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Low-code automation and integration platform Tray.I today announced the launch of Merlin TO THE, a natural language automation feature on its platform. With Merlin AI, large language models (LLMs) can be transformed into complete business processes without exposing customer data to the LLM or requiring LLM training.
Merlin AI enables employees and developers to build, refine and improve workflows without requiring IT or engineering intervention, reducing integration times from weeks or months to minutes. The Tray.io platform combines the power of adaptable and extensible automation, the provision of sophisticated business logic and built-in generative AI capabilities to generate automated workflows.
“Merlin AI leverages OpenAI models and works seamlessly with Tray.io’s connector, workflow and API technologies, as well as other platform features, to automatically translate natural language input – prompts or requests written in plain English — into sophisticated workflows,” Rich Waldron, cofounder and CEO of Tray.io, told VentureBeat. “Anyone can use Merlin to develop comprehensive workflows to perform day-to-day tasks or retrieve information for specific business questions. Completely eliminates the learning curve for building automated workflows.”
The generative AI capabilities of the Tray.io platform, along with data transformation, authentication mechanisms, and support for advanced business logic, allow users to build comprehensive integrations with natural language processing (NLP). Additionally, Merlin AI can automate complex tasks, including aggregating or transferring data between systems, creating automated workflows, and responding to requests.
The company says the Tray platform is the first integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) solution to provide generative AI capabilities accessible to all users.
“No other iPaaS on the market has native generative AI capabilities that anyone can use to securely automate complex business processes,” Alistair Russell, co-founder and CTO of Tray.io, told VentureBeat. “Unlike other applications that interface with LLM, the operational capabilities of Merlin and the underlying Tray platform are self-contained, meaning Merlin only needs to retrieve small pieces of information from the LLM as needed during the integration build process. As a result, customer data is never exposed or sent to the LLM.
The company said Merlin uses a combination of GPT templates, including GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Whisper, and others, to handle distinct components of its natural language automation workflow.
“Each of the models offers different levels of capacity, speed and tuning, which Merlin selects to ensure the best user experience,” said Russell.
Streamlining complex workflows through generative AI
The company believes the release of Merlin AI heralds a new era in automation, as it eliminates IT and engineering participation requirements. This not only frees those teams to focus on other imperatives, but increases the pace of innovation.
“Merlin … increases the pace of innovation because your line-of-business teams no longer rely on scarce technical resources,” Russell told VentureBeat. “What makes Merlin so valuable over LLMs alone is that it can act on query outputs. Merlin is giving the “brain” of LLM a “body” of Tray, who can act on the query and build the integration needed to complete the business process. He does this without passing client data back to the LLM and requires no further training to perform complex business tasks.
In addition, the system operates across the customer’s entire software stack.
“This is very different from most GPT-related chatbot ads which, at best, will only be able to perform pre-defined actions within its application,” said Russell.
Merlin AI allows users to automate complex workflows in two ways. First, through conversation, Merlin can build and refine sophisticated automation across multiple systems. For example, by taking natural language input, such as a call to add a new data enrichment source to a lead lifecycle management process, Merlin can identify the appropriate connector from the Connector Tray library, elicit the required authentications, run the query and ensure that the results are properly incorporated into the process progression.
Second, Merlin AI can perform tasks on behalf of a user without directly interacting with workflows, establishing an entirely new interface for business problem solving.
“In this case, a CMO looking to optimize social media investments can query Merlin directly to identify the top sources of leads for the biggest ‘closed won’ accounts based on revenue and cross-reference the results with LinkedIn followers. The CMO never needs to see the complexity of the integrations Merlin is building on the Tray platform; they simply get the data they need to make a more informed business decision,” said Tray.io’s Waldron.
The company has clarified that it does not send customer data through a third-party LLM. Instead, LLMs are used to build workflows that can run entirely within the Tray.io platform, ensuring that no data is exposed or shared with the LLM.
Leverage Open AI models to enhance iPaaS
The company explained that Merlin enhances the OpenAI LLM by acting on its output, and says that while LLMs can quickly provide intelligent answers to questions, they take no action once they are answered.
“The burden is immediately returned to the person who asked the question, and it is their responsibility to take often complex actions on the answer to achieve the desired result. Merlin can take that response and perform the action on behalf of the user,” Waldron said. “With the release of Merlin, Tray.io is the first iPaaS offering with generative AI that anyone, regardless of their technical experience, can use to automate complex workflows.”
The Tray Platform incorporates contemporary technology standards, allowing LLMs to code without requiring a comprehensive understanding of the platform or any Tray connectors. This crucial capability allows any user, including the integration builder, to harness the potential of AI. Also, because Merlin is a core aspect of the Tray platform, a product not designed in this way would have a hard time replicating this experience.
“Tray.io provides a suite of powerful automation infrastructure accessible via APIs and low-code, coupled with Merlin AI at the heart of the Tray platform. Merlin can tap into Tray’s broad range of automation services via APIs to perform actions using natural language on behalf of the user. This opens up the infinite possibilities of automation to the entire workforce,” explained Russell. “By asking Merlin AI, as you would a colleague, you can get answers at decision time and automate critical business tasks.”
Tray.io believes organizations are struggling with isolated information and multiple niche SaaS apps in every department, making automation and integration more critical than ever. Traditionally, organizations have turned to modern, resilient iPaaS vendors to “glue” their systems together and ensure their data works seamlessly with the rest of the organization.
“Embracing digital transformation has been critical in the ‘real-time’ cloud-based reality we find ourselves in today. However, this movement results in application and data overload,” added Waldron. “Merlin AI takes this to a whole new level because, for the first time ever, these problems can be solved faster, more accurately, and by a wider variety of people across the company through a natural language interface.”
Merlin allows users to enter their own requests and parameters and then builds a workflow with the necessary business logic. Once completed, the low-code visual builder will display all the steps required for review and changes.
Tackling IT bottlenecks through artificial intelligence
Waldron said the scarcity of resources to combat the consequences of mass adoption of internal cloud-based tools is the biggest bottleneck in delivering on critical digital initiatives.
“Merlin AI is the knight in shining armor for IT and development teams – it provides AI support on their projects, enabling them to work faster, more accurately than ever before,” he said. “Also, a central element of the Tray platform is governance and security, which assures IT that it is safe for them to allow less technical users to take advantage of automation because there are established rules for accessing applications and data that regulate its use”.
According to Waldron, the new version unlocks the full potential of automation and makes the creation of automated workflows more accessible to all employees by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence through a natural language interface.
He believes that with Merlin AI, even people with no technical skills can build full integrations using NLP alone, dramatically simplifying the process of building automation. In other words, information or business process requests often require complex integrations that span multiple applications.
“What seems simple to the asker, like adding a new step in a company’s order-to-pay process, requires someone else, probably a developer with a completely different set of priorities, to develop business rationale complex and build and test the integration needed to deliver that ‘simple’ business process change,” said Waldon. developer.”
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