Plan your custom agent strategy

Planning your custom agent before you start building ensures a successful setup. Choosing your assistant's goal, platform, safety rules, and test group ahead of time helps you give employees accurate answers while keeping your system secure.

Choose an agent focus and the audience

Start with a task your team repeats every day. The best first projects are ones where a subject matter expert answers the same question again and again, since an agent can take over that repetition and give the expert their time back.

Strong first use cases include:

• Build an agent that answers basic questions about the employee handbook, so repetitive HR requests never reach a person's inbox.
• Create an agent that guides employees through compliance rules and company policies as questions come up.
• Set up an agent that helps new hires find training materials and setup steps quickly.
• Create an agent that teaches users how to navigate internal software tools and systems.

If your organization uses the learning management system, use one of more than fifty pre-built templates to speed up rollout. 

Select the right agent platform

ClearCo provides two separate workspaces for agents, and they do not share information. Choose the platform that best matches your use case before you begin building.

• For training use cases where you need to connect course materials and target specific learning groups, build your agent in the learning management system (LMS).
• For broad HR use cases where you need to share company-wide policies and manage access via your standard security groups, build your agent in the core ClearCo application.

Choosing the right platform early helps prevent rework later.

Set instructions and safety boundaries

Building a secure assistant means giving it clear rules. Think of instructions as a job description that tells the agent how to behave. Pairing these guidelines with ClearCo safety blocks stops the agent from guessing or giving legal advice when it gets confused. This ensures it stays on topic and passes complex issues to your human team.

Consider these questions before building your agent:

• What tone should the agent use when talking to employees?
• What sensitive topics or questions should the agent avoid completely?
• Who is the correct human contact when a user needs extra help?

Gather the right documents and information

Your agent needs the right files to do its job well. Match your ClearCo training documents to the agent’s specific goal. All files stay hidden at first, so you can test them safely before launch. If you’re building a custom LMS agent, you can reference content that’s already in your learning management system.

Consider these questions before uploading your files:

• What exact documents already answer our team's daily questions?
• Are these files accurate, updated, and easy to read?
• Should everyone in the company see this information, or just a specific group?

Design a pilot program to test your agent

Testing your agent with a small pilot group is the best way to catch mistakes without any risk. Create a temporary testing team made up of a few trusted coworkers or topic experts. Let them chat with the assistant to check its answers, test your safety rules, and find missing information in your files. This builds company confidence before you launch the tool to everyone.

Prepare your permission strategy

Before you configure access, map your existing security groups to the agents each audience should use. This makes rollout smoother and helps avoid confusion later.

For example, decide in advance:

• Which employees should see a handbook assistant?
• Which managers should see coaching or training agents?
• Which specialist teams should access compliance-focused agents?

Thinking through permissions early helps you move quickly once testing is complete. 

Recognize a successful rollout strategy

A successful custom agent rollout gives employees accurate answers grounded in verified company documents. Your teams understand where agents live, how they are tested, and who should have access to them.

Instead of spending time answering repetitive questions or troubleshooting avoidable setup issues, you can focus on improving the agent, expanding adoption, and supporting new use cases with confidence.

Next steps

After you finish planning your rollout strategy, continue with the related setup articles:

• Build custom agents for ClearCo app.
• Create a custom LMS agent for learners.