Workbench

The power of natural conversation for your workflows 

Workbench is an AI-powered chatbot that enables natural conversations around your key processes. Workbench utilizes a directory of skills developed by Tines and your teams to power your business's most important workflows.

Whether you're in SecOps, Engineering, or IT, Workbench creates a fluent, actionable workflow by accessing real-time information across your stack within a secure architecture.

The intelligence between you and your systems 

Workbench isn't just a chatbot it's a sophisticated bridge between your natural language requests and the complex systems you work with every day. Let's peek behind the curtain to see how Workbench processes your requests and delivers results.

The comprehension layer: Making sense of your requests 

When you interact with Workbench, a powerful comprehension process unfolds:

1. Ask a question

   • You express your need in natural language

   • This could be a request to execute a task ("Lock down John's account")

   • Or a request for collaboration ("Help me understand this security alert")

2. Layer of comprehension

   • Workbench analyzes your query to understand your intent

   • It determines if there's a specific task related to your request

   • If a task exists, Workbench identifies which story or template can fulfill it

   • If no specific task exists, Workbench prepares to collaborate with you on the information

3. Execution

   • For task requests: Workbench securely connects to the relevant systems

   • For collaborative requests: Workbench analyzes the information you've shared

   • In both cases, it processes the results to make them human-friendly

4. Continuation

   • Workbench presents the results and offers follow-up options

   • The conversation continues based on your needs

Your command center for daily tasks 

Think of Workbench as sitting at the center of your digital workspace a hub that connects to all the systems and tasks that make up your workday:

• Security tools for threat investigation

• IT systems for user management

• Development platforms for code reviews

• Communication tools for team updates

• Analytics systems for data insights

Instead of navigating to each of these systems individually, you simply tell Workbench what you need, and it handles the connections for you.

Managing multiple tasks with conversation switching 

Workbench is designed to match your natural workflow, including the need to handle multiple tasks simultaneously:

• Start a new chat for each distinct task or project you're working on

• Switch between conversations as easily as you'd switch between tabs in a browser

• Return to previous conversations at any time to continue where you left off

This conversation management gives you the flexibility to:

• Keep contexts separate when working on unrelated tasks

• Maintain organized threads for different investigations

• Revisit past interactions to reference information or continue work

For example, you might have one conversation for investigating a security incident, another for managing user access requests, and a third for analyzing performance metrics all accessible within your Workbench interface.

From request to result: A practical example 

Let's see how this works in practice:

Your request: "Is IP 192.168.1.100 suspicious?"

Behind the scenes:

1. Workbench recognizes this as a security investigation task

2. It identifies the appropriate story or template for IP investigation

3. The story connects to multiple systems:

   • Internal network logs to check for the IP's activity

   • Threat intelligence platforms to check reputation

   • Historical case records to see if this IP appeared before

4. Workbench executes this workflow securely

5. It compiles the results into a clear, actionable summary

The response: "IP 192.168.1.100 appears suspicious. It has been flagged in 3 threat intelligence feeds and has attempted to access sensitive resources 5 times in the last hour. Would you like me to create a case for investigation?"

All of this happens in seconds without you needing to log into multiple systems or manually transfer information between them.

Collaborative analysis: Beyond task execution 

Workbench isn't limited to executing predefined tasks. You can also share information and ask for help analyzing it:

Your request: "I'm seeing unusual network traffic patterns in this report. Can you help me understand what might be happening?"

Behind the scenes:

1. Workbench recognizes this as a collaborative analysis request

2. It examines the report data you've shared

3. It applies analytical capabilities to identify patterns and anomalies

4. It formulates insights based on security best practices

The response: "The traffic patterns show signs of potential data exfiltration. There are large outbound transfers occurring at unusual hours (2-4 AM) to destinations not in your normal business operations. I recommend investigating these specific connections..."

Your personal work assistant 

Whether you're executing routine tasks, investigating complex issues, or analyzing information, Workbench serves as your personal assistant understanding your needs, connecting to your systems, and delivering results in a way that's immediately useful.

By centralizing your interactions through Workbench, you can:

• Save time by avoiding system switching

• Maintain focus on the problem at hand

• Work more efficiently with immediate access to information

• Collaborate more effectively with contextual assistance

Finding your way to Workbench 

Ready to start chatting with your new digital assistant? Workbench is always just a click away, no matter where you are in Tines:

What can Workbench do for you? 

You can leverage Workbench to lead the way into flows like:

• Investigating a suspicious IP

• Opening cases

• Locking down someone's account

• Reviewing any pull requests in the past few hours with contextual information

• And any other workflow your team would like developed

All from the same screen!

How Workbench works its magic 

Workbench combines three powerful capabilities:

1. Natural language understanding: Interprets what you're asking for, even if you don't use technical terminology

2. System connectivity: Securely accesses your integrated tools and platforms

3. Contextual intelligence: Formats responses in human-friendly ways that highlight what matters

Think of Workbench as a skilled translator who not only speaks your language and the language of your systems but also knows exactly which systems to talk to for different requests.

The power of Stories and templates in Workbench 

What makes Workbench truly powerful is how it connects to your existing Tines ecosystem:

Templates: Quick tasks at your fingertips 

Templates are short-form tasks that are associated with a tool's API. Using Slack, a few examples are: getting a user's profile, adding a reaction, creating a reminder, or inviting users to a channel.

When you first click on the radio button for the template, you will be prompted to select a CREDENTIAL. If you don't see the credential from the drop-down list, you can always choose to add a new one.

Stories: Complex workflows through conversation 

You can activate a story for use with Workbench by clicking the radio button to the right of the story name. Actively available stories are visualized with a green radio button. This means that Workbench can utilize the story throughout your communication with it.

Connecting Workbench to your stories 

Your Workbench instance is a configured environment that is exclusive to your session. The stories are accessible based on whether or not they are enabled for Workbench (we'll go over how to do this shortly).

When Workbench tries to interact with your story, it needs an input (webhook action) to make the request and then an output (event transform action) to pull the results from the story. This is done by converting a story to a send to story.

On the bottom right corner of a story's settings, you can toggle the send to story option. From there, you will need to configure the story's input/output and enable it for Workbench.

Let's look at how to add a story for Workbench.