Online Help | Desktop App

Configuring integration with AI

Introduced in 2024.2

Updated in 2025

Alloy Navigator Express comes with built-in AI-powered features that help technicians work smarter and faster by streamlining tasks, cutting down manual effort, and delivering a better user experience. To enable AI assistance, you need to provide your organization’s API key and configure additional settings in the desktop Settings App, under AI Integration > AI Configuration. This page explains available AI features and guides you through setting up AI integration.

Alloy Navigator Express supports language AI models from the most trusted providers and gives you complete control over AI usage and the flexibility to manage associated costs.

Available AI features

"AI features" offer two distinct sets of AI-powered assistance:

  1. AI-Powered Insights

    AI-Powered Insights provide precise, context-aware recommendations for Help Desk tickets, including Summarize Ticket, Suggest Category, Suggest Solution /Action Plan, and Analyze Risks. These insights are immediately available across tickets and change requests, helping your IT specialists make informed decisions quickly. Customization for AI-Powered Insights is not available.

  2. AI Writing Assistance

    AI Writing Assistance helps IT specialists respond faster and more confidently with actions like Summarize, Improve, and Translate, available in all text-based HTML fields everywhere in Alloy Navigator Express, from tickets to IT assets to purchase orders. Writing assistance actions are customizable and can be tailored to meet your organization's needs. AI Writing Assistance also includes AI-powered voice capabilities like Text-to-Speech and Speech Recognition.

Turn AI assistance on or off

You can control the availability of AI features in Alloy Navigator Express using a single toggle: the Enable AI features checkbox on the AI Integration > AI Configuration page. Use this option to enable or disable AI assistance across Alloy Navigator Express with a single click.

Depending on your configuration, there are three possible scenarios:

  • Initial setup

    By default, AI features are enabled, but no API key has been provided yet. On attempts to use AI features, users will see this message:

    To complete the setup, you'll need to configure AI integration as described in Configure AI integration below.

  • AI integration is set up, AI features are enabled

    Once you've provided the API key and kept AI features enabled, both AI-Powered Insights and AI Writing Assistance become active and available to users.

  • AI features are disabled

    If you disable AI features, both AI-Powered Insights and AI Writing Assistance are completely hidden from the interface and unavailable to users—regardless of whether an API key or other AI integration settings are in place.

Configure AI integration

AI integration requires a verified account with your AI provider and a valid secret API key.

Alloy Navigator Express integrates with AI services from supported vendors, including OpenAI and Azure OpenAI. Alloy Navigator Express does not operate its own AI service, nor does it transmit any data to these AI services except what users submit themselves. We do not store, analyze, or control the information sent to AI services. All security, privacy, and data protection concerns, including any potential risks of data leakage, should be directed to the respective AI service providers.

To configure AI integration:

  1. In the Settings App, navigate to AI Integration > AI Configuration and specify your AI provider and enter your API key.

    1. Under AI Provider, specify your provider:

      • OpenAI API: Use this option for direct integration with OpenAI's models, offering flexible and powerful AI capabilities for various text-processing tasks.

      • Azure OpenAI Service: Choose this option if you prefer to use OpenAI's models hosted on Microsoft Azure, providing additional integration with Azure's cloud services and security features.

        Then use the Endpoint URL field to enter your unique URL provided by Azure to communicate with the API. You can obtain this URL in the Azure portal, it typically looks like this: https://<resource-name>.openai.azure.com/

    2. In the API key field, provide your secure key for authenticating requests to your AI provider’s API.

      • For OpenAI, you can find or generate your API key in your OpenAI account dashboard, under the API Keys section.

      • For Azure OpenAI Service, you can obtain your API key from the Azure OpenAI resource, under the Keys and Endpoint page.

  2. Choose the completion model.

    The completion model is a pre-trained neural network (e.g. gpt-4) that the completion endpoint uses to process prompts and generate responses. It defines how input is interpreted and shapes the response’s style, length, and creativity.

    In the Completion model field, keep the default selection, choose an alternative from the list, or enter a model name manually.

    TIP: To provide immediate access to the most recent models, the Completion model field supports manual entry. This also applies to other fields on this page where you specify a model, including the Text-to-Speech, transcription, and embedding models.

    NOTE: We do not recommend using "reasoning models," such as O3 and O4-mini, as these models process a detailed chain of thought before delivering a response, which does not fit into our AI-assisted workflows.

    For Azure OpenAI Service, this completion model must be deployed in your Azure OpenAI, and you need to enter the name of this instance into the Completion deployment name field.

  3. Turn Text-to-Speech feature on or off.

    Use the Enable Text-to-Speech checkbox to allow or prevent the AI from converting its responses into natural-sounding audio..

    Then specify the Text-to-Speech (TTS) model you want to use. For Azure OpenAI Service, the model must be deployed in your Azure OpenAI instance, and you’ll need to enter the instance name.

  4. Control speech recognition.

    Use the Enable speech recognition checkbox to allow or prevent the AI from transcribing spoken input into text.

    Then specify the transcription model you want to use. For Azure OpenAI Service, enter the name of a deployed transcription model.

    IMPORTANT: For speech recognition to function, the site hosting the Web App instance must allow access to audio input devices. Make sure there are no restrictions, such as Permissions-Policy: microphone or browser settings, that block microphone access.

  5. Control access to internal knowledge for AI-Powered Insights.

    Use the Allow AI to access internal knowledge checkbox to enable or disable the AI's ability to search your Help Desk content (Tickets and Knowledge Base Articles) for more accurate and relevant responses in AI-Powered Insights.

    Then specify the embedding model you want to use. For Azure OpenAI Service, enter the name of a deployed model.

    • Allow access to internal knowledge

      When selected, the system starts a system scheduled task that builds and maintains the vector index database that stores Tickets and Knowledge Base Articles, allowing AI-Powered Insights to search this content for more relevant responses.

      In the web-based Admin Center, yYou can view the task progress directly on the AI Configuration page, under Vector indexing progress. For details, see Vector index for AI-Powered Insights.

    • Allow access to internal knowledge

      When cleared, AI-Powered Insights will rely solely on the AI's pre-trained knowledge and will not access your internal Help Desk content.

  6. Click Save to apply your changes.

Related Information:

Vector index for AI-Powered Insights

Managing AI Writing Assistance actions