Enabling Machine Learning Features

You can enable optional machine learning features, which generate item recommendations and a usage report.​

Machine learning features examine your organization's purchases over time and use artificial intelligence to display item recommendations for users and generate a usage report for administrators.​

Guided buying can suggest item recommendations for products and services based on users' past purchases.​ It collects both individual and organizational purchasing history and uses artificial intelligence to recommend catalog items that might be of interest based on the individual user. Item recommendations encourage quick purchasing to solve business needs while discouraging browsing, which wastes time and could result in unnecessary buying.​

When you enable item recommendations, guided buying can display recommended catalog items on up to four different pages:

• A Recommended for you carousel on the home page displays up to five item recommendations.
  
• A Related items carousel at the bottom of the item details page, which displays up to five related items.
  
• A Recommended alternatives from catalog carousel on the Non-Catalog Request page and line item forms, which displays up to five related items. This carousel encourages users to buy catalog items instead of non-catalog items. The list of alternatives updates as users change the Product name/Service name, Category, or Description fields on these pages.

For the most relevant recommendations, guided buying must first collect and analyze a significant number of searching and purchasing actions. Immediately after enabling this feature, the carousels display your organization's popular items, not recommended items. Over time, guided buying analyzes purchases and replaces popular items with recommended items.

Play the video to learn about using AI-generated item recommendations in the guided buying capability.

The usage report provides administrators visibility into the searching and purchasing performed by users and the organization's overall interaction with guided buying.​

Guided buying generates this Microsoft Excel report monthly to provide usage details, such as the number of users who logged in, the number of users who added items to their cart, the total number of items added to carts, and searches that returned no results.