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Role IQ

Build Your First AI Agent That Sustains Learning

"Training may end. Support doesn't have to."

ROLE IQ Build Your First AI Agent That Sustains Learning CHARLES HINDS, M.Ed.
~60% Reduction in information-search time
15 Chapters, concept through maintenance
0 Lines of code required
M365 Built inside Microsoft tools you already have
The Problem

Training ends.
Work doesn't.

By week two, the new employee has a question. It is specific, urgent, and not covered in the training. They interrupt a supervisor, ask a nearby colleague, or guess.

This is the performance gap — the space between what training delivers and what work actually demands. Most organizations have accepted it as an unavoidable cost of doing business.

It is not unavoidable.

The tools to close it already exist inside the Microsoft 365 environment most organizations run today. This book shows you how to use them.

The employee's first two weeks

1
Day 1 — Welcome & orientation
Sessions, handbooks, introductions
2–5
Days 2–5 — Training
eLearning modules, videos, onboarding
6
Day 6 — The actual job begins
Real work, real decisions, real context
?
Week 2 — A question arises
Specific. Urgent. Not covered in training.
The result: interrupt a supervisor, guess, or spend 20 minutes finding a 20-second answer.
The Solution

An AI agent that knows exactly what employees need to know.

Role IQ is an AI-powered support agent that lives inside Microsoft Teams. It answers employee questions instantly using only your organization's approved documents — not the internet, not guesswork. Your content, cited by source, delivered in seconds.

Grounded in your content

Answers come only from the documents you provide — policies, SOPs, job aids, and reference guides. Nothing is invented.

Lives inside Teams

No new app. No new login. Employees ask in the tool they use every day and get an answer in seconds.

Always cites its source

Every answer includes the document it came from. Employees can verify what they received. Trust is built in.

How Role IQ Works

Five steps. Seconds to answer.

1
Employee asks a question
In plain language, inside Teams
2
Agent searches knowledge base
Your approved SharePoint documents
3
AI composes a clear answer
Specific, readable, role-appropriate
4
Source is cited
Document name in every answer
5
Employee acts with confidence
In seconds, not minutes
The Core Idea

The Role Intelligence Layer

Training introduces knowledge. The Role Intelligence Layer sustains it. When an employee completes onboarding and moves into their role, support does not disappear — it stays with them, accessible in the tool they use every day.

Most organizations approach the knowledge-retention problem as a training problem. They invest in refresher courses and better onboarding. None of that addresses what happens at the specific moment when an employee is mid-task and the answer they need is not at hand.

Training prepares people for those moments. The Role Intelligence Layer follows them into those moments. Role IQ is how that layer becomes real — built by a learning designer, not an IT team.

Training Onboarding, eLearning, orientation
Role Intelligence Layer Role IQ — always available, always current
Work Real decisions, real context, real time

The Role Intelligence Layer sits between training and performance, available at the moment employees actually need it.

Inside the Book

From concept to deployed agent — in five parts.

Part One
Understanding Role IQ
  • What is a Role Support AI Agent?
  • How Copilot Studio works
  • The concept behind the build
Part Two
Getting Ready to Build
  • Setting up your environment
  • Preparing your knowledge base
  • Designing agent behavior
Part Three
Building Step by Step
  • Creating the agent
  • Connecting knowledge sources
  • Configuring topics
  • Testing before launch
Part Four
Deploying & Communicating
  • Publishing to Teams
  • Launch communication templates
  • Onboarding employees
Part Five
Maintaining & Optimizing
  • Power Automate enhancements
  • Piloting and full release
  • Measuring impact and ROI
  • Troubleshooting guide
Who This Book Is For

Built for learning designers.
Readable by everyone.

Instructional Designers

You understand learning. This book teaches you to extend it into performance support without needing IT involvement.

L&D and HR Professionals

If you're responsible for onboarding, policy communication, or knowledge management, this book solves a real problem in your work.

Training Coordinators

You work with content every day. This book shows you how to turn that content into a support system that works around the clock.

Operations & People Managers

If your team interrupts you with the same questions week after week, Role IQ addresses that problem directly.

No coding required. If your organization uses Microsoft 365, you already have everything you need. This book shows you how to use it.

Charles Hinds, M.Ed.
About the Author

Charles Hinds, M.Ed.

Learning Designer  ·  AI Strategist  ·  Author

Charles Hinds, M.Ed., is a learning designer, AI strategist, and digital learning innovator with more than a decade designing training for large, complex organizations. He has built production-ready AI performance support systems that deliver trusted, role-specific guidance to employees at the moment the work actually happens — because training alone is not enough.

Role IQ is his practical guide to building exactly that kind of system: step by step, without a software engineering background, inside the Microsoft 365 tools most organizations already use. His first book, The New Learning Stack, is his roadmap for helping designers work smarter, create with confidence, and build learning that actually supports the people it is meant to serve.

Walmart Canada Costco Canada Canada Post Manulife Financial NAV CANADA Telus Health

The gap between training and
performance has existed long enough.

"You now have the tools to close it."

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