Understanding Joule - (Step #4) Joule Interaction Patterns

[Raja_Gupta]

This blog is part of the series 8 Baby Steps to Learn Joule. Please check the previous blogs, before proceeding.

 #1 – Introduction to Joule

#2 How Joule Works

#3 Joule Architecture

In this blog, we will dive deep into Interaction Patterns in Joule.

Let’s first quickly recap what we learnt so far:

• Joule is an advanced, generative AI copilot.
• It is embedded into various SAP applications, for example SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors etc.
• Users ask their queries in the natively integrated Joule client embedded in SAP cloud solutions, such as S/4HANA, SuccessFactors etc. 
• Joule analyses the prompt, provides a much richer query to the LLM, and finally returns a secure, accurate, and appropriate response back to the user.
• Technically, Joule is a service running on SAP BTP in a Cloud Foundry environment.
• Users can access Joule through a diamond icon in the top right-hand corner of the SAP user interface, regardless of the specific system. 
• Joule uses SAP Cloud Identity Services for authentication and authorization

What is Interaction Pattern in Joule?

The interaction pattern refers to the different ways users can communicate with Joule to get information, perform tasks, or navigate across applications.

Joule supports 4 types of interaction patterns:

1. Informational
2. Navigational
3. Transactional
4. Analytical

Below image gives a quick glimpse on these 4 interaction patterns.

Informational

With informational interactions Joule provides knowledge-based results. These are, for example, policy related questions, information in SAP Help, or customer documents stored in third-party repositories.

Joule supports two categories of informational pattern:

• One is based on SAP owned content with the goal to have all our knowledge-base available via Joule. This is managed by SAP and offered to every Joule user out of the box.
• Additionally, SAP customers can upload their own content. For example, customers can upload their own HR policies, travel policies, information content, and others. This is called Document Grounding.

Example of Informational interaction pattern – in Joule with SuccessFactors

Prompt – “Tell me the birthdays of my team members.”

Prompt - “How many leaves do I have this year?”

Example of Informational interaction pattern – in Joule with S/4HANA

Prompt: "What is the approval process for purchase orders in our company?"

Navigational

In this interaction pattern, Joule interprets if the users want to navigate to a business application and navigate them directly where they want to go.

This is especially helpful for users who are not very familiar navigating SAP applications.

Example of navigational interaction pattern – in Joule with SuccessFactors

Prompt – “Show me my organization details”

Example of navigational interaction pattern – in Joule with S/4HANA

Prompt – “Show me all open sales orders.”.

Joule will show a list of open sales orders. It will also provide a link that redirects the user to the S/4HANA Manage Sales Orders app.

Transactional

With transactional pattern, Joule provides users direct entry point to SAP, the backend system, allowing them to do CRUD operation directly from Joule.

For example, review purchase order, create job positions, change address etc.

Example of transactional interaction pattern – in Joule with SuccessFactors

Prompt – “Change my address”

Analytical

SAP plans to introduce analytical interactions. This will enable analytical interactions based on JustAsk and SAP Analytics Cloud.

Example: “Show me the top five performing products by revenue this quarter."

This is in nutshell - Interaction Patterns in Joule!

What's Next?

Blog #5 - Joule in SAP SuccessFactors [Will be published soon]

Meanwhile, you may read the blog Joule, SAP’s Generative AI Copilot