Many organizations are using IBM Lotus Sametime to enable employees to effectively communicate with each other and with customers. Some companies are taking the investment a step further by using Sametime bots to automate certain business processes, thereby increasing efficiency, improving productivity, and enhancing user satisfaction.

Companies can use bots to potentially reduce costs normally associated with specific functions (e.g., help-desk queries). Administrators and IT directors identify which processes bots can improve, and developers can then build bots to perform these specific functions. As soon as developers deploy the bots, end users can access them as contacts in the Sametime client or through Web pages via the Sametime Links (STLinks) toolkit or any other Web user interface that communicates with bots.

I’ll introduce three main types of bots and demonstrate bots’ business value through real-world examples. Plus, you’ll receive sample code for building a Navigator bot of your own.