Voho and Archibus: an AI chatbot and call centre for service and work requests
Voho puts an Arabic voice agent and chatbot in front of Archibus, so service requests and work requests are raised, classified, tracked and closed without a helpdesk agent re-keying anything.
Archibus holds the workplace: the buildings, the floors, the assets, the maintenance history and the work requests that keep it all running. What it does not do is answer the phone. In most deployments the request still arrives by call, email or a walk-up to the helpdesk, and a person re-types it into the system — adding delay, mis-classification and an after-hours gap where nothing gets logged at all.
Voho puts an Arabic-first voice agent and chatbot in front of Archibus so the request is captured, classified and created directly, and so the caller chasing its status never needs a human at all.
What the agent actually does
| Capability | What happens |
|---|---|
| Raise a service request | The caller describes the problem in their own words; the agent classifies it to the right problem type and creates the request in Archibus. |
| Capture location precisely | Building, floor and room are confirmed against your own location hierarchy rather than typed as free text, which is what makes a request actionable. |
| Attach the asset | Equipment identified by tag, description or location, so the work request lands against the right asset and its history. |
| Set priority and route | Priority applied against your rules, and the request routed to the responsible trade or team. |
| Answer status queries | "Where is my request?" answered from live data — the largest single category of helpdesk calls, and the easiest to remove. |
| Schedule and reschedule | Access windows and appointment slots confirmed with the requester, and updated when they change. |
| Escalate with context | Anything outside scope, or any caller who asks for a person, transferred with the full conversation attached. |
| Close the loop | Completion confirmed with the requester and satisfaction captured against the work request. |
Why Arabic-first matters here
Facilities requests come from everyone in the building — not just head-office staff comfortable in English. A cleaner reporting a leak, a contractor asking about access, a tenant complaining about air conditioning. They speak Najdi, Hijazi or Gulf dialect, they switch into English for equipment names and room numbers, and they will not adapt their language to your system. An agent that only handles Modern Standard Arabic fails exactly the population that generates the most requests.
The same applies to your data. Building and department names are often bilingual, asset descriptions are frequently English inside Arabic sentences, and locations get referred to colloquially rather than by their catalogue name. Mapping what people say to what Archibus stores is most of the work, and it is where a generic chatbot falls over.
How the integration works
- Voho connects to Archibus through its web service and API layer — reading the location, asset and problem-type hierarchies, and creating or updating requests.
- Your workflows stay as they are. Approvals, routing rules, SLAs and escalation paths continue to live in Archibus; the agent is a front door, not a replacement.
- Identity is resolved against your directory so requests are raised under the correct requester with the correct entitlements.
- Works with Archibus deployed in your cloud tenancy or on-premise, including environments where the data cannot leave your estate.
- Voice and chat share one implementation, so a request started on WhatsApp and chased by phone is the same request.
What it removes
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Requests logged only during helpdesk hours | Requests raised at any hour, including during weekends and holidays. |
| Status chasing consuming helpdesk capacity | Status answered instantly from live data, freeing agents for actual coordination. |
| Free-text locations that trades cannot act on | Locations confirmed against your hierarchy at the point of capture. |
| Mis-classified problem types distorting reporting | Consistent classification, so maintenance analytics reflect reality. |
| Re-keying between the call and the system | One capture, written directly to Archibus. |
Governance
Every request the agent creates carries an audit trail back to the conversation that produced it, with the recording and transcript retained under a defined retention period. Callers are told they are speaking to an automated system. Any request touching safety, security or a vulnerable person escalates to a human immediately rather than being handled autonomously — that boundary is written into the escalation policy before launch, not discovered afterwards.
How a rollout runs
Start with your three highest-volume request types and status lookup — typically air conditioning, electrical and cleaning in most portfolios, plus "where is my request". Route a portion of live traffic, review recordings weekly, and expand the problem-type coverage only once classification accuracy holds. Most of the value arrives with the first three types, because request volume follows a steep curve.
If you are running Archibus in the Kingdom and your helpdesk is drowning in calls that a system already has the answers to, that is the conversation to have.
Frequently asked
- Can Archibus service requests be created by an AI chatbot or voice agent?
- Yes. Voho connects to Archibus through its web service and API layer, so an Arabic voice agent or chatbot can classify a caller's problem, confirm the location against your own hierarchy, attach the relevant asset and create the service or work request directly, without a helpdesk agent re-keying it.
- Does this replace our Archibus workflows?
- No. Approvals, routing rules, SLAs and escalation paths continue to live in Archibus. The agent is a front door for capture and status, so your existing configuration and reporting stay intact.
- Will it understand Saudi dialects and mixed Arabic-English requests?
- That is the point of an Arabic-first agent. Facilities requests come from across the workforce in Najdi, Hijazi and Gulf dialect, usually with English equipment names and room numbers mixed in. Mapping colloquial descriptions to the locations, assets and problem types Archibus actually stores is the substance of the integration.
- Can it run where Archibus is deployed on-premise?
- Yes. The stack can be deployed into your own cloud tenancy or your own data centre, including environments where data cannot leave your estate, which is the common requirement for government and regulated portfolios in the Kingdom.
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