Applied Assistant

The Applied Assistant is your workspace’s default AI teammate. It helps your team answer questions, summarize customer context, draft replies, and move work forward from the channels where your team already works.

Each workspace has one Applied Assistant. Other agents can be created for more specialized workflows, but the Applied Assistant is the shared assistant for your team and uses the standard Applied Labs Slack app.

What the Assistant can do

The Assistant’s abilities depend on the knowledge, connectors, workflows, and permissions configured in Applied. Common uses include:

Answering team questions using your published knowledge and connected systems
Summarizing Slack threads, customer conversations, and open follow-ups
Drafting customer replies, internal notes, and handoff summaries
Running approved workflows when your workspace has configured them
Helping identify missing knowledge or repeated customer questions
Escalating or routing work when escalation settings are enabled

The Assistant is most useful after you connect the systems and knowledge sources it should reference.

Set up the Assistant

Open Agents in Applied.
Select Applied Assistant.
Add or review the knowledge and content sources the Assistant should use.
Connect any systems the Assistant should reference.
Connect Slack so teammates can use the Assistant from Slack.
Test the Assistant in a Slack channel and in a direct message.

Connect the Assistant to Slack

The Applied Assistant uses the shared Applied Labs Slack app.

Open Agents.
Select Applied Assistant.
Open Settings.
Find the Slack card and click Connect.
Continue to Slack and approve the Applied Labs app.
Invite the app to the public or private Slack channels where the Assistant should respond.
Mention the app in Slack to test the connection.

If your workspace has not created the Applied Assistant yet, Applied creates it during the Slack install.

For separate bot identities or non-Assistant agents, use Slack Agent Installs.

Use the Assistant in Slack

Public channels

Invite the Slack app to a channel, then mention it directly. The Assistant replies in the same Slack thread so the conversation stays grouped.

Private channels

Invite the Slack app to the private channel first. After it has access, mention the Assistant the same way you would in a public channel.

Threads

Mention the Assistant inside a thread when the context is already there. Keep follow-up questions in the same thread so the Assistant and your team share the same history.

Direct messages

Message the Slack app directly for one-off questions. In DMs, the Assistant replies directly in the DM instead of creating a Slack thread.

Escalations

If Slack escalations are enabled for the Assistant, your team can use the configured reaction to escalate a Slack conversation into Applied. Applied keeps the conversation, summary, and routing state together so your team can continue the work from the Inbox.

Best practices

Ask the Assistant in the channel or thread where the relevant context lives.
Keep follow-up questions in the same thread.
Use DMs for quick, private, or one-off questions.
Invite the Assistant only to channels where it should have access.
Connect relevant knowledge and systems before expecting operational answers.
Review important replies before sending them to customers.

Troubleshooting

If the Assistant does not respond in a channel, confirm the Slack app has been invited to that channel and that the message directly mentions the app.

If the Assistant does not respond in a private channel, invite the app to the private channel first.

If DMs do not work, confirm Slack was connected through the Assistant setup flow and reinstall the app if your Slack admin changed app permissions.

If an answer is missing context, review the Assistant’s connected knowledge, content sources, connectors, and workflows in Applied.

If you need a different Slack bot name for another agent, create a custom Slack agent install instead of reusing the Applied Assistant install.