Overview of watsonx Assistant for Z

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IBM® watsonx Assistant for Z leverages generative AI solutions to simplify and optimize the way developers, operators, and programmers interact and manage the IBM Z platform. The watsonx Assistant for Z solution offers the following key features:
  • Conversational AI - Provides accurate answers to questions related to IBM Z with detailed steps and links to enhance learning. This feature is based on Large Language Model (LLM) coupled with domain-specific Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) which augments LLM with IBM Z domain-specific knowledge base and information.
  • Integrated Automation - Capability to recommend relevant automated skills that the user can run during the conversation. A skill is an automated capability that you can use to accomplish a task. With watsonx Assistant for Z, skills are simplified and optimized for performing both complex and routine tasks on IBM Z. Automation uses the existing user security settings and ensures that the user performs the tasks.
  • AI builder to provide customizable Assistants – The Builder empowers domain experts to create customized AI assistants for specific users, roles, and business units. By using the builder, you can create a skills catalog. You can configure the AI assistants to respond to version-specific Z products. After you build the assistant, you can share it with the target users to provide information based on their role, team, and experience.

You can create custom automation by using the existing automation such as Ansible, JCL, and REXX as skills into the product catalog. When added to a customized assistant, the skills allow users to invoke automation from the contextually-aware chat interface along with providing a guided experience. Therefore, IBM® watsonx Assistant for Z enables users to efficiently enhance their platform expertise, improve productivity across all skill levels, and accelerate efficiency through the trusted AI-powered conversational experience augmented with intelligent automation to simplify and optimize the execution of IBM Z tasks.

watsonx Assistant for Z introduces a conversational AI Assistant that provides accurate answers to your questions and guides you to resolve issues. The integrated automation provides instructions to perform tasks.

For example, when a user attempts to log in to the bank account to verify a statement but encounters a certificate expiry message instead of the login page, a system programmer is notified about the issue the user is facing. The system programmer investigates the error, determines that it is caused by an expired SSL certificate, and consults the AI Assistant for information about SSL certificates and their renewal. watsonx Assistant for Z assists the programmer in understanding:
  • SSL certificates and their types
  • Step-by-step procedure to renew an expired SSL certificate

If an automation skill exists for certificate renewal, it helps in performing the task automatically.

After the system programmer renews the certificate, the user can log in to the bank account without the certificate expiry error.

The following diagram illustrates how watsonx Assistant for Z works.

watsonx Assistant for Z overview diagram

watsonx Assistant for Z is powered by IBM watsonx Orchestrate that is built on Red Hat OpenShift and Cloud Pak Platform.

The generative AI capability is driven by two LLMs. The first LLM granite-3-8b-instruct is used for conversational search and the second LLM Granite-8b-unified-api-model-v2 is used for conversational skills. This capability presents relevant automated skills that the users can invoke to address their enquiry and leverage automation integrated within the conversation.

In addition to watsonx Orchestrate, the architecture includes the following components:
  • Retrieval Augmented Generation (zRAG) - A component that augments LLM with the knowledge based on IBM Z documentation and creates IBM Z context aware responses to the questions.
  • IBM® watsonx Assistant for Z - An extension that allows to connect to Ansible and z/OS APIs and enables you to import automation, Ansible playbooks, JCL, or REXX as skills.
Note: As watsonx Assistant for Z is powered by watsonx Orchestrate, this documentation includes descriptions that refer to this underlying technology.