Getting Started with Skylar Advisor

Skylar Advisor is an AI‑powered application within the Skylar AI ecosystem that provides proactive, tailored guidance based on real‑time data sent from your Skylar One system to Skylar AI. You can interact with Skylar Advisor by reviewing and following its proactive suggestions, called "Advisories." Additionally, you can query Skylar Advisor for advice and use it to perform deeper investigations of the issues and events in your environment.

For an overview of the Skylar AI platform, see Introduction to Skylar AI.

To view the latest release notes, see the Skylar AI Release Notes.

What is Skylar Advisor?

Skylar Advisor is an AI-powered application that offers tailored guidance based on real-time data sent to Skylar AI from Skylar One, which lets you make informed decisions quickly and efficiently.

What Skylar Advisor is not is a "chatbot" or "assistant" that you have to query to get answers. Skylar Advisor uses its gathered knowledge to give you the potential answers before you get around to typing a question. Skylar Advisor can also forecast for issues that might occur, and create requests for upgrades.

Image of he Skylar Advisor features.

Similar to large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, you can also use the Ask Skylar feature in Skylar Advisor to start a conversion with Skylar AI to get more information.

Logging In to the Skylar AI User Interface

If you know the URL of your Skylar AI system, you can go directly to that location. You can also access Skylar AI components from a link in Skylar One.

The login process might vary slightly, depending on the versions of Skylar AI, Skylar One, and the Skylar One AP2 user interface currently running in your environment.

To log in to Skylar AI from Skylar One:

  1. From Skylar One, go to the Skylar AI page () and click the Visit button for the Skylar AI component you want to use, such as Skylar Analytics or Skylar Advisor. If you are not currently logged in to Skylar AI, the Skylar AI sign-in page appears.

  2. If you need to log in to Skylar AI, type your email address and password and click Continue. The Skylar AI landing page appears.

  3. If your Skylar AI site requires multi-factor authentication, but you have not set it up, you will need to scan the QR code that displays or enter the "secret key". This is a one-time-only step.

  4. Click the name of the Skylar AI component you want to use, such as Advisor, Analytics, or Skylar Settings.

The Skylar Advisor User Interface

The Skylar Advisor user interface includes the following main pages and features:

  • The Ask Skylar feature lets you query Skylar Advisor for customized guidance based on real-time data sent from Skylar One, which empowers you to make informed decisions quickly and efficiently. You interact with the Ask Skylar feature in much the same way as you would with ChatGPT, Claude, and other LLMs. For more information, see Using the Ask Skylar Feature.

  • The Dashboards page is the default page that displays when you open Skylar Advisor. This page contains a list of your work and all of your interactions with Skylar Advisor. This page also lets you work with events imported from Skylar One, organized by business service, device group, issue type, or organization. For more information, see Managing Activities on the Dashboards Page.

    • The Reports tab on the Dashboards page lets you set up and schedule reports in Skylar Advisor. Available reports include "Corpus Health", "Handoff", "Business Services", "Trends", and "Spend Value". For more information, see Scheduling Reports for Skylar Advisor.

    • For more information about the process of moving from an unclaimed Advisory to a closed one, see Working with an Advisory.

    • If you are a NOC supervisor or shift lead holding Owner-level permissions, you can use Skylar Advisor to keep up with your team's work on Advisories. For more information, see Supervising with Skylar Advisor.

  • The Knowledge Center page lets you upload your own documents to the Corpus to train Skylar Advisor on your company's specific workflows, policies, and processes. For more information, see Managing Documents and Data on the Knowledge Center Page.

  • The Data Lens page lets you view details about the Skylar One events and event groups ("signals") that have been received by Skylar Advisor so that you can perform further investigations on them. For more information, see Managing Signals on the Data Lens Page.

  • The Toolbox page ( > lets you view and test all tools from the Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers that have been enabled in Skylar Advisor. For more information, see MCP Services.

  • The Alert Configuration page ( > Advisor > Alert Configuration) displays the data gathered by your OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector and exported to Skylar Advisor. For more information, see Managing OpenTelemetry (OTel) Alerts on the Alert Builder Page.

  • The Customer Insights page  ( > Advisor > Customer Insights) displays data about the activities of all users on the Skylar Advisor instance. For more information, see Viewing User Activity on the Customer Insights Page.

  • The Preview Features page ( > Account Settings > Preview Features) lets users toggle on and experiment with new features. For more information, see Enabling New Features on the Preview Features Page.

  • The Agentic Control Plane page ( > Advisor > Agentic Control Plane) lets you monitor any AI agents and tools that you are using with Skylar Advisor. For more information, see Using the Agentic Control Plane Page.

    For information about the other pages available from the Skylar AI menu (), see Configuring Skylar AI System Settings.

Use the following buttons and icons to help you navigate the Skylar Advisor user interface:

  • The Skylar AI menu () at top left gives you access to all of the Skylar Advisor pages, along with User Settings (your user information), Account Settings (information specific to this account), and the Persona page. The User Settings link takes you to the same Profile page that displays when you select Skylar Settings from the login page.

  • If you have multiple instances of Skylar Advisor running, you can switch between those instances by clicking the drop-down next to Instance at the top right.

  • The user icon () at top right displays the email address and role for the current user in the user interface. You can click the Sign Out button to sign out of this session.

  • The List () and Dashboard () buttons in the top navigation on the Recent Activity tab of the Dashboards page let you change how Skylar Advisor displays your activities.

  • The Persona button on the Recent Activity tab takes you to the Persona page, where you can edit your personal settings for Skylar Advisor.

  • Most Skylar Advisor pages and tabs have a Help Ctr button at top right or a Help Center icon () in the small navigation bar on the left. The Help Center pane contains links to short videos that explain the latest features for this version of Skylar Advisor, and it also has a link to the Skylar AI product documentation site. The Help Center pane displays a yellow Updated button for new content, and the smaller Help Center icon on the left also displays a small yellow circle for new content.

  • If a page contains a list, the enter selection mode icon () adds check boxes to items in the list so that you can perform bulk actions to multiple items at once, such as bookmarking or archiving an item. Click the icon again to hide the check boxes.

  • The notifications icon () at the bottom left of the window lets you view all your recent notifications related to activities and warnings for that page. You can click Clear All to delete all past reminders. When you move to another page or tab, the list of notifications is updated for the new page.

  • The Queue button on the bottom right of the Recent Activity tab displays a brief summary of your activities, including events, signals, and questions when you hover over it.

  • The Versions link in the footer of any page displays the version numbers for Skylar Advisor and other applications. From the footer, you can also click links to view the Terms of Service and to view information about licenses and open-source packages.

Defining Your Persona and Role Information

One of the first tasks you should work on when you get started with Skylar Advisor is to set up your Persona information with the Persona Setup wizard ( > Persona).

Your persona information lets Skylar Advisor know what your role is in your company, the language you will use for interacting with Skylar Advisor, and how you want Skylar Advisor to structure your feedback. You can also select your preferred tabs and layout for the Dashboards page for a more personalized experience.

Image of the Skylar Advisor Persona Setup page.

To define your Skylar Persona using the Persona Setup wizard:

  1. In the Skylar Advisor user interface, click the Skylar AI menu () and click the Persona button at bottom right. The Persona Setup dialog appears.

  2. On the Persona Setup dialog, click Personalize Skylar or Update my Persona if this is not your first visit to this page. The Persona Setup wizard appears.

  3. The wizard presents you with a series of questions that you need to answer:

  • Which sounds most like you? Select from one of the three roles, and then select a job title. You can edit the job description to better fit your role as needed.

    • I Operate. You are an engineer or an analyst, solving problems and closely using Skylar Advisor. If you select this option, you will have a Your Work pane and a Team Work pane at the top of the Dashboards page to track your activities. You can click Coach Me to get advice about your current workload.

    • I Supervise. You are a manager with a as group of operators working for you. If you select this option, you will have a Team Load pane, a Team Work pane, and a Health pane at the top of the Dashboardspage to track your team's activities. You can also edit team thresholds and have Skylar Advisor help coach your team from these panes.

    • I Own. You are an administrator or service owner responsible for maintaining Skylar Advisor. If you select this option, you will have a Business Risk pane and a Health pane at the top of the Dashboards page to track your activities. You can also create a report about the activities.

  • What should your dashboard open on? Select the default time range, the tabs you want to display on the Dashboards page, and the number of activities to show up on each page.

  • What language should responses use? Select your preferred language for your responses from Skylar Advisor

  • What format should responses use? You can let Skylar Advisor choose the format for you (Auto), or have Skylar Advisor format responses in paragraph format or in a structured format like bulleted or numbered lists. Click each option to view as sample response.

  • How much detail, and in what tone? Select the depth of detail you want for your responses. You can let Skylar Advisor choose the depth or granularity, or have Skylar Advisor give either detailed or brief responses. You can also let Skylar Advisor choose the tone, or have Skylar Advisor give either more formal or casual responses.

  • What view should Skylar show you first? Select which type of data you want to display by default on the Dashboards page. The list of options is based on your role.

  1. After the final step, click Save and Show My View. The Dashboards page appears with your customizations.

If you are on the Dashboards page, you can click the Persona button at the top right to return to the Persona page. The Skylar Persona page appears, but without the setup wizard that appears if you click the Skylar AI menu () and click the Persona button:

Image of the Skylar Advisor Persona page.

You can return to the Persona Setup wizard or the Persona page at any time to update your persona information if you are not satisfied with the responses you are currently getting from Skylar Advisor.