Intelligent End-to-End Automation with Flowable’s AI Service

In today's unpredictable market, enterprises need the agility to adapt quickly to ever-changing external influences. Flowable has always championed flexibility, used by businesses across various industries to design processes that perfectly align with their specific requirements.

As Flowable is used in a wide range of industries and use cases, it became clear that AI could add significant value by driving new levels of automation and intelligence. That's why we developed the AI service, enabling users to create AI-assisted features that can be integrated seamlessly into process or case models. With the new AI service, integrating AI into your end-to-end processes is now more flexible, scalable, and individualized than ever before.

Creating reusable AI components

Scalability and maintenance are key to any successful AI implementation. With Flowable’s AI service, users can encapsulate AI behavior into reusable components, making it easier to maintain and scale over time. Once AI components are created, modelers and even non-technical users can leverage them without needing to dive into the technical complexities behind the scenes.

AI services for predictable results

AI services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT can be useful in manual, one-off interactions. However, when incorporating AI into more repetitive, automated workflows, structured responses are crucial. Unpredictable outputs or "hallucinations" could disrupt process execution, leading to errors or delays.

This is where Flowable’s AI service shines. By focusing on highly structured, repeatable use cases, Flowable ensures that AI tasks can be invoked from within a process or case execution—producing precise and predictable responses that can seamlessly continue automated workflows.

Similar to other Flowable services, AI services use input and output parameters. Defining these structures ensures a smooth interaction between the AI and other systems. Flowable uses this information to dynamically generate prompts and structure the AI responses, providing reliable data that supports ongoing automation.

Example: Intent recognition and data extraction

Let’s explore the AI service in action with a practical example: customer email automation. Imagine a scenario where emails from customers are read and processed automatically. The first step is to recognize the intent behind the email. Once identified, the system can extract key data from the unstructured email content, such as a new address for an address change or payment details like IBAN, amount, and valuta date for payment requests.

We can further enhance this automation by analyzing the email’s sentiment. If the sentiment score falls below a certain threshold, such as 50%, the email is flagged for manual review to ensure it’s handled with appropriate care.

The result? A sequence of AI operations within a well-defined AI service that executes intent recognition, data extraction, and sentiment analysis efficiently.

Simplifying AI service development

To streamline the process of AI service development, Flowable Design includes built-in tools for testing and refining AI prompts directly. This reduces the complexity of prompt engineering and helps developers quickly validate their AI-assisted processes.

In this simplified example, let’s walk through how Flowable’s AI services might power a business process:

• Customer email ingestion: The system listens to incoming customer emails using Flowable’s email channel capabilities.

• AI service invocation: The email content is passed to the AI service, which recognizes the customer’s intent and analyzes sentiment.

• Data extraction: For recognized intents, such as an address change, the AI service extracts relevant information (e.g., the new address) to facilitate automatic processing.

• Sentiment-based review: If the sentiment is low, or the intent is unrecognized, the email is flagged for manual intervention, ensuring customers receive the best possible support.

This approach transforms unstructured customer emails into structured data that can be processed automatically, enhancing both speed and accuracy in customer service operations.

Conclusion

Flowable’s AI service enables organizations to design AI-assisted features with clear structure and reliability, allowing for seamless integration into repetitive, automated processes. By leveraging structured AI prompts and responses, businesses can automate complex workflows with confidence, reducing the manual workload while improving accuracy and efficiency.

This flexibility—blending AI services with human input and business process automation—allows enterprises to deliver superior customer experiences while optimizing their operations. Flowable’s AI service opens up a world of possibilities, allowing you to create and scale AI-assisted solutions tailored to your unique business needs.