Zoho People Zia - AI Functions & Use Cases

Zoho People Zia - AI Functions & Use Cases

 



 



Zia

AI Functionality & Use Cases with Sample Prompts

Overview

 

This knowledge base documents the AI-assisted capabilities available across Zoho People services through Zia. Each section describes a service, the functionalities it supports, the access level required, and sample prompts that users can use. These use cases provided are examples, Zia can perform a wide range of actions and generate visual charts for report-based queries, helping users gain insights more effectively.

Access Level Explanation


  • Self: team member role user acting on their own data  
  • Manager: manager role user acting on reportees data 
  • Admin / HR: administrator or HR with org-wide access  
  • Permission-based: governed by the user’s configured role permissions only 
  • Approver: the designated approver in a workflow.


AlertDisclaimer: 
Zia access is enabled by default for administrators only. Additional roles can be granted access using the multi-select dropdown available in Settings > Zia. Zia's ability to respond and act on relevant data depends on each role's permissions in Zoho People (Settings > Manage Account > User Access Control to setup). Permission-based access ensures that actions such as viewing, editing, deleting data and all actions are performed by appropriate users only. Response may also vary between different accounts based on available data. 

AI-generated content may be inaccurate. Please verify important information.

1.  Employee Database

 

Zia surfaces employee profiles, organizational structure, work and personal details, attrition trends, and data-based insights. It can also action common HR updates conversationally.

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Profile & general lookup

Retrieve an employee’s profile, identifiers, contact details, and reporting line.

“Show me the profile of Employee A.”

Self / Manager / Admin

Reporting relationships

Identify who an employee reports to, or who reports to a given manager.

“Who is the reporting manager for Employee C?”

Self / Manager / Admin

Department & team information

View headcount, team composition, and new hires within a department or location.

“What is the headcount in the Marketing department at Chennai?”

Admin / HR

Work information

Query designation, employment type, joining date, tenure, and probation or contract status.

“What is Employee A’s employment type and total experience?”

Admin / HR

New joiner insights

List employees who joined recently.

“Show new joiners this month.”

Admin / HR

Upcoming birthdays

Surface employees with birthdays in a given period.

“List employees with upcoming birthdays.”

Self / Admin

Experience & education

Find employees by years of experience, qualifications, or alma mater.

“List employees with an MBA degree and more than 5 years of experience.”

Admin / HR

Personal & identity info

Review identity documents and flag missing or expiring details.

“List employees whose PAN or passport is expiring soon.”

Admin / HR

Managerial / reporting structure

Visualize team hierarchy and track recent manager changes.

“Show the team structure for the Sales department.”

Admin / HR

Exit information & attrition

Track resignations, notice periods, terminations, and upcoming exits.

“Show all employees who resigned in the last quarter.”

Admin / HR

Data completeness & validation

Detect missing fields, incorrect manager mappings, and duplicate records.

“Which employees have missing email addresses or emergency contacts?”

Admin / HR

Analytics & insights

Generate distribution, joining-trend, and attrition analytics.

“Give me a gender distribution and average experience by department.”

Admin / HR

Predictive & smart suggestions

Predict attrition risk and suggest successors or promotion candidates.

“Which department has the highest attrition in the past 3 months?”

Admin / HR

Succession & promotion planning

Recommend internal candidates for roles and promotions.

“Who are potential successors for Employee C?”

Admin / HR

HR requests & automation

Action profile updates such as manager changes, dependents, and work location.

“Update the reporting manager for Employee C to Employee D.”

Admin

Bulk lifecycle actions

Perform bulk operations such as deactivating exited employees.

“Deactivate employees who exited last month.”

Admin / HR

Compliance & audit

Generate compliance reports on documents, visas, and contracts.

“Generate a report of employee without passport information"

Admin / HR

Notifications & data hygiene

Identify employees who have not updated personal information recently.

“Who has not updated their personal info in the last 6 months?”

Admin / HR

Advanced insights

Detect anomalies

“Give me a list of departments with high attrition risks and share insights"

Admin / HR

Age-related queries

Filter and rank employees by age or date of birth.

“Who is the youngest employee in the company?”

Admin / HR

Missing-data queries

List employees with any unfilled mandatory field.

“List employees without an assigned reporting manager.”

Admin / HR


2.  Time & Attendance

 

This consolidated service covers daily attendance, shift management, leave and compensatory off, regularization and on-duty workflows, and time tracking through projects, jobs, and timesheets.

2.1  Attendance

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Check-in / check-out

Mark attendance and view current working duration.

“Mark a check-in now.”

Self / Admin

Reportee attendance

View reportees who have checked in and their recent attendance history.

“Show the list of my reportees who marked check-in today.”

Manager / Admin

Working headcount

See how many employees are currently working.

“How many employees are currently working?”

Admin

Overtime tracking

Check overtime hours logged for a given day.

“Did I work overtime yesterday, and how many OT hours did I log?”

Self

Check-in / out for a period

Retrieve first check-in and check-out times across a period.

“Show my first check-in and check-out times recorded this week.”

Self

Late check-in insights

Analyze late arrivals over a period.

“Show my late check-in entries for last week.”

Self

Shift details

View assigned shift, its timings, and upcoming shift assignments.

“What is my shift today, and what time does it start and end?”

Self

Presence summary

Summarize days present and absent in a period.

“How many days was I present this month?”

Self

Regularization (self)

Raise and track attendance regularization requests.

“Create a regularization request for 10th June 2026 with check-in 09:00 AM, check-out 09:00 PM, reason ‘Forgot to check out.’”

Self / Admin

Regularization (manager view)

View pending regularization requests raised by a specific employee.

“List all pending regularization requests raised by Employee B.”

Manager / Admin

Regularization approval

Approve regularization requests as an approver.

“Approve the regularization requests raised by Employee B for 11-06-2026.”

Approver

On-duty (self)

Raise and track on-duty requests.

“Create an on-duty request for 16th June as Work From Home, half day, first-half session.”

Self / Admin

On-duty (manager view)

View pending on-duty requests raised by an employee.

“List all pending on-duty requests raised by Employee B.”

Manager / Admin

On-duty approval

Approve on-duty requests as an approver.

“Approve the on-duty request raised by Employee B for 11-06-2026.”

Approver

Shift change request

Raise and approve shift change requests.

“Add a shift change request for 19th June with the Saturday shift.”

Self / Admin · Approver


2.2  Leave

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Apply for leave

Submit a leave request for self or, with permission, for another employee.

“Apply for Casual Leave on 20th May.”

Self / Admin

Apply leave for others

Submit leave on behalf of an employee.

“Apply Casual Leave on 20th May for Employee C.”

Admin

View leave requests

View pending or historical leave requests for self or an employee.

“Show the pending leave requests raised by me in May.”

Self / Admin

Cancel leave request

Cancel a previously raised leave request.

“Cancel leave request ZY-001 (Hourly Leave) raised for 21st May.”

Self / Admin

Leave balances

Check remaining balance by leave type, including negative or high-usage balances.

“What is my current leave balance for each leave type?”

Self / Admin

Leave analytics

Identify leave-volume trends across periods.

“Which months have the highest leave requests?”

Admin

Holidays

List upcoming holidays, optionally filtered by year or location.

“List the 2026 holidays for the Madurai location.”

Self / Admin

Leave approvals

View and act on pending leave approvals.

“Show my pending leave approvals.”

Approver

Compensatory off

Raise comp-off requests and check comp-off balances.

“What is my available comp-off balance?”

Self / Admin

On-leave visibility

See which reportees or employees are on leave.

“List the employees who are on leave today.”

Manager / Admin

Holiday work tracking

Track employees who worked on holidays.

“How many employees worked on holidays this year?”

Admin

Absence reporting

View absenteeism rate and absence records.

“Show the absenteeism rate and absence records for April.”

Self / Admin


2.3  Time Tracker (Timesheet)

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Timesheets

View, submit, and track timesheet status.

“Do I have any pending timesheets to submit for May?”

Self / Admin

Projects

Retrieve projects by status and view project members.

“Get my InProgress Projects.”

Self / Admin

Project users

List the users assigned to a project.

“Get the project users for the project ‘Map’.”

Self / Admin

Clients

View and add clients.

“Show the list of clients added.”

Self / Admin · Add: Admin

Add client

Create a new client record.

“Add a client named ‘Client 1’ with currency INR.”

Admin

Job schedules (self)

View, create, edit, and publish your own job schedules.

“Add a job scheduler for 19th June for job Design, 10:00 AM to 04:00 PM.”

Self / Admin

Job schedules (for others)

Manage job schedules on behalf of an employee.

“Add a job scheduler for 10th June for job Design, 10:00 AM to 04:00 PM for Employee A.”

Admin / HR

Publish schedules

Publish draft job schedules.

“Publish the job schedules in draft status for 18th June.”

Admin

Time logs

Create, view, and delete time logs, including via the timer.

“Create a time log for 25th May, 11:00 hours, description ‘Today log’, billable.”

Self / Admin

Timer control

Start and stop the timer for a specific job.

“Start the timer for the Design job"

Self / Admin

Daily log summary

Summarize hours and tasks logged today.

“How many hours did I log today for project A"

Self / Admin

Jobs list

List all jobs across statuses.

“List all jobs, including in-progress and closed.”

Self / Admin

3.  Learning Management System (LMS)

 

Zia supports course discovery, enrollment, reminders, learning plans, and progress reporting for learners, managers, and administrators.

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Course search

Find courses a user is enrolled in, or look up course details.

“Get the courses @employeeabc has enrolled in.”

Users & Admins

Course details

Fetch the details of a specific course.

“Fetch the course details of course Xyz.”

Users & Admins

Enroll users

Enroll an employee into a course.

“Enroll @employeeabc in course Xyz.”

Admin

Overdue reminders

Send reminders to learners with pending self-paced items.

“Send reminders to learners of course Xyz1.”

Admin

Learning plans

List the learning plans applicable to a user.

“Get the learning plans applicable for @employeeabc.”

Users & Admins

Learner course progress

View a learner’s progress report.

“Get the learner progress report for employee A.”

Admins

Course progress detail

View detailed progress for a specific course.

“Get the course progress for course CourseA.”

Admins

Learning plan progress

Summarize progress on a learner’s learning plan.

“Get the learning plan progress report for @employeeabc.”

Admins

Plan-wide course progress

View progress across all courses in a learning plan.

“Get the learning plan courses progress report of ‘Learning Plan A’.”

Admins

Batch details

View batches for a Blended Learning course.

“Get the batch details of the course ‘Course B.”

Admins


4.  Compensation

 

Salary and salary-revision queries are available only to roles with the appropriate access. All prompts below are permission-based.

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Salary information

View salary details and component breakups for self or reportees.

“Fetch my salary information and component breakup.”

Permission-based

Reportee salary

View the salary details of reportees.

“List the salary details of my reportees.”

Permission-based

Salary revision

View revision history and the date of the last revision.

“When was my last salary revision, and show the revision history.”

Permission-based

5.  Performance Management (PMS)

 

Zia assists with appraisals, goals and KRAs, competencies and skills, the skill matrix, and review workflows. Capabilities differ by persona: employees act on their own data, managers on their reportees, and HR org-wide.

5.1  Appraisal & Performance Insights

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Current rating & performance

Check current cycle rating and performance standing.

“How am I performing this quarter, and what is my current rating?”

Employee

Weighted average score

View weighted average performance across cycles.

“What is my weighted average score?”

Employee

Performance trend

Compare performance across appraisal cycles.

“Show my performance trend compared to last cycle.”

Employee

Feedback insights

Surface strengths and improvement areas from feedback.

“What are my strengths, and where am I underperforming?”

Employee

Team performance summary

Summarize overall team performance.

“Show my team’s overall performance summary.”

Manager

Top & low performers

Identify the highest and lowest performers in the team.

“Who are my top and low performers?”

Manager

Team rating analytics

View the team’s average rating and compare members.

“What is the average rating of my team, and compare performance across members?”

Manager

Cycle comparison

Identify employees who improved or declined across cycles.

“Which employees improved and which declined this cycle?”

Manager


5.2  Goals & KRAs

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

List goals

View own goals and their completion status.

“Show my goals, which are completed and which are still pending?”

Employee

Goal–KRA alignment (self)

Check whether goals are mapped to KRAs.

“Are my goals aligned with my KRAs, and show goals mapped to each KRA.”

Employee

Reportees’ goals

View reportees’ goals and identify incomplete ones.

“Show the goals of my reportees and flag team members with incomplete goals.”

Manager

Add goal for reportee

Create a goal for a team member.

“Add a goal for my reportee.”

Manager

Goal–KRA mapping (team)

Map, unmap, and review KRA-wise goal distribution for the team.

“Map goals to KRAs for my team and show the KRA-wise goal distribution.”

Manager

Org-wide KRAs

View organization-wide KRAs.

“Show the organization-wide KRAs.”

HR

Create KRA

Create a KRA and tag it to a department with weightage.

“Create a KRA ‘TEST KRA’ mapped to the ‘IT Support’ department with 30% weightage.”

HR

Edit KRA

Update existing KRAs.

“Update KRA ‘KRA6’ to ‘KRA7’.”

HR

Delete KRA

Remove outdated KRAs from a department.

“Delete outdated KRAs for a department.”

HR


5.3  KRA Queries

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

List own KRAs

View assigned KRAs and untagged ones.

“Show my KRAs and flag which KRAs are not tagged to me.”

Employee

Reportees’ KRAs

View, assign, edit, and delete KRAs for the team.

“Show the KRAs for my team.”

Manager

Manage reportee KRAs

Assign, update, or remove KRAs for an employee.

“Assign KRAs to my team members.”

Manager

List all KRAs

List every KRA in the organization.

“List all KRAs in the organization.”

HR


5.4  Competencies & Skills

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

List competencies

View assigned competencies and missing skills.

“What competencies do I have, and which skills am I missing?”

Employee

Reportees’ competencies

View and assign competencies for the team.

“Show the competencies of my team.”

Manager

Skill gap analysis

Identify employees lacking critical skills and team-level gaps.

“Which employees lack critical skills, and show the skill gaps in my team.”

Manager

Manage competencies

Create, update, delete, and analyze competency frameworks org-wide.

“Create and add competencies for ABC" / "Show competency distribution across the org.”

HR


5.5  Skill Matrix

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Team skill matrix

View the skill matrix for the team.

“Show the skill matrix for my team.”

All Users

Find skilled employees

Locate employees by a specific skill or expertise.

“Find employees who have Cybersecurity skills.”

All Users

Skill distribution

Analyze skill distribution and gaps across a department.

“Show the skill distribution across the department.”

All Users


5.6  Appraisal & Review Workflows

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Self review (employee)

Draft, summarize, and get suggestions for a self appraisal.

“Generate my self-appraisal draft and suggest what to highlight.”

Employee

Manager review

Write reviews, summarize employee performance, and suggest ratings.

“Write an appraisal letter for employee A and suggest a justified rating.”

Manager

Review analysis (HR)

Summarize reviews and analyze rating trends and inconsistencies.

“Show review summaries across teams and identify rating inconsistencies.”

HR

Review questions

View, add, edit, and delete review questions.

“Show the review questions and / "add a new review question.”

All Users

Appraisal templates

Create review templates and role-based questions using Zia's inputs

“Suggest leadership review template questions with role-based questions.”

All Users


5.7  Setup & Common Queries

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Setup gaps

Find employees missing KRAs, competencies, or goal-to-KRA mappings.

“Which employees don’t have KRAs?"

All Users

Fix missing data

Remediate missing KRAs and competencies.

“Which goals are not mapped to KRAS.”

All Users

Self performance check

Conversational self-assessment of standing and readiness.

“How’s my performance looking, and is my appraisal ready?”

Employee


6.  Employee Engagement (Surveys)

 

Zia helps employees and administrators discover, complete, manage, and analyze surveys.

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Pending surveys

List surveys awaiting the user’s response.

“List my pending surveys.”

User & Admin

Navigate to surveys

Open the survey page directly.

“Take me to the survey page.”

User & Admin

Surveys created by me

List surveys the user has created.

“List the surveys created by me.”

User & Admin

Recurring surveys

View completed recurring surveys.

“Show my completed recurring surveys.”

User & Admin

Anonymous surveys

List anonymous surveys.

“List the anonymous surveys.”

User & Admin

Survey reports

Generate detailed survey reports.

“Show me the detailed survey report.”

Permission-based

7.  HR Help Desk

 

Zia powers HR self-service end to end — from FAQ search and category discovery to raising, tracking, and resolving cases. Employees can find answers and log requests conversationally, while agents and admins triage, reprioritize, respond to, and report on cases.

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

FAQ search

Search the HR knowledge base for instant answers before raising a case.

“Search the FAQs for my query.”

User, Admin & Agent

Browse case categories

List the case categories available to the user for logging a request.

“List my case categories.”

User, Admin & Agent

Assigned categories

View the categories an agent or admin is responsible for handling.

“Show the case categories assigned to me.”

Admin & Agent

Category & subcategory details

Drill into a category to view its subcategories and full configuration.

“Get all subcategories under the ‘Payroll’ category and show its full details.”

Permission-based

Raise HR case

Create a new HR case under the relevant category and subcategory.

“Raise a new HR case under Payroll › Reimbursements.”

User, Admin & Agent

Look up a case

Fetch the full details of a specific case by its ID.

“Fetch case ID 1234.”

Permission-based

List my cases

View cases raised by or assigned to the user, optionally with agent details.

“List all my cases along with their assigned agent details.”

User, Admin & Agent

Reclassify a case

Move a case to a different category or subcategory.

“Change the category or subcategory of this case.”

User, Admin & Agent

Update case status

Transition a case between statuses such as In Progress and On Hold.

“Change the case status from ‘In Progress’ to ‘On Hold’.”

Admin & Agent

Change case priority

Re-prioritize a case to reflect its urgency.

“Change the case priority from Medium to High.”

User, Admin & Agent

Reply & comment

Post a reply or internal comment to keep the case conversation moving.

“Post a reply on this case.”

User, Admin & Agent

Case & SLA reporting

View case-status dashboards and SLA-compliance reports.

“Show the case status report and the SLA report.”

User, Admin & Agent

8.  Files & Documents

 

Zia assists with document summarization, OCR-based data entry, and mail merge related queries.

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Summarize policy documents

Summarize HR policy and reference documents.

“Summarize the code of conduct policy document”

User, Manager, Admin

Mail merge templates

List available mail merge templates.

“What are the available mail merge templates?”

Admin

OCR document parsing

Upload an identity document and auto-populate the form via OCR.

“Upload the attached document to the form A”

User, Admin

Merge documents

Generate a merged document from a mail merge template with employee data.

“Download template ABC with employee data.”

Admin

9.  Benefits

 

Zia can be accessed via Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Note: 

Benefits is available by default for US-based accounts. Contact support@zohopeople.com for more details.

Functionality

Description

Sample Prompt

Access

Plan comparison

Compares two medical plans

“Can you compare two pension plans A & B"

User, Admin & Agent

Plan recommendation

Recommends a plan for the user by validating the offered plans

"Can you suggest the best health plans for me?"

User, Admin & Agent

Queries on enrollment

Fetches and lists medical plans that user will require to enroll before they can enroll in a HSA plan

"List of medical plans required to enroll in HSA Plan."

User, Admin & Agent

10.  Integrations

 

Zia can be accessed via Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Note: 

Most queries supported in Zia are also supported through the People Zia bot in Microsoft Teams and Slack. However, there are some unsupported actions due to technical limitations. View the table below for unsupported actions 

Functionality

Slack Limitation

Microsoft Teams 

Text based queries

fully supported

fully supported

Responses with tabular data

Limited support

Supported

Navigating Zoho People with prompts

Not supported

Not supported

Visual chart generation

Not supported

Not supported