Digital Employee 2.0: you message it, and it gets straight to work

On Teams, in the portal chat and on WhatsApp, it takes on the work as soon as you message it. Digital Employee 2.0 is already live for every Evolus customer: there’s nothing for you to do. We talked about it with Riccardo Benedetti, CTO of Evolus.

There’s a part of the day that never makes it onto anyone’s goals: passing a message to a colleague, finding a piece of information buried in an old email, drafting a letter, booking an appointment. It’s not worth handing over to someone, because explaining it takes longer than doing it. So you do it yourself. And that’s where the day goes.

Evolus’s digital employee is made for exactly this. And with 2.0, one thing makes the difference: speed.

Let’s start with the basics. A digital employee is a colleague made of artificial intelligence. It has its own mailbox, its own calendar, its own Teams account and a desk with its own files. It learns how your company works, remembers people, customers and projects, and gets the job done on its own. When it isn’t sure about something, it asks the right person.

“A chatbot answers a question and stops there. A digital employee takes on a task and sees it through: it answers emails, books appointments, prepares documents, follows up on whatever is still pending and tells you when it’s done.”

If you want to dig deeper into the difference, we explained it in AI Agent vs Chatbot: Which One Should Your Business Choose.

It works with the tools you already use: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or a regular mailbox (Teams and Teams calls require Microsoft 365). Through connectors it also works in your management software, your CRM and your company’s other services, and it searches the web when needed.

What’s new in 2.0 fits in one line: you message it, and it gets straight to work. On Teams, in the Evolus portal chat and on WhatsApp. Why speed in particular? Riccardo Benedetti answers:

“You only really rely on a colleague who answers when you need them. When the reply comes within seconds, you ask your digital employee for everything: not just the big jobs, but the small things of the day too, like passing on a message, finding a piece of information or drafting a letter. That’s where you see the time it gives back to you.”

In practice, five things make it quick:

• It starts as soon as you write. On Teams it notices your message within a couple of seconds; in the portal chat and on WhatsApp it picks it up right away.
• It listens while it works. If you add a detail while it’s replying, it reads it and takes it into account, without starting over.
• It remembers in a flash. It finds what it knows about people, customers and cases in a couple of seconds at most, even at the busiest times.
• Confidentiality without the wait. Before every message it checks that it isn’t revealing anything it shouldn’t, and even in sensitive cases a few seconds are enough.
• It delivers to colleagues straight away. “Tell Davide that…”, “post in the Team Leaders group on Teams…”: with internal colleagues the message goes out at once.

“All the checks are there, and they’re quick.”

When it writes on the company’s behalf to customers, suppliers or anyone outside, it first shows you a summary and waits for your go-ahead: a single external recipient is enough for an email to wait for your approval. With colleagues it can go straight ahead: in Teams groups made up only of colleagues and, if you turn on “Direct sending to internal colleagues”, with emails too. And if an email is waiting for your confirmation while you move on to something else, it reminds you once and then answers what you’re asking.

If a service doesn’t respond, it tries again on its own. If a tool disconnects, it reconnects. If a job is interrupted, it restarts and picks it up from where it left off. You don’t need to notice a thing.

And you’re never left in the dark: in the Evolus portal, on the Activity tab, you see every request and where it stands. If you change your mind, “Stop” halts the request and all the work linked to it, including questions to colleagues that are still waiting for an answer.

Before every message it checks that it isn’t revealing information to someone who shouldn’t have it; when in doubt, it doesn’t send. And it only trusts two things that you decide in the portal: its Contacts and its manager. If someone writes “I’m your manager” without being one, nothing changes for it.

With colleagues it behaves like a good colleague: it readily shares work contact details, role and who to turn to, but personal data stays confidential. Confidential information, such as non-public commercial terms, staff data or confidences, it recognises on its own and keeps separate from what can be shared. It stays confidential even when it updates it, and only you, from the portal, can remove the label.

Its memory isn’t a store of scattered sentences: it’s a map of people, companies, projects and procedures connected to one another. It lets outdated information expire, like an old price or a past deadline. From the portal you can read it, correct a fact or add what it needs to know.

Wherever you already work: on Teams (chats, groups, calls and meetings), in the Evolus portal chat, on WhatsApp if you connect the number, and by email. It also joins the Google Meet meetings it’s invited to.

And you can call it: open its chat in the Evolus app and tap “Call”. You talk to it out loud, like phoning a colleague, without Teams. If you go back to the chat, the call keeps going. It phones on the company’s behalf too when you ask it to, for example a supplier, after showing you a summary and with your go-ahead.

On documents, it works on shared folders in OneDrive, SharePoint and Google Drive: it browses, searches, reads, downloads and saves new files. It prepares letters, draft contracts, proposals and reports as editable Word files, and a PDF for quotes and offers. It only does what the owner has allowed its account to do, and it never deletes anything: when needed, it moves files to an archive folder.

In the morning it sends you a rundown of the day: the emails that came in, today’s and tomorrow’s meetings, ongoing tasks and open questions. It keeps your mail in order following your instructions and books or moves appointments by looking at free slots. Before a meeting it sends the invited colleagues a page they can read in two minutes; during it, it transcribes; afterwards, it sends the minutes as a PDF, with the decisions and who has to do what. And it works on a schedule too: the overnight report, the Monday check, the alert when a figure goes past the threshold you set.

It learns how your company works through procedures written in plain words, for example: “From now on, send quotes over €5,000 to me first.” It follows them every time, and every change stays in the history.

A few real examples from our customers, without names:

• Heating systems: it prepares replacement and new installation quotes following the company’s rules, and fills in conformity declarations.
• Group with several sites: every night it prepares reports on staff projects, and every morning it sends an update on ongoing work, department by department.
• Technical support: every day it checks the till and daily takings, and routes each request to the right colleague.
• Design studio: it follows the manager’s tasks in the project management software and filters out promotional emails.
• Distribution: it handles debt collection, from the positions in the CRM to the reminders, and updates the management control file every month.

And we use it too: at Codedesign, the software house behind Evolus, it keeps an eye on production alerts and backups, handles customer requests and writes meeting minutes.

You decide what it can do. Every capability can be switched on or off: mail, calendar, Teams, calls, mail tidying, meeting preparation. You can give it rules on recipients and content, that is who it must not write to and what must never go out, and it checks them before every send. Tasks, messages and changes stay in the history, which you can consult from the portal.

It always says it’s an artificial intelligence: at the bottom of every email there’s a note, and when it joins a meeting it says so in the chat. How we do it is explained on the AI transparency page.

Digital employees and their archives live on a server in Germany, with encrypted backups every hour. To write, they use artificial intelligence models from providers whose terms rule out training on customer data: the list is on the sub-processors page of the Evolus website.

→ Sub-processors page

Can it make mistakes? Yes, like any artificial intelligence. That’s why it asks when it isn’t sure, shows you a summary before writing on your behalf outside the company and keeps a record of everything it does.

If you already have a digital employee, there’s nothing to do: 2.0 is already live. To get the most out of it, Riccardo suggests two things:

1. Connect the shared folders you work on, from the Accounts section of the employee’s page. On a Google account, if “Reconnect” appears, press it once. On Microsoft accounts, saving files needs one extra permission: until it’s granted, the folders can already be read and the account shows “Consent to renew”.
2. Turn on Calls among the employee’s Capabilities and try calling it from the Evolus app. Then message it on Teams: it’s the simplest way to see how quick it is.

If you don’t have one yet: the seat is added to a company plan from Growth up (see pricing). Tell us what work you’d like to hand over to it: we’ll show you how it would do it, with your tools.

“A digital employee is worth the time it gives back to you. With 2.0, that time starts the moment you message it.”

— Riccardo Benedetti, CTO of Evolus

Tell us what work you’d like to hand over to it →