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 watsonx Orchestrate:
- Use of skills directly in the chat or through AI assistants
- Relation between skill catalog and skill sets
- Relation between apps and skills
- Customization of skills for your digital worker
- Creation of conversational experiences with AI 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 directly in the watsonx Orchestrate chat.
watsonx Orchestrate comes with prebuilt apps and skills ready to use, so if you're getting started with 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 or an AI assistant. Use the chat to directly start a skill or call an AI assistant and use the skills through it.
The chat
Use the chat to accomplish your tasks with help of a generative artificial intelligence (AI), AI assistants, and skills and automations.
The watsonx Orchestrate chat
In the watsonx Orchestrate chat, 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.
For more information, see Using the watsonx Orchestrate chat.
The watsonx Orchestrate Beta chat
In the watsonx Orchestrate Beta chat, you can interact with a powerful generative AI model that is provided by IBM. Use it to complete generative artificial intelligence (AI) tasks, or even run skills to complete more complex tasks like sending emails, or posting a job requisition with AI assistants.
For more information, see Using the watsonx Orchestrate Beta chat.
Apps and skills
Apps group collections of skills that you can use to complete certain tasks so you can take more time to focus on what you do best.
Skills can be as simple as a singular action or as elaborate as needed to complete some tasks. For example, adding a row to an Excel table is a single action that accomplishes a task. While getting the email of job candidates and sending to them the contents of a file over email is a bit more complex task. On watsonx Orchestrate, those complex tasks can be built as skill flows.
Use your skills in the way that fits better to the flow of your tasks, for example:
- You can add skills to a skill set and start them directly in the watsonx Orchestrate chat.
- You can add skill-based actions to AI assistants to and start them in the AI assistant chat or the watsonx Orchestrate Beta chat.
Skill-based actions are the skills that you add to AI assistants to implement orchestration for specific conversations. Any skill, even if it's a prebuilt or a custom skill, can be used as a skill-based action if its app is connected for a AI assistant environment.
Check the prebuilt apps available and their skills in the Prebuilt apps and skills topic.
Skill catalog
The skill catalog is a shareable repository of skills that you can use in a skill set or an AI assistant. The skill catalog contains all skills that are published on watsonx Orchestrate. To open the skill catalog,
click Add skills from the catalog or go to the menu 
and click Skill catalog.
The following video shows how to open the skill catalog:
To use a skill, even if you want to add it to a skill set or run it in a conversational way with AI assistants, you must connect to the app that the skill belongs to.
The following video shows how to connect to an app through the skill catalog:
Note: This video has no narration.
Also, check the following procedures to connect to apps according to the approach that you choose to use skills:
- To connect to apps in the personal skill set, see Connecting to an app.
- To connect to apps in the team skill set or an AI assistant, see Managing connections.
Skill set
Skill sets are a bundle of skills that you use on watsonx 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:
On watsonx Orchestrate, you have the personal and the team skill sets. Included, you have the AI assistants that you manage as you do for the team skill set.
Personal skills
Personal skills are the set of skills that only you use. To use that skills, select Personal skills on watsonx 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:
Team skills
Team skills are the set of skills that all your team can use. To use these skills, select Team skills on watsonx 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:
AI assistants environments
An environment is a place where you can group AI assistant content, channels, and extensions in separate containers.
The draft environment and the live environment come with each AI assistant that you create in a tenant. An AI assistant environment behaves as the team skill set, in which all resources like apps and their skills, and connections are shared with all members that have access to that AI assistant in a tenant.
Switch from AI assistants' environments in the same way you do for the personal and team skill sets.
Customize skills for your digital worker
Build customized skills for your digital worker with the building capabilities on watsonx 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 watsonx 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:
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 watsonx 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 AI assistants
AI 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 watsonx Orchestrate, where you can combine generative AI and conversational AI features to tackle complex integrations and workflows. With the AI assistant builder, you create skill-based actions from your skills and configure built-in integrations to meet users where they are.
For more information, see Building AI 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. This diagram provides an abstract,
high-level representation of how decisions and the data that is required to decide 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 watsonx Orchestrate.
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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