What's new in IBM® watsonx Orchestrate®

Learn about new features and updates for IBM watsonx Orchestrate on IBM Cloud® and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for December 2025.

12 December 2025

Watch the release video for the latest updates in IBM watsonx Orchestrate.

Monitor agent metrics on watsonx.governance

Users that have watsonx Orchestrate tenants from IBM Cloud can now enable a monitoring agent feature to track key performance and usage metrics in depth of deployed agents on watsonx.governance. After builder or admin enabled it, these metrics are automatically sent to watsonx.governance, where you can view them in a dedicated dashboard for better visibility and control.

The benefits are:

Gain insights of agent activity and performance.
Monitor compliance and governance metrics in one place.
Simplify troubleshooting and optimization with centralized data.

This feature is supported by the following regions on IBM Cloud:

Dallas (us-south), in Texas, US
Frankfurt (eu-de), in Germany
London (eu-gb), in England
Tokyo (jp-tok), in Japan
Sydney (au-syd), in Australia
Toronto (ca-tor), in Canada

See how to enable the monitoring agent on your watsonx Orchestrate to access the metrics dashboard on watsonx.governance in Monitoring agent analytics.

Use partner A2A agents

This release introduces the Partner A2A (Agent2Agent) agents, which enable your agent to seamlessly communicate with automated agent platforms outside watsonx Orchestrate. You can add a Partner A2A agent from the catalog as a collaborator to delegate work to an external agent and receive results automatically.

For more information, see Accessing partner A2A agents.

Manage structured data in the chat

Users can now manage structured data directly within their chat experience. This feature allows users to edit tables inline without leaving the chat interface, which provides a fast and intuitive method for entering and updating structured data.

Editable tables

Builders must configure the editable tables to collect user's inputs in the forms from flow builder. See more in Collect information.

Default greeting message for agents

This release adds a capability that enhances the user experience during voice interactions: a default greeting message for agents. Builders can define the welcome message that the agent delivers at the start of a voice interaction during the voice configuration.

See the details in Selecting the voice in the agent.

Updates for tools and flow builder

Document extraction options

You can now choose between two tool options for extracting fields from documents:

Unstructured: Uses a text-based language model to extract top-level fields. Best suited for text-heavy documents such as contracts, emails, or manuals.
Structured: Uses a vision-based, multimodal language model to extract both top-level fields and table data. Ideal for structured or fixed-layout documents like invoices, purchase orders, or tax forms.

For more information, see Choosing a tool option for extracting fields from documents.

Import tools from an MCP server

You can import external tools from Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and add them to your agents to enhance the agent’s ability to accomplish complex tasks.

See more information in Importing tools from an MCP server.

Default LLM model for flow builder

The default LLM model for the flow builder changed:

Prior default: watsonx/meta-llama/llama-3-3-70b-instruct
New default: groq/openai/gpt-oss-120b

User data type for agentic workflows

Builders can now use a user data type throughout the flow design process. With this improvement, it is possible to:

Select the user data type in flow variables and code block outputs.
Map node input parameters by using this type.
Search for tenant-registered users by ID, name, or email to set values accurately.

See the Input, output, and variable types section in Mapping data for more details.

New prebuilt and partner agents available in the catalog

Newly added prebuilt agents and tools

IBM watsonx Orchestrate introduces new prebuilt agents and tools to expand automation across key business domains.

Category	Agent name
IT	Build Management with Jenkins
	Job & Log Management with Jenkins
	Record Manager in ServiceNow
	Request Manager in ServiceNow
	DevOps Management with GitLab
Procurement
	Invoice Management for Oracle Fusion
	Supplier Search with Oracle Fusion
	Supplier invoices with Oracle Fusion

For the complete list of available prebuilt agents, see List of prebuilt agents.

Category	Tool name
HR	Create emergency contact in SAP SuccessFactors
	Update emergency contact in SAP SuccessFactors
	Get compensation history
	Lists the cost centers for the 'organization' categories of cost centers in Workday HCM
IT	Stop build in Jenkins
	Get jobs in Jenkins
	Get last build in Jenkins
	Get build queued in Jenkins
	Trigger build in Jenkins
	Get recent changes in Jenkins
	Get failed builds in Jenkins
	Cancel build queue in Jenkins
	Enable job in Jenkins
	Get jobs in Jenkins
	Disable job in Jenkins
	Download export Job log in Jenkins
	Retry failed job in Jenkins
	Get stopped Job in Jenkins
	Export job configuration in Jenkins
Procurement	Get all suppliers in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get supplier tax registration details in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get supplier contact information in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get supplier income tax data in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get supplier addresses in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get tax authorities in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get legal locations in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get invoice details in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get all invoices in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get all disputed invoices in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Update invoice in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get all payment terms in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Update an invoice item in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get tax classifications in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get ship to locations in Oracle Fusion Procurement
	Get all purchase requests in Ariba
	Get all goods receipt in Ariba
Productivity	Searches email using a search term
	Moves an outlook email to another folder
	Retrieves attachments from a specified Microsoft Outlook email
	Downloads a specific attachment from an Outlook email using Microsoft Graph API
	Create contacts on HubSpot
	Update contacts on HubSpot
	Create company on HubSpot
	Update company on HubSpot

For the complete list of available prebuilt tools, see List of prebuilt tools.

Newly added partner agents

Agent name	Published by
AskSirion Contract Agent	Siren
ContentIQ Setup Agent	Symplistic.ai
Seismic MCP Server Setup Assistant	Seismic
Spark Compass AI News Agent	SparkCompass
DataVault Data Valuation Agent	DataVault Inc

For more information, see Partner agents.

Foundation models deprecated

IBM watsonx Orchestrate no longer supports the following foundation models from 29 January 2026:

llama-3-2-90b-vision-instruct
llama-3-405b-instruct

For more information, see Deprecated and withdrawn models.

Other enhancements and changes

The following table details the fixes that are delivered in this release and the user role that is affected by the fix:

Bug fixes	Description	Affected role
Error to upload files in knowledge base	Fixed an issue where the builders got errors when they tried to import documents to the knowledge base of an agent.	Builder

The following table lists the enhancements available in the current release corresponding to the user role:

Enhancement	Description	Affected role
Informational banner on agent details page	An informational banner now appears in the agent details page, providing quick access to key resources such as demo videos, documentation, and case studies. This feature is available for globally accessible agents, including IBM-provided domain agents and partner-provided agents.	User Builder Admin
Auto-fill from OpenAPI metadata for connections	When creating a new connection for tools imported from an OpenAPI specification, the system now automatically populates connection fields by using metadata from the OpenAPI spec. This enhancement simplifies the setup process by reducing manual input and eliminating the need for users to understand the tool’s internal implementation.	Builder

Documentation updates

See the updates in the watsonx Orchestrate documentation and other contents for this release.

New sections

IBM Watson Commerce now is named Supply chain IBM SIP. See more information in Connecting to Supply chain IBM SIP.
The Overview of document processing section helps new users to work with document processing on watsonx Orchestrate.
The GPT-OSS model behavior and instruction guidelines section guides builders to use the advanced capabilities of the GPT-OSS model in their agents

Updated sections

The Known issues and limitations topic now has the following entry:

Models
- GPT-OSS 120B — OpenAI (via Groq)

3 December 2025

Support for FedRAMP through AWS GovCloud (US)

IBM watsonx Orchestrate is now available on AWS GovCloud (US), a secure and cloud-based environment that is designed to support US government agencies and organizations handling sensitive and regulated data. It provides a compliant infrastructure to meet stringent federal requirements. AWS GovCloud (US) inherits the robust compliance framework of AWS, enabling customers to align with critical standards such as:

Enhanced compliance alignment: AWS GovCloud (US) now offers improved support for FedRAMP requirements, streamlining authorization processes for government workloads.
Strengthened data sovereignty: Expanded operational controls can ensure that all regions remain managed exclusively by US citizens, reinforcing compliance with government regulations.
Improved isolation architecture: Logical and physical isolation enhancements provide greater security for sensitive workloads.

For more information, see: