Kipwise Agent for Bob

The same HR questions keep landing on your People team: who is out this week, how many holiday days are left, who is my manager, what is still open on my list. With Kipwise Agent connected to Bob, people ask in Slack or Microsoft Teams and get the answer from Bob in the same thread. Everyone sees only what they are allowed to see: colleagues’ names, titles, departments and managers are open to all employees, while balances, requests, tasks and documents are shown only to the person themself or a team admin, and a question asked in a channel is answered to the asker alone. Anything that changes Bob waits for an Approve card, and time off always goes to the usual approver in Bob. Kipwise reads Bob when asked and keeps no long-term copy of your Bob data.

1. Overview of the integration

Kipwise Agent is an AI teammate in Slack and Microsoft Teams. Connect it to Bob and your people can ask HR questions where they already chat. The agent reads the answer from Bob and replies in the same conversation.

What people can ask or do

• Who is out of the office this week, or today.
• A colleague’s job title, department, site, manager, work email, photo and a link to their Bob profile.
• Their own time off balance, time off requests, tasks and document names.
• The company’s time off policy types and job catalog.
• Ask for time off, cancel a request, mark a task as done, or upload a file from Slack to their own documents. Each change waits for an Approve card.

An Approve card is a message with Approve and Deny buttons. Only the person who asked can press them, and nothing changes in Bob until they press Approve.

Team admins can also look up the same things for anyone, ask for or cancel time off for someone else, change a person’s name, mobile phone, birth date, about-me text or hobbies, use the confidential documents folder, and set up automations that react to events in Bob.

Who sees what

Bob cannot tell Kipwise who is asking, so Kipwise applies the rules itself:

• A colleague’s name, title, department, site, manager, work email and photo are open to every employee.
• Balances, time off requests, tasks, documents and personal details are shown only to the person themself or a Kipwise team admin. Ask about someone else’s and the agent says no and gives their Bob profile link.
• A colleague’s approved time off shows as dates only. Pending requests of others stay hidden.
• Asked in a channel, answers and Approve cards that show HR data reach only the person who asked.
• Time off always goes to the person’s usual approver in Bob. The approver decides in Bob; the agent gives them the link.

How it connects

One connection covers the whole company. A Kipwise team admin asks Kipwise Agent to connect HiBob, presses Connect and approves the app in Bob as a Bob admin. Nobody has to connect a Bob account of their own.

What you need before you start

• A Bob admin who can install apps from Bob Marketplace.
• Kipwise Agent installed in your Slack workspace (https://kipwise.com/auth/agent/install) or Microsoft Teams (https://kipwise.com/microsoft-teams-agent).
• A Kipwise team admin (the access role admin or super admin in Kipwise) to press Connect. If that person is not a Bob admin, do the steps together with one.
• On every person’s chat profile, an email that matches their Bob work email.

2. Installation steps

You connect HiBob from Slack or Microsoft Teams, once for the whole workspace. It takes about 2 minutes.

1. In Slack or Microsoft Teams, a Kipwise team admin asks Kipwise Agent: “Connect HiBob”. Asking a HiBob question, such as “Who is out today in HiBob?”, works too. If your Slack plan has no direct messages with the agent, mention Kipwise Agent in a channel.
2. The agent shows a Connect button that only you can see. Press it within 5 minutes.
3. Bob opens. Sign in as a Bob admin. Bob shows the permissions Kipwise Agent asks for (explained in the table below).
4. Under People data access, choose All company (see Recommended People data access setting below).
5. Click Authorize. Bob returns to a Kipwise page that says HiBob is connected, and the agent says in your conversation: “HiBob is now connected for the whole workspace.”
6. Try it: “Who is out of the office this week in HiBob?”

Only a Kipwise team admin can connect HiBob. Anyone else who presses Connect is told to ask an admin, and nothing is connected.

What Bob will ask you to approve, and why

Bob may word these a little differently.

Salary, bank details, other sensitive employee data and employee history are not requested.

Recommended People data access setting

Choose All company. Kipwise Agent works only with the people you include. With All company, everyone who asks is recognised by their work email, and the company directory and “who is out” cover everyone. If you pick Select by condition (for example one site) or Select by name, people outside that group cannot be found: the agent cannot act for them or show them to others, and it says the person is not shared with the app. Bob locks this choice when the app is approved. To change it, uninstall the app in Bob, then connect HiBob again from chat.

Changing or removing the installation

• To change the permissions or People data access: a Bob admin uninstalls the app in Bob (Marketplace, Manage apps), then a Kipwise team admin asks the agent to connect HiBob again.
• To stop Kipwise Agent using Bob: a Kipwise team admin asks the agent to disconnect HiBob and approves the card. Kipwise deletes the stored access for the whole workspace. The app stays installed in Bob until a Bob admin uninstalls it there.
• If a Bob admin uninstalls the app, Bob sends Kipwise no notice. The next time someone asks about Bob, the agent finds out, removes the stored access, and shows the Connect button again.

3. Setup in Kipwise

1. Emails. Each person’s chat email must equal their Bob work email. In Slack it is the email on their profile. In Teams it is the email, or the sign-in name, that Teams gives the agent for that person. If the agent cannot match a person, it refuses every Bob question for them, even a directory lookup, and tells them why.
2. Who can use it. Every member of the workspace who is matched to a Bob employee. Guests from outside your company can use it only where a Kipwise admin has enabled it.
3. Admin switches. A Kipwise team admin can ask the agent to show the workspace settings and switch Bob lookups, Bob changes or a single action off and on.
4. Automations (team admins only). In a channel, ask for example: “Whenever someone asks for time off in HiBob, post a one-line note here.” The agent shows an Approve card once. It posts only in the channel where you asked, and it cannot mention people. Say “list my automations” or “stop that automation” at any time. An event tells the automation what happened and to whom; the agent then reads the details with the same privacy rules, as the admin who set it up.
5. Price. Kipwise Agent has its own price: https://kipwise.com/pricing

4. Data sync flows

Kipwise does not copy your Bob data on a schedule. It reads from Bob when someone asks, and it writes to Bob only after an Approve card.

What people can read, on request

“Everyone” means everyone Kipwise can match to a Bob employee by email.

What can change in Bob, always after an Approve card

Only the person who asked can press Approve. The card expires after 30 minutes, and a card that is denied or expires runs nothing. Bob can take up to 20 seconds to show a change.

Automations (events from Bob), set up by a team admin

What Kipwise keeps

• The connection: the sign-in details Bob gave the app, encrypted, and your Bob company number, so Kipwise knows which Bob company belongs to which workspace.
• The employee list (name, title, department, site, manager, work email, photo link): held in memory for 5 minutes so Bob’s limits are respected, then forgotten. It is not written to a database.
• Approvals: while a card is open, and for up to 7 days after it is decided, an encrypted record of the card’s sentence and, if you approved it, of what was done (for example the dates of a time off request). Then it is deleted.
• Automations: what the admin asked for, in their own words, until it is stopped. For each event Bob reports, a short note with ids only, cleared as soon as the automation has run.
• A log of each action: which action ran, who asked, when, whether it worked. It holds no text from your messages or from Bob. Diagnostic logs, kept 30 days, can occasionally hold a short excerpt of a reply.
• Slack: Kipwise does not store the text of your questions and the agent’s replies in its database. It stays in your Slack workspace under your own retention settings.
• Microsoft Teams: Kipwise keeps the conversation transcript for 90 days, then deletes it. In a one-to-one chat that includes the agent’s replies, so an answer that shows your time off balance is kept in it. Private replies to a question asked in a channel are not part of it.
• Workspace memory (on by default; a Kipwise admin can switch it off) keeps short facts from what people type, such as a date. It does not read the agent’s own replies.
• Who else handles it: Amazon Web Services hosts Kipwise and runs the AI models that write the replies; Anthropic’s Claude models are used through Amazon Bedrock; typesafe.ai checks each reply before it is posted. See https://kipwise.com/subprocessors. Kipwise does not train AI models on customer data (https://kipwise.com/privacy).
• Not requested: pay, bank and other sensitive employee data, and employee history.

5. Screenshots or short clips

These screenshots show the app in Bob, Bob’s approval screen and the agent at work in Slack.

Watch the full setup and the main flows in the demo video (5 minutes).

6. Troubleshooting tips

7. Support contact info

• Email: support@kipwise.com
• Help center: https://support.kipwise.com
• Privacy policy: https://kipwise.com/privacy
• Terms of service: https://kipwise.com/terms-of-services
• Sub-processors: https://kipwise.com/subprocessors
• Data protection officer: dpo@kipwise.com