Lyric: Release 19 highlights

Release 19 brings Applaud closer to a truly connected, AI-powered HR experience.

From smarter case management and agentic workflows to new ways to bring AI into Slack and Outlook, this release makes it easier to automate work, connect knowledge, and give employees HR support wherever they work.

Behind the scenes, stronger analytics, employee data feeds, integrations, and reporting provide HR teams with greater visibility and control.

Take a look at what's new!

Smarter case management

Case Management gets a major boost with AI-powered intake and triage, guided case plans, and deeper analytics.

AI can clarify employee requests, capture the details needed to categorize them, and route cases to the right team. Case plans then help coordinate multi-step work between AI and HR teams.

For HR leaders, enhanced analytics make it easier to understand demand, workload, backlog, service levels, and employee experience across the case operation.

You can now:

• Let AI handle intake and triage: Clarify requests, capture key details, and route cases automatically.
• Coordinate complex case work: Use case plans to bring AI and HR teams together across multi-step processes.
• See the bigger picture: Track SLAs, XLAs, AI quality signals, and employee feedback.
• Understand individual cases: Review timelines, activity, messages, key events, and service-level performance in one place.

Automate more with agentic AI

Agentic workflows make it possible to build sophisticated HR processes that combine AI reasoning, integrations, business rules, and external events.

That means processes such as time-off requests, job and position requests, onboarding, and approvals can move forward automatically, while still pausing for employee input or waiting for an external event when needed.

And now, AI agents and workflows can use out-of-the-box Workday and SAP SuccessFactors tools to access HR data and perform supported actions.

You can now:

• Build multi-step HR workflows: Combine AI, integrations, business rules, and events in a single process.
• Connect AI to HR data: Give agents access to common Workday and SAP SuccessFactors information and actions.
• Keep processes moving: Branch based on data, process lists of items, and pause when human input is needed.
• Generate documents automatically: Create personalized documents from templates using information gathered during conversations and workflows.

Bring richer AI experiences to every channel

AI responses don't have to be a wall of text.

Applaud Visuals lets the AI assistant return information as charts, cards, lists, maps, organizational charts, and diagrams, helping employees understand complex information at a glance.

And with new Slack and Outlook channels, employees can get AI-powered HR support in the tools they already use every day.

You can now:

• Use Applaud in Slack: Ask questions, continue conversations in threads, share attachments, and receive visual responses.
• Use Applaud in Outlook: Keep employee questions and follow-up conversations together in an email thread.
• Deliver visual answers: Present complex information in richer, more structured formats.
• Manage channels centrally: Configure and manage employee experiences across web, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Outlook.

Connect Applaud to more of your AI ecosystem

Applaud now supports an MCP server, opening up Applaud capabilities to supported external AI clients.

Administrators can control which Agent Tools external clients can access, extending Applaud's HR capabilities beyond the Applaud platform.

External integration connections also expand the systems that can connect to Applaud and be used by AI assistants, workflows, and other experiences.

The result: Applaud can become part of a broader AI ecosystem, while giving administrators control over the capabilities they expose.

Put knowledge to work

Knowledge Management gets stronger foundations for AI with SharePoint integration and the new Unified Knowledge Engine.

Organizations can connect selected SharePoint sites and keep content synchronized, giving employees and AI assistants access to current policies, guides, and intranet content.

The Unified Knowledge Engine brings SharePoint, published articles, uploaded documents, and other sources into a shared knowledge layer, giving the AI Assistant and case AI a more consistent foundation for finding and using organizational knowledge.

You can now:

• Connect SharePoint knowledge: Bring selected SharePoint content into Applaud.
• Keep content current: Synchronize connected content on a schedule.
• Bring sources together: Give AI a shared knowledge layer across different content sources.
• Work more easily with knowledge: Use the refreshed Knowledge Management experience.

See what's really happening

Get a clearer picture of how your HR operation is performing from individual cases and team workloads to AI adoption and knowledge effectiveness.

Case Management Analytics gives HR leaders and case managers a broader view of case operations, helping you understand demand, workload, backlog, team performance, service levels, and employee experience. Compare performance across teams and time periods, drill into priorities and categories, and use AI triage results and employee feedback to spot opportunities for improvement.

Alongside this, enhanced analytics across Applaud give you a more complete picture of how employees are using AI and knowledge across the channels they already use.

You can now:

• Understand case performance: Analyze case volumes, workloads, backlog, priorities, team performance, SLAs, and XLAs across your operation.
• Spot opportunities to improve: Use AI triage results, employee feedback, and operational trends to identify where case handling can be improved.
• Understand channel adoption: See AI assistant activity across Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and web.
• Measure AI effectiveness more accurately: Analyze assistant conversations and topic effectiveness without Case Management activity affecting the results.
• Follow the knowledge journey: Track engagement from article views through deeper reads and feedback, with more consistent deflection measures.
• Share insights automatically: Generate and schedule personalized Excel reports based on each recipient's permissions.

Connect employee data to experiences

Employee Feeds make it easier to keep workforce data in sync and use employee lifecycle events to trigger automated experiences.

Bring employee records into Applaud from supported HR systems, APIs, spreadsheets, or webhooks, map the fields you need, and trigger experiences when something changes.

You can now:

• Keep employee data synchronized: Import and update records from multiple sources.
• Control what you bring in: Map only the employee fields Applaud needs.
• React to lifecycle events: Trigger experiences for new hires, leavers, manager changes, job changes, and more.
• Connect your HR ecosystem: Use supported HRIS systems to enhance your automated employee experiences.

A more connected Applaud

Release 19 is about bringing the pieces of the HR experience closer together.

AI can reason and act. Workflows can automate processes. Knowledge can come from more of the places your organization already uses. Employees can get support in the tools where they work. And HR teams get better visibility into what's happening.

The result is a more connected Applaud experience that helps HR do more and makes everyday HR support simpler for employees.