Traditional digital adoption programs often depend on people defining a path, attaching guidance to interface elements and updating that content when the application changes. AI is reducing that work, but vendors automate different parts of the process.
The important question is not whether a platform says it uses AI. It is what the system can learn automatically and what your team still has to maintain.
Three ways guidance can be automated
1. AI-assisted authoring
AI can help builders create or edit guidance faster. WalkMe’s current AI Authoring lets teams describe the content they want in natural language instead of building every item manually.
Source checked September 2026: WalkMe AI settings.
2. Context-aware assistance
A system can inspect the current application context and decide which answer or next action is relevant. WalkMe’s Contextual AI uses automated system intelligence for user intent and next-best-action assistance. Whatfix ScreenSense is designed to interpret interface context and user intent.
Source checked September 2026: Whatfix ScreenSense.
3. Product knowledge generated from the software
Smartdoxx takes a different approach. It derives structured product knowledge from source code, including functional flows and role context. The knowledge layer can then support documentation, answers and contextual guidance without treating every product tour as a separate knowledge asset.
Can a DAP create guidance automatically?
Increasingly, yes, but automation ranges from helping an author create content to generating guidance from a learned model of the product. These are different maintenance models.
For complex software, ask whether the platform understands complete workflows, roles and permissions, or mainly the current screen and authored content.
Do you still need to create product tours manually?
Not for every workflow. Predefined tours remain useful for controlled onboarding journeys, but AI can handle more open-ended user questions and context-specific paths. This is why #62 and the closely related intent about avoiding manually created product tours belong on one page rather than two competing URLs.
Read Do You Still Need Product Tours With AI? and How Do You Prevent Product Tours From Becoming Outdated? for the related decision and maintenance questions.
What to compare before choosing an automated guidance platform
- Knowledge source: authored content, screen context, browser learning or source code.
- Maintenance: what happens after each software release?
- Workflow depth: can the system understand multi-step business processes?
- Role awareness: can it change guidance based on what a user can do?
- Reuse: can the same knowledge also power documentation and AI answers?
Where Smartdoxx fits
Smartdoxx is designed for teams that own complex software and want the software implementation to become a source of product knowledge. Instead of maintaining guidance as a separate layer, teams can regenerate knowledge as the code changes and use it across different user-facing experiences.
See how Smartdoxx automatically generates in-app guidance and how guidance can update when code changes.
Frequently asked questions
Can AI build product tours automatically?
AI can now automate parts of authoring and, in some platforms, generate guidance from learned product context. The degree of automation depends on how the platform learns the product.
Can you use a DAP without manually creating every tour?
Yes. Modern platforms increasingly support AI authoring, contextual assistance or generated guidance. For complex software, compare how much product understanding is automatic and what still requires manual maintenance.
Generate guidance from product knowledge
Smartdoxx turns code-derived product knowledge into contextual help for complex software.
See the in-app assistant