Asking an Expert Workflow

Not finding the information you're looking for? Whether you escalate a Guru-suggested answer or go straight to an expert with your question, Guru has a workflow that will get you unstuck.

With "Ask an Expert", teammates or subject matter "Experts" within your Guru workspace will select an existing Card or create a new Card in response to your question, allowing you and your team to access the answer again and again. Over time, the "Ask an Expert" feature learns from your questions and surfaces recommended Cards accordingly.

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Tip

Did you know you can try asking Guru a question in the web app, extension, or Slack before asking a team member? In workspaces with Answers enabled, Guru will search through the Cards and connected external source applications and automatically suggest an answer. If you're still not sure, you'll see the "Ask an Expert" option so that you can escalate your question to an expert on your team.

Ask a teammate a question within Guru's web app

1. Click on your avatar in the top right corner of the Guru Web app.
2. Select the option Content Questions - Ask an Expert.
3. Use the text box to type your question. Provide sufficient information for your team's subject matter expert to easily understand and answer it.

4. If after typing your question Guru has found similar Cards matching the topic, click on the Show Cards prompt to ensure that the answer to your question isn’t already in Guru. This reduces the possibility of duplicate, confusing content.
5. Select an individual user or Group of experts you would like to answer your question. You will be able to select users or Groups who are authors in Collections you have access to. Guru uses AI to suggest experts automatically under Suggested Experts.
6. Click Ask question.
7. Click Tasks in the web app's left-hand navigation. Users or Groups who are assigned to answer your question will be notified in their Questions > Inbox. Under Sent, you will see all the questions you have asked, if the question has been answered, and who has answered the question.

8. Once a teammate has answered your question, you will be notified via email or Slack notification.

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Tip

If the assigned subject matter expert comments on the question asking for additional or clarifying information, you can respond by clicking your question under the Tasks tab and clicking Add a comment.

Frequently Asked Questions about Ask an Expert

How do I know the right person to ask my question?
Guru applies AI to recommend choosing someone or the Group of people with the specific knowledge to answer the question because they work with the topic. For example, API questions might go to an Engineering Group or the specific back-end engineer in charge of your team's API.

Why am I still assigned to a question even if I'm not the expert?
When a user asks a question using the Ask an Expert feature, Guru will assign the original user who asked the question and the expert as “followers” on the question. All users involved will appear in the “followers” lists until a question is answered. When you change an expert, you add a new follower to the list. All followers will receive notifications when changes to questions are made.

What happens if another expert answers a question that was directed at a Group I am a member of?
Questions that have been assigned to a Group and answered by one individual will still appear in everyone's inbox. They should appear under the "Answer" column with the name of the Card that was used to answer the question. The purpose of this is to allow others to see that questions have been answered and give them the opportunity to follow up (in the comments section) if they have additional information to share rather than have the question vanish.

What happens to an expert's questions if they are removed from the Guru team?
If the question were asked to a Group, the Group will continue to see it in their Inbox. In addition, all authors and Collection owners can see questions (whether or not they were the expert asked) in the Questions tab of Card Manager.

Can we see analytics for questions and answers?
You can use our Analytics API to pull information about when questions for your team were created, answered, or deleted. While this requires a slightly more technical lift, this would give you a little more information about feature usage.