up a dedicated Kubernetes cluster to ensure high performance and security of compute components
• combined low-level environments (staging and development) within a non-production account to ensure cost-efficient development
• completely isolated production instances to ensure that changes in the staging and development environments won’t affect the production environment, ensuring its stability and reliability
• automated the release management process and ensured data privacy between environments
• ensured LLM model and middleware components can be updated independently, which allows the support team to roll out improvements and enhancements without affecting other parts of the system
• implemented zero-downtime deployment to ensure a high level of system uptime

HRM integration as part of custom AI assistant implementation

Since our existing AI assistant was using data from our internal systems, Yalantis data engineers needed to integrate it with Workday so it could retrieve data from Workday and update its knowledge base with the client’s business-specific data. To enable smooth integration, we contacted Workday’s in-house technical team and followed their instructions and documentation.

By integrating with Workday, we not only ensured access to employee data but also provided employees and HR specialists with direct access via the assistant to the following HRM features:

• Employee self-service. Workday provides employees with self-service portals where they can access their personal information, submit time-off requests, and view personal information.
• Learning and development. Employees can use Workday to access training programs, skill development initiatives, and learning resources.
• Access to frequently asked questions. The assistant can provide instructions on how to interact with Workday based on the client’s internal knowledge base and corporate processes and policies.
• Automated HR reporting. The HR assistant generates comprehensive reports on employee performance, recruitment, and workforce analytics in real time.

HR assistant’s main functionality tailored to fit the client’s workflow

Key functionality that the HR assistant solution offered the client includes:

• Advanced search capabilities. By entering a request via the AI assistant embedded in Microsoft Teams, company employees and HR specialists can easily get any type of company- or employee-related information such as personal profiles, results of performance reviews, company policies, user guides, individual development plans, and salary information.
• Alerts and notifications. The HR assistant can notify employees and HR specialists about the end of onboarding or individual onboarding processes, remind employees to sign a form or go through a checklist for a performance review, and notify HR staff to review employees’ documents.
• Continuous learning and feedback loop. The AI assistant provides functionality for collecting feedback, but our AI team extended that mechanism with a dashboard on HR bot statistics, which includes the number of requests, metrics on relevant answers, and other useful business metrics to track HR bot efficiency across the company.

Integration with Microsoft Teams to enable the AI assistant’s messaging interface

Microsoft Teams is the client’s primary communication channel. Integrating the HR assistant with Teams made it more natural and convenient for employees to use. Our ready-made assistant supports out-of-the-box integration with MS Teams, so Yalantis AI specialists only needed to configure the assistant for quick and seamless integration. Our team completed the integration in hours instead of the days it would have taken with a completely custom AI assistant due to the lengthy approval process and rigorous security measures on the part of Microsoft.