Overview of IBM watsonx Orchestrate

IBM watsonx Orchestrate is a platform that empowers your business by automating tasks, simplifying complex processes, and ultimately saving you and your team time and effort. Get access to a broad range of prebuilt apps and skills to help you and your team complete daily tasks like emailing coworkers, collating spreadsheets, creating cases at Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms, and so much more.

Learn the concepts behind the features that you might face when you use Orchestrate:

  • Use of skills through the chat
  • Relation between skill catalog and skill sets
  • Relation between apps and skills
  • Customization of skills for your digital worker
  • Creation of conversational experiences with assistants
  • Automation of repetitive work with automations

The following diagram illustrates the process to add skills from the skill catalog to the personal or team skill sets and use these skills by typing in the chat.

The process to add skills from the skill catalog to the personal or team skill sets and use these skills by typing in the chat.

To get started, type in the chat bar what you want to do. You can, for example, email a coworker with a text that you got from a file in your storage service.
Orchestrate comes with prebuilt apps and skills ready to use, so if it's your first time accessing the platform, you might need to add some skills from the skill catalog to use them.

All skills are grouped in apps, which are available on the skill catalog. Go to the skill catalog to connect to apps and add their skills to a skill set.

Orchestrate chat

In the chat bar, ask questions that are related to the work you want done or use the skills in your personal or team skill set. The following video shows an interaction with the chat:

Note: This video has no narration.

See how to start skills in the chat bar in Starting a skill.

Skills

Use your skills to complete certain tasks for you, so you can focus on what you do best. To use a skill, you must add the skill to a skill set and connect to the app that the skill belongs. If you run a skill without connecting to the app before, you are able to connect the app during the skill run. A message appears in the chat by asking for the connection.

Connect to the app in the chat

See more information about connections in Prebuilt apps.

In addition to add skills to your skill sets to complete your tasks, you can count on the natural language to recognize and understand your queries and get answers.

The following video shows how to use a skill:

Note: This video has no narration.

For more information about skills, see Using skills.

Apps

Apps group skills based on their functions. To use the skills of an app, connect to the app by clicking Connect app. For more information about how to connect to apps, see Apps.

Note: The connection that you set is only validated when you use the skill.

The following video shows an app and its skills and how to connect to this app:

Note: This video has no narration.

Skill catalog

The skill catalog is a collection of all skills that are published on Orchestrate. To open the skill catalog, click Add skills from the catalog.

The following video shows how to open the skill catalog:

Note: This video has no narration.

Skill set

Skill set are a bundle of skills that you use on Orchestrate to automate tasks based on a business context. To use a skill, you must add the skill to your skill set.

The following image shows the skills that were added to a skill set:

The skills in a skill set

On Orchestrate, you have the personal and the team skill sets.

Personal skills

Personal skills are the set of skills that only you use. To use that skills, select Personal skills on Orchestrate menu bar. You add skills to your personal skills set through the skill catalog. Connect to apps to use their skills.

The following image shows the personal skill set:

Personal skills

Team skills

Team skills are the set of skills that all your team can use. To use theses skills, select Team skills on Orchestrate menu bar. Only builders and admins can add skills and connect to the apps in the team skill set. Use shared credentials to connect to the apps of the team skill set because these credentials are used for everyone in your team to run the skills.

The following image shows the team skill set:

Team skills

Note: For the user role, the skill catalog in the team skills set shows the apps and skills that are already added to the skill set.

Customize skills for your digital worker

Build customized skills for your digital worker with the building capabilities on Orchestrate. With these capabilities, you can:

  • Create custom skills by combining internal systems, third-party tools, and prebuilt skills.
  • Discover new skills from applications.
  • Combine multiple skills into a flow to automate several steps of your daily tasks.

Custom skills

Custom skills are imported skills that you, as a builder, build and import into Orchestrate, or discover from applications. With custom skills, you can combine internal systems, third-party tools, and prebuilt skills to accomplish use cases for your organization's specific needs.

Within the platform, you can explore the following capabilities to build custom skills:

  • Build an OpenAPI file with aid of the OpenAPI Builder and upload this file into the platform.
  • Discover skills from applications, such as:
    • IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation - On premises,
    • IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation as a service,
    • IBM Robotic Process Automation,
    • IBM Business Automation Workflow as a service,
    • IBM Operational Decision Manager as a service

Learn more about these capabilities in Building skills from files, Building skills from apps, and Building OpenAPI specifications in OpenAPI Builder.

The following image illustrates the process that a builder takes to import custom skills:

Process to import custom skills.

Notice that importing custom skills doesn't mean that these skills are available in the skill catalog right away. Before they can be available, you must follow the path that is illustrated in the previous image:

  • Choose the source from where you want to import your custom skills, which can be imported from an OpenAPI file or discovered from resources of an in-product app.
  • Select the custom skills that you want to bring to Orchestrate.
  • Enhance the custom skill. You enhance one skill at a time.
  • Publish the custom skill. You publish one skill at a time.

After you publish the custom skill, it becomes available in the skill catalog for you to add it to a skill set. Later on, you are able to use the skill added.

Skill flow

Create a skill flow that combines two or more skills to automate several steps of your repetitive tasks. A skill flow is a linear sequence of skills that you have on your skill catalog that can come from different applications.

For more information, see Combining skills into skill flows.

Create conversational experiences with assistants

Assistants can guide users through complex digital journeys by handling simple or complex conversations while run backend tasks, like creating files in a storage service or emailing a coworker.

Create conversational experiences with the AI assistant builder, a low-code builder capability within Orchestrate, where you can combine generative AI and conversational AI features to tackle complex integrations and workflows. With the AI assistant builder, you create custom extensions from your skills and configure built-in integrations to meet users where they are.

The screen of the steps for a single action in an assistant.
The image displays the steps of the Authenticate a user sample action in an assistant.

For more information, see Building assistants.

Automate repetitive work with automations


An automation represents a set of business logics through decisions and workflow models that automate or solve a business problem. Decision models help you capture business decisions in a decision diagram, which provides an abstract, high-level representation of how decisions and the data that is required to make decisions are structured and related to each other.
While workflow models help you to model business processes over a sequence of activities such as workflows, decisions, automations, or skills.

Create automations with the Automation Builder to automate repetitive work from your team. With the Automation Builder, you can build automations from scratch, import existing automations, or use industry samples to get started. Later on, you can publish automations to use as skills in Orchestrate.

The screen of the new automation creation through industry samples.
The image displays the page to create a new automation through industry samples. You can create the new automation by scratch or import existing automations, use discovery tutorials, or use industry samples.

The screen of a decision model for the Retention offer sample.
The image displays the decision model for the Retention offer sample.

For more information, see Building automations.

Are you ready to get started?

Explore the pathways based on your role by using IBM watsonx Orchestrate:

➤ Getting started as an admin
➤ Getting started as a builder
➤ Getting started as a user

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