Workforce Bots
1. What it is
Workforce Bots lets you create AI assistants that answer employee questions from the documents you upload. You feed a bot your handbooks, SOPs, policies, or job descriptions, and it answers questions around the clock using only that material.
- Enablement: Workforce Bots requires a license. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace; it is off by default.
- What it is not: Workforce Bots does not replace Ask AI. Ask AI is the platform-wide assistant; a Workforce Bot answers only from its own uploaded documents and configured knowledge base.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Apps Marketplace and enable Workforce Bots. A license is required.
- Open Workforce Bots → Bots and click New Bot.
- Choose a template — HR Policy Bot, Recruiting Bot, Process Bot, Compliance Bot, or Custom Bot. Each pre-fills a welcome message, a fallback message, and conversation starters you can edit.
- Upload at least one document (PDF, DOCX, or text). The bot processes it into searchable chunks; wait for the status to show Ready before testing.
- Set the Access mode to control where the bot is reachable:
- Portal Only (Public) — anyone with the portal link can chat, no login needed.
- Portal with Login — the portal link works but requires a MangoApps login.
- Internal Only (Intranet) — reachable only inside the app, through the Ask tab and the Bots list; no portal page.
- Both Portal and Internal — available everywhere.
- Confirm the bot appears on the Dashboard tab and that employees in the target group can see it in the Ask tab.
Only admins and app admins can create, edit, or delete bots. All other employees can view and chat with bots that are active, not in draft, and whose access mode includes internal access.
3. How it fits together
Bots and documents. A bot is a named assistant with its own document corpus, system prompt, and settings. Each document you upload is split into chunks and embedded for retrieval. When someone asks a question, the bot retrieves the most relevant chunks and passes them to the LLM with the question. A bot can have documents uploaded directly, ingested from a URL or pasted text, or synced from a Knowledge Base source such as Service Desk, Safety Hub, Recruiting, HR, Help, Learning, Inspections, or Custom.
Example: You create a bot called “Benefits Guide”, set it to HR Policy Bot, and upload your 2026 benefits handbook. An employee asks “Am I eligible for dental?” The bot retrieves the chunk from the handbook covering dental eligibility and answers with a citation. If the bot cannot find a relevant chunk, it shows the fallback message you configured.
Templates. The five template types set the bot’s starting personality and defaults. A Compliance Bot adds a legal-disclaimer prompt and connects to the compliance rules database. A Recruiting Bot allows candidates to attach resumes. A Custom Bot is a blank slate. You can change the system prompt, welcome message, and fallback message after creation regardless of template.
Access modes and portals. Access mode determines where the bot is available. Bots with portal access get a shareable URL at /portal/<slug>. Portal-only bots are invisible to employees inside the app; internal-only bots have no portal page. A bot that is in draft or whose status is not active never appears to employees, regardless of access mode.
Ask — the router. The Ask tab is a single input that routes each question to the best bot automatically. When there is only one active internal bot, it goes straight there. With multiple bots, a lightweight LLM classifier picks the most relevant one per turn and shows which bot answered. Employees do not need to know which bot to ask.
Approvals vs. Answer Reviews. These are two separate queues. Approvals lists answers the bot itself flagged as low-confidence (below its configured threshold). Answer Reviews lists answers employees rated poorly (thumbs-down). Both are post-delivery — the answer has already been shown. Approving or rejecting stamps a compliance record and notifies the person who asked.
Cross-agent discovery. When the setting Let other AI agents discover and consult these bots is on, other AI agents in the platform (Ask AI, app agents) can find this tenant’s bots by subject matter and route questions to them. This is read-only — it changes which questions reach the bot, not what the bot can do.
Portal embedding. A bot with portal access can be embedded on an external website. The portal page supports three modes: the full-page portal at /portal/<slug>, a chrome-stripped iframe at /portal/<slug>?embed=1, and a JavaScript widget snippet that renders a floating chat bubble. You can restrict which external domains are allowed to embed the portal by configuring the Allowed embed origins on the bot’s edit page.
Escalation. When an employee clicks “Route to a human” on a low-confidence answer, the bot tries to reach a person in order: first it creates a Service Desk ticket (if Service Desk is enabled for the tenant), then it sends an in-app notification to the bot’s admin. The configured deflection webhook fires alongside either path. The reply to the employee says whether a human was actually reached.
Mobile. Employees can browse and chat with bots from the mobile app at /m/apps/workforce-bots. The mobile view shows the bot directory and a full-screen chat interface. Admins stay on the desktop dashboard.
AI Writer and Comms Planner. Workforce Bots includes an AI Writer (for generating content using a writing profile) and a Comms Planner (for planning a communications calendar). Both have been consolidated into the Communications app as canonical surfaces. If your tenant has Communications enabled, the Workforce Bots entry points redirect there. If not, the local surfaces remain available.
4. Running it
Reviewing knowledge gaps
Go to a bot’s detail page and click Knowledge Gaps. This lists questions the bot could not answer, grouped by the employee’s original question. You can mark a gap as answered (which silences it), or click Teach the bot to write an answer — the answer is saved as an FAQ document in the bot’s corpus so it can answer the same question next time.
Reviewing flagged answers
Open a bot’s Approvals tab. Each row shows the employee’s question and the bot’s low-confidence answer. You can approve or reject individually, or select multiple and apply a bulk decision. The employee is notified of the verdict.
Reviewing poorly rated answers
Open a bot’s Answer Reviews tab. This shows answers employees rated with a thumbs-down. Mark each as addressed once you have taken action (uploaded a better document, edited the system prompt, or decided the answer was actually correct).
Syncing from a Knowledge Base
On the bot’s edit page, choose a Knowledge Base source (the dropdown shows sources that have entries for your organization). Enable Knowledge Base Sync to keep the bot’s documents updated automatically on a nightly schedule. You can also click Sync Now on the bot’s detail page to run an immediate one-time sync without enabling recurring sync.
Setting up webhooks
Open a bot’s Webhooks tab. Each webhook fires a signed JSON payload to your URL when one of four events occurs: Conversation completed, Low rating (1–2 stars), Question unanswered, or Routed to a human. The payload includes an HMAC-SHA256 signature using the webhook’s secret. If an endpoint fails 15 times in a row, the webhook is auto-disabled until an admin re-enables it.
Viewing analytics
Open a bot’s detail page and click Analytics. The page shows questions asked, conversations started, unanswered questions, average rating, and top topics — all filterable by time range (24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, or 90 days). If a monthly question quota is configured, a usage meter shows progress. You can download the analytics as a PDF report.
Exporting conversations
From the admin side-panel chat or the portal, you can export a conversation as Markdown or PDF. Bulk Q&A (available on Compliance and Custom template bots) lets you paste or upload a list of questions, run them all through the bot, and export the results as XLSX, CSV, or Markdown.
Managing documents
Open a bot’s Documents page to see every source in its corpus. You can upload files, add a web page by URL, or paste text directly. Each document shows its processing status: Pending, Processing, Ready, or Failed. Failed documents can be retried. Documents can be marked as reviewed for governance tracking.
Connecting Slack or Microsoft Teams
Workforce Bots can respond to slash commands in Slack (/ask-<bot>) and to messages in Microsoft Teams. The integration enqueues the question and posts the answer back via the platform’s response URL.
5. Settings
Settings are at Workforce Bots → Settings (admin or app admin only).
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Default welcome message | (blank — each template supplies its own) | Pre-fills the welcome message when creating new bots |
| Default fallback message | (blank — each template supplies its own) | Pre-fills the fallback message when creating new bots |
| Enable custom branding | Off | Applies your organization’s theme colors and removes “Powered by MangoApps” from bot portals |
| Enable auto-governance | Off | Surfaces stale bot documents in the content governance dashboard and notifies reviewers. Review interval is 90 days. |
| Monthly question quota | Unlimited | Maximum questions per bot each month before portal chat is soft-blocked. Checked nightly against rolled-up usage, so a bot can run past the limit for up to a day. Applies to the bot portal only — Ask and the in-app panel are not metered. |
| Erase conversation text after | Keep forever | Erases the message text of conversations older than the configured number of days. The conversation row, timestamps, and audit trail are kept. Minimum 7 days. |
| Require identity verification to read conversations | Off | Admins must re-enter their password or PIN before reading an employee’s conversation. Each read is written to the audit log. Verification lasts 15 minutes. |
| Notification email | (blank — falls back to each bot’s admin email) | Receives monthly quota warnings |
| Send a weekly summary | Off | Sends a Monday in-app digest: questions asked, unanswered questions, poorly rated answers, and pending review decisions. Quiet weeks send nothing. |
Per-bot settings (on each bot’s edit page)
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Access mode | Portal Only (Public) | Where the bot is reachable — portal, internal, or both |
| Draft | Off | A draft bot is hidden from all employees |
| Status | Active | Active, expired, or upgraded. Only active bots answer questions. |
| Knowledge Base Sync | Off | When on, documents from the chosen Knowledge Base source sync nightly |
| Web search | Off | Lets the bot supplement its documents with web search results |
| PII redaction | Off | Redacts personally identifiable information from bot responses |
| Low-confidence review | Off | Flags low-confidence answers for admin review in the Approvals queue |
| Low-confidence threshold | 0.40 | Answers with confidence below this score are flagged for review |
| Deflection | Off | Shows a “Route to a human” button on low-confidence answers. Escalation tries Service Desk (if enabled), then notifies the bot’s admin. |
| Auto-detect language | Off | Responds in the language the employee used |
| Monthly question quota | (inherits app setting, or unlimited) | Overrides the app-level quota for this bot |
| Quota reset day | 1 | Day of the month the usage counter resets |
| Nudges | Off | Prompts the employee with follow-up suggestions after a configurable number of turns |
| Nudge after turns | 3 | How many turns before the first nudge |
6. More help
- Workforce Bots FAQ — specific setup and operating questions
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Workforce Bots from these articles.