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Guidance documents are instructions you write for Serval’s help desk agent. When a user submits a request that matches your guidance, the agent follows your instructions to respond—adapting its tone and approach while staying true to your procedures. Guidance is unique because it combines agent instructions with deterministic workflows to create advanced automations.

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When to Use Guidance

Use Guidance when you’re giving the help desk agent instructions on how to act, how to respond, and what context to consider while helping an end user. Guidance should focus on agent behavior and decision-making—not long-form reference content. Think of Guidance as “Something that you’d train your new help desk agents on.” Guidance is especially useful when you need the agent to:
  • Follow a consistent tone and communication style
  • Apply language preferences or formatting rules
  • Make decisions in a multi-step troubleshooting flow
  • Follow an internal playbook or **standard operating procedure **(triage, escalation, follow-up)
  • Handle edge cases or sensitive situations with the right framing
Best Practice: Keep in mind that Guidances should be focused on specific scenarios.
Guidance editor showing slow computer troubleshooting instructions

Example guidance for handling slow computer troubleshooting requests

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Combining Guidance with Serval Tools

From Guidance, tag Workflows, Access Roles, Knowledge Base Articles and Users to help guide the help desk agent when responding to users.
Tagging workflows and users in the guidance editor

Tag workflows, knowledge base articles, and users within your guidance

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Guidance & Workflows

Guidance and workflows can work together, but they don’t need to be paired in every case. For straightforward actions with a single input and clear outcome (e.g., password reset, access provisioning), a workflow can usually run without additional guidance. Guidance becomes important only when extra context, judgment, or user interaction is required. Use Guidance with workflows when:
  • The agent needs significant context before running the workflow
  • The workflow outcome depends on confirming details with the user
  • A second input must be collected conversationally
  • There are edge cases, policy constraints, or expectations that need to be explained
  • The agent needs help choosing whether or not to run the workflow
When guidance is used, the recommended pattern is:
  1. Create a workflow for the single end-to-end action.
  2. Add guidance only when necessary to explain when to run it and how to communicate with the user.

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Guidance & Knowledge Base

Both Guidance and your Knowledge Base can answer user questions. They can be used for separate purposes, but you can also store knowledge in Guidance, if it best fits your company’s processes.
GuidanceKnowledge Base
Instructs the agent on how to behaveProvides reference content the agent can retrieve externally
Tone, language rules, decision logicFAQs, how-to articles, policies
Active instructions (“do this, then this”)Passive information (“here’s the answer”)
Tagging workflows and Serval automations
Self-healing information with Serval Suggestions
When in doubt: if it tells the agent how to act, it’s guidance. If it tells the agent what to say, it’s probably Knowledge Base content.If you don’t have a formal Knowledge Base yet, start with a simple shared document or lightweight KB format and build from there. In the meantime, use Guidance as an interim way to ensure the agent behaves consistently.

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Creating Guidance

1

Start a new guidance

Navigate to Guidance in the sidebar and click New Guidance.
2

Add a name and description

Enter a Name (a short title the agent uses to identify this guidance) and a Description (when this guidance applies—helps the agent match it to requests).
3

Write your instructions

Add your Content—the actual instructions the agent follows. Write guidance as direct instructions to the agent, telling it what to do, what to ask, and when to trigger workflows.
4

Tag workflows (optional)

Link workflows to your guidance using one of these methods:
  • Type @ in the content field to search for and select an existing workflow inline
  • Click the "+" icon to either add a New Workflow or Browse Workflows (select from existing or installable workflows)
Selected workflows appear as actionable references the agent can execute when following your guidance.
5

Tag users (optional)

Tag users in your guidance by typing @ followed by their name. Select the correct profile from the dropdown to reference specific team members.
6

Configure always-use (optional)

Enable Always use if you want this guidance included in every conversation, regardless of the user’s request. Learn more →
7

Save your guidance

Click Save to publish your guidance. The agent will immediately begin using it for matching requests.

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Learn How to Build Guidance for Your Organization

  • Test example Guidance use cases for HR, IT, Ops, and Finance.
  • Use Serval Suggestions to automatically generate Guidance based on existing tickets. Accept, configure, or deny these suggestions to build your Guidance base. Instruct Serval to remember knowledge or suggest Guidance when handling escalated requests.