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AI Assistant Guide

The Sparko AI Assistant is your intelligent companion for all HR-related tasks. Available 24/7, it can answer questions, complete tasks, and provide personalized recommendations.

Accessing the AI Assistant

Methods to Open

  1. Omni-search (recommended): Press Cmd/Ctrl + K (or /), type your question, and press Enter or choose "Ask Sparko about…". The answer streams in right there, grounded in what you can access, with follow-up suggestions and inline charts.
  2. Full chat page: Open Sparko AI from the top bar for the full conversation view. It remembers earlier turns in the same chat on every plan. Keeping those chats after you close them is a Business feature.

Interface Overview

🤖 AI Assistant ● Online ⚙️ ✕ Quick suggestions: 📅 Check my PTO 📈 My OKR progress 🎯 Career advice 
<!-- Conversation -->
<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; margin-bottom: 15px;">
  <div style="width: 28px; height: 28px; background: #4f46e5; border-radius: 50%; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; flex-shrink: 0;">
    <span style="font-size: 12px;">🤖</span>
  </div>
  <div style="background: white; padding: 12px; border-radius: 12px; box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.05); max-width: 300px;">
    <p style="margin: 0; font-size: 14px; color: #374151;">Hello! I'm your AI assistant. I can help you with:</p>
    <ul style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding-left: 18px; font-size: 13px; color: #6b7280;">
      <li>HR questions & policies</li>
      <li>Time off & schedules</li>
      <li>Career development</li>
      <li>Performance & OKRs</li>
    </ul>
    <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; font-size: 14px; color: #374151;">How can I help you today?</p>
  </div>
</div>
📎 ➤

AI Personas

The AI adapts its personality based on your question:

HR Business Partner

For policy questions, HR processes, and administrative tasks.

Example questions:

  • "What's the parental leave policy?"
  • "How do I report a workplace concern?"
  • "When is open enrollment?"
  • "How do I update my tax withholding?"

Career Advisor

For career development, skills, and growth conversations.

Example questions:

  • "What skills should I develop for promotion?"
  • "Help me set a career goal"
  • "What learning paths do you recommend?"
  • "Am I ready for a senior role?"

Compensation & Benefits Advisor

For salary, benefits, and total rewards questions.

Example questions:

  • "What health benefits does the company offer?"
  • "How does the 401k match work?"
  • "When is my next salary review?"
  • "Explain my stock options"

Common Tasks

Time & Leave

Check PTO balance:

You: "How much PTO do I have?"
AI: "You have 12 days of PTO remaining this year.
     - Total: 20 days
     - Used: 8 days
     - Pending: 0 days

     Would you like to request time off?"

Request time off:

You: "I need to take off December 23-27"
AI: "I'll help you request time off for December 23-27 (5 days).

     This will use 5 of your 12 remaining PTO days.
     Your manager James Wilson will be notified.

     [Request Time Off] [Modify Dates]"

Performance

Get OKR help:

You: "Help me write an OKR for improving code quality"
AI: "Here's a suggested OKR for code quality:

     Objective: Deliver high-quality, maintainable code

     Key Results:
     1. Reduce code review revision requests by 40%
     2. Achieve 85% unit test coverage on new code
     3. Run 2 code-quality workshops with the team

     [Create this OKR] [Modify] [See alternatives]"

Prepare for 1-on-1:

You: "Help me prepare for my 1-on-1 with James"
AI: "Here's your 1-on-1 prep with James Wilson:

     📅 Meeting: Tomorrow at 3pm

     Suggested topics:
     - Your OKR progress (currently at 72%)
     - Recent project completion
     - Career development discussion

     Since your last 1-on-1:
     - You completed 2 key results
     - Received positive peer feedback
     - Questions about promotion timeline

     [Generate agenda] [Add notes]"

Career Development

Get career advice:

You: "What should I focus on to get promoted?"
AI: "Based on your profile as Software Engineer II,
     here's what you need for Senior Engineer:

     Skills to develop:
     🔴 System Design (Critical gap)
     🟡 Technical Leadership (Moderate gap)
     🟢 Code Quality (Strong)

     Recommended actions:
     1. Lead the design of a cross-team system
     2. Lead a cross-team project
     3. Mentor a junior engineer

     Readiness score: 68%
     Estimated timeline: 9-12 months

     [Create development plan] [Find mentor]"

HR Policies

Ask about policies:

You: "What's the remote work policy?"
AI: "Here's our remote work policy summary:

     ✅ Eligibility: All employees after 90 days
     📍 Options: Full remote, hybrid, or in-office
     📝 Requirements: Manager approval, home office setup

     Key points:
     - Core hours: 10am-3pm your timezone
     - Equipment: Company provides laptop, monitor
     - Internet: $50/month stipend available

     [Read full policy] [Request remote work]"

Advanced Features

Context Awareness

The AI understands your context:

  • Current page you're viewing
  • Recent actions you've taken
  • Your role and permissions
  • Time of year (reviews, enrollment periods)

Example: When you're on the Performance page:

You: "Help me with this"
AI: "I see you're looking at your Q4 OKRs.
     Would you like me to:
     - Add a check-in for your current OKR
     - Suggest updates based on progress
     - Compare to team averages"

Multi-Turn Conversations

The AI remembers the chat you are in, on every plan:

You: "Show me the engineering team"
AI: [Shows engineering team list]

You: "Who has the most tenure?"
AI: "In the Engineering team, James Wilson has the
     most tenure at 8 years, 3 months."

You: "What's his email?"
AI: "James Wilson's email is [email protected]"

Attachments

You can share files with the AI:

  • Screenshots for help with UI issues
  • Documents for policy questions

Action Buttons

AI responses often include action buttons:

  • Primary action: Main suggested action
  • Secondary actions: Alternative options
  • Learn more: Additional information

Agentic AI: Action Execution

The AI can execute actions on your behalf, always with your explicit approval:

What changes by plan

Asking questions works on every plan. The assistant reads only what you already have permission to see, and answers in the chat.

On Core, each AI answer uses one of your company's monthly AI actions. The "AI actions" chip at the bottom of the sidebar shows how many are left. On Growth, Business and Custom, answers are not counted.

Answers cite your company's documents on every plan. Ask about a policy and you get the handbook or announcement it came from, whether you are on Core or Custom.

Proposed actions work on every plan. What differs is the count: on Core and Growth, an action the assistant carries out costs one of your monthly assistant actions, a separate allowance from AI actions, and on Business and Custom nothing is counted.

When the assistant looks something up, it reads what it found before it replies, so you get an answer in plain language with the actual figures in it, not just the raw result. The lookup card, chart and sources stay with the answer.

Keeping your chats is a Business feature. On Core and Growth a conversation lasts as long as you have it open. On Business and Custom it is saved to your history, and only you can see it. A saved conversation keeps what each answer came with: the sources, the charts, the lookup results and the steps the assistant took, so reopening it shows the same answer you got the first time.

In an active workspace, a conversation you have not touched for 90 days is archived. It is not deleted. It drops out of the list beside the chat, and Show archived shows you the archived ones on their own. Send another message in an archived conversation and it returns to the list.

The assistant proposes an action, shows you exactly what it would do, and carries it out once you confirm. It can only ever propose an action you have permission to perform yourself.

What is Agentic AI?

Instead of just answering questions, the AI can:

  • ✅ Create career goals and development plans
  • ✅ Create OKRs with key results
  • ✅ Request feedback from colleagues, or start a full 360 feedback workflow
  • ✅ Schedule 1:1 meetings
  • ✅ Submit time off requests
  • ✅ Update your profile
  • ✅ Request a mentorship match
  • ✅ Draft performance reviews in STAR format (managers can approve and submit)
  • ✅ Create a job posting and route it for approval

How It Works

  1. You ask in natural language: "I want to become a Senior Engineer in 12 months"
  2. AI proposes actions: Shows you what it will do with all details
  3. You confirm: Review and approve (or cancel)
  4. AI executes: Action is completed automatically

Example: Creating a Career Development Plan

You: "I want to become a Senior Engineer"

AI: "I'll help you create a career goal and development plan.
     Let me set this up for you..."

[Action Card Appears]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📋 Generate Development Plan
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Target Role: Senior Software Engineer
Timeline: 12 months

I'll create a 3-phase development plan:
• Phase 1: Foundation (Months 1-4)
• Phase 2: Building (Months 5-8)
• Phase 3: Mastery (Months 9-12)

[✓ Confirm Action] [✕ Cancel]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[After confirmation]
AI: "✅ Development plan created successfully!
     - 12 milestones across 3 phases
     - Skills analysis complete

     You can view your plan in Career Development."

Example: Creating an OKR

You: "Create an OKR for Q1: Launch new mobile app"

AI: "I'll create this OKR for you with key results."

[Action Card Appears]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🎯 Create OKR
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Objective: Launch new mobile app
Key Results: 3 results
Quarter: Q1 2025

Key Results will include:
1. Release MVP by end of January
2. Achieve 10,000 downloads
3. Maintain 4.5+ star rating

[✓ Confirm Action] [✕ Cancel]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AI: "✅ OKR created! Track progress in Performance."

Example: Requesting Feedback

You: "Request feedback from Sarah about my presentation"

AI: "I'll send a feedback request to Sarah Johnson."

[Action Card Appears]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💬 Request Feedback
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
From: Sarah Johnson
Context: Presentation skills
Questions: General

[✓ Confirm Action] [✕ Cancel]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AI: "✅ Feedback request sent to Sarah Johnson!"

Example: Scheduling a 1:1

You: "Schedule a 1:1 with my manager next Friday"

AI: "I'll schedule a 1:1 meeting with James Wilson."

[Action Card Appears]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📅 Schedule 1:1 Meeting
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
With: James Wilson (Your Manager)
Date: Next Friday (Dec 8)
Duration: 30 minutes
Agenda: General check-in

[✓ Confirm Action] [✕ Cancel]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AI: "✅ Meeting scheduled for December 8 at 2pm!"

Example: Generating a Performance Review (NEW!)

You: "Write a performance review for Sarah Chen for Q4 2025"

AI: "I'll generate a comprehensive performance review for Sarah Chen
     using data from OKRs, 1-on-1 notes, and 360 feedback."

[Action Card Appears]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✍️ Write Performance Review
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Employee: Sarah Chen
Review Period: Q4 2025
Format: STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result)

Data Sources:
• 3 OKRs (avg 82% completion)
• 8 1-on-1 meeting notes
• 5 peer feedback items

The review will include:
• Accomplishments (3-4 STAR examples)
• Areas for improvement (1-2 STAR examples)
• Goals for next period
• Overall rating recommendation

Quality checks:
✓ Plagiarism detection enabled
✓ Uniqueness scoring (70%+ required)
✓ Template pattern detection

[✓ Confirm Action] [✕ Cancel]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[After confirmation]
AI: "✅ Performance review generated successfully!

     📊 Quality Metrics:
     • Uniqueness: 87% (Excellent)
     • STAR compliance: 100%
     • Data sources: 3/3 integrated
     • Template patterns: None detected

     ✨ Accomplishments (3 examples)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
     Situation: Sarah was assigned to lead the Enterprise
     tier launch with a team of 4 developers...

     Task: Her goal was to deliver 3 major features by Q4
     end while maintaining code quality...

     Action: She implemented daily standups, code review
     automation, and mentored 2 junior devs...

     Result: All 3 features shipped on time, customer
     satisfaction increased 23%, team velocity improved 40%.

     [View full review] [Edit] [Send for approval]

     The review has been saved and is ready for your review.
     You can approve it directly or make edits first."

Example: Requesting 360 Feedback

You: "Start a 360 feedback process for my Q4 review"

AI: "I'll initiate a 360 feedback workflow for you."

[Action Card Appears]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💬 Request 360 Feedback Workflow
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Review Period: Q4 2025
Deadline: 14 days from now

Recommended reviewers (AI-selected):
• 3 peers you collaborated with most
• 2 cross-functional partners
• Your manager (auto-included)

Feedback areas:
• Technical skills
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Leadership

[✓ Confirm Action] [Customize reviewers] [✕ Cancel]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AI: "✅ 360 feedback requests sent to 6 reviewers!

     You'll receive notifications as feedback comes in.
     Deadline: December 19, 2025"

Available Actions

These work on every plan. Each one still needs the same permission you would need to do it yourself, so your list is shorter than this if your role is narrower. A few draw on data that is a paid add-on, such as market pay, and stay unavailable until your plan includes it.

Career Development

  • Create Career Goal: Set target roles with timelines
  • Generate Development Plan: AI creates phased plans with milestones
  • Find Mentor: Search for mentors by skill area
  • Request Mentorship: Connect with specific mentors

Performance Management

  • Create OKR: Set objectives with key results
  • Request Feedback: Ask colleagues for input
  • Schedule 1:1: Book time with your manager
  • Write Performance Review: AI generates complete reviews with STAR format
  • Approve Performance Review: Validate and approve AI-generated reviews
  • Request 360 Feedback: Initiate 360 feedback workflow with reviewer selection

Analytics

  • Generate a Chart: Describe a chart in plain language and Sparko builds a permission-scoped visualization from the data you can access (e.g. "headcount by department", "how is attrition trending")

HR Operations

  • Request Time Off: Submit PTO requests (managers can request on behalf of a report)
  • Update Profile: Modify your employee information
  • Check Leave Balance: View remaining PTO

Safety & Control

You're Always in Control:

  • AI never executes without your confirmation
  • You see all details before approval
  • You can cancel any action
  • Every action the assistant carries out is recorded in your company's audit log, visible to admins alongside every other security event

What AI Shows You:

  • Clear action description
  • All parameters and details
  • Impact of the action
  • Option to cancel or modify

Tips for Better Results

Be Specific

❌ "Help with time off"
✅ "I need to take December 23-27 off for vacation"

Provide Context

❌ "What should I focus on?"
✅ "What skills should I develop to become a Tech Lead?"

Use Natural Language

❌ "query: pto balance status"
✅ "How much vacation time do I have left?"

Ask Follow-ups

"Tell me more about the first option"
"Can you explain that differently?"
"What if I did it this way instead?"

Privacy & Security

What AI Can Access

  • Your profile and employment data
  • Data you're authorized to view
  • Company policies and handbooks
  • Your conversation history (this session)

What AI Cannot Access

  • Other employees' private data
  • Data outside your permissions
  • External websites or systems
  • Previous session conversations (unless saved)

Data Handling

  • Conversations are encrypted
  • Not used to train external models
  • Retained per company data policy
  • You can delete conversation history

Troubleshooting

AI Not Responding

  1. Check your internet connection
  2. Refresh the page
  3. Try logging out and back in
  4. Contact support if issue persists

Unexpected Answers

  1. Rephrase your question
  2. Provide more context
  3. Try being more specific
  4. Use "I meant..." to clarify

AI Made a Mistake

  1. The AI can make errors - always verify important info
  2. Click "Report issue" on any response
  3. Provide feedback to improve accuracy

"You have used this month's AI"

Your plan includes a set number of AI actions and assistant actions each month, shared across everyone in your company. On Core, asking Sparko a question that needs an AI answer uses one AI action, and having it carry out a task additionally uses one assistant action. On Growth only the tasks it carries out are counted, as assistant actions. When a pool is empty you get a short note with the date it comes back, plus what a higher plan includes.

Searching, browsing and dashboards never use an action. The chip at the bottom of the sidebar shows how much is left. Full detail is in the AI Governance & Allowance guide.

"AI is turned off for your workspace"

This is not a plan limit. An admin has switched AI off in Company Settings, either globally or for one area such as Recruiting. Ask an HR admin or Super Admin to turn it back on.

Answers From Your Company's Documents

When you ask about a policy or how something works, the assistant answers from real documents rather than guessing, and shows you where each answer came from.

This works on every plan. On Core it uses one of your monthly AI actions, the same as any other question you ask Sparko.

What it reads

  • Your company handbooks (including PDF handbooks)
  • Policy announcements
  • Sparko product help, for "how do I..." questions

What you will see

Ask "how much parental leave do I get?" and you get the answer plus a Sources line naming the document and section, for example Employee Handbook › Parental Leave. You can check the source yourself.

When the documents do not cover it

The assistant says it could not find it rather than inventing an answer. If that happens on something your handbook does cover, ask an HR admin to check the handbook is uploaded and current.

What you can see

Only what you can already open. Handbooks follow the same permissions and location rules as the Handbooks page, so you are answered from the handbook that applies to you. Announcements follow announcement permissions. Product help is available to everyone.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut Action
Ctrl/Cmd + / Open AI Assistant
Esc Close AI Assistant
Enter Send message
Shift + Enter New line in message
↑ Edit last message

Related Features

Still need help? Reach us at [email protected].

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