Joule skills explained: Turning skills data into action

With AI-powered features like skills inference and Joule, SAP SuccessFactors turns fragmented skills data into real workforce intelligence — so organizations can move from static job models to skills-based strategies. But there’s more. Joule Skills aren’t just about understanding skills data. They help you act on it — with precision, speed, and flexibility.

The power of Joule Skills comes down to three things:

• They activate data through AI-powered, pre-defined actions.

• They’re fully customizable to your business processes.

• They bring consistency and automation into complex workflows.

In the following, we’ll explain what Joule Skills are and how to use them.

Joule Skills are actions powered with AI capabilities designed to execute atomic, predefined operation within a business context through Joule’s chat interface. Among other capabilities, Joule Skills allow Joule to execute tasks such as retrieving specific data, or executing system transactions. Joule skills ensure that business users have fast and reliable automation for high-frequency operations.

Joule Skills are perfect for the unique challenges of a diverse system landscape, because they offer the flexibility and the possibility to define logic and third-party integrations for each of the different use cases.

Why Joule Skills Exist

Every business has its unique challenges and characteristics. A standard, one-size-fits all AI assistant is not enough to meet them all. With Joule Skills You can customize how Joule responds — giving it the power to execute specific tasks and surface insights, all through natural language. Let’s say you ask Joule, “Which users are being terminated next month?” Out of the box, Joule can’t answer that. But with a tailored Joule Skill, it can — and even return the answer in your preferred format.

Joule Studio meets the need of both flexibility and extensibility, providing a development space to build and enhance Joule for specific business needs. It’s inside Joule Studio that you can build Joule Skills.

Common Misconceptions About Joule Skills

A common misunderstanding is that Joule Skills can be configured inside SAP SuccessFactors. It can’t. Joule Skills are created in Joule Studio, which is a service that needs to be enabled in SAP Business Technology Platform. Joule Studio is closely related to SAP Build Process Automation, as it is developed on its foundational platform. With Joule Studio it is possible to create Joule Skills, manage access permissions to it and toggle when it is available in the Joule chat interface.

Another misconception is that you by using AI powered replies cannot control the outcome, nor guarantee the consistency of the answers generated. By using Joule Skills, you can get a defined outcome with the same structure all the time, either generated by AI or provided by you. This way, you can ensure the consistency of the outcome and avoid surprises.

Finally, there’s an assumption that you need expert developers to build Joule Skills. That’s not true. In reality, Joule Skills are created in a low-code/no-code way, lowering the barrier to entry for HR and IT teams alike.

How Joule Skills Work

Where the data comes from

Joule Skills can pull data from anywhere — APIs, files, integrated systems. There are no restrictions. Most commonly the data is gathered via SAP Cloud Integration, where your integration flows handle the data retrieval. You can also connect directly through APIs.

How the right Skill gets triggered

The answer to this is that each skill needs to have a description explaining what the skill does and when it should be used. When you make your request in the Joule chat interface, the AI will match your request with the closest skill description, and it’s surprisingly accurate.

What it doesn’t do (yet)

Joule Skills can’t run on their own. Joule Skills can only be triggered through the Joule chat interface. You can't schedule or setup it to run automatically, at least for now.

What You Need in Place

In order to have Joule Skills in place you need to first enable Joule Studio. The prerequisites to enable Joule Studio are the following:

• A subscription to Joule.

• A developer license for SAP Build, and the build-default service plan.

• A Subscription to SAP Build Process Automation in your SAP BTP subaccount.

• A subscription to SAP Cloud Identity Services.

With all these requirements met, you will be able to enable Joule Studio. Then you can start creating your own Joule Skills.

How to Build a Good Joule Skill

Now that we have established what the technical requirements are, let’s deep dive into what you need to build a good Joule Skill.

In order to build a good Joule Skill you need to first identify a task or process that is repeated multiple times and is a good candidate for automation. After identifying this, you need to assess whether it would be a good solution to have this process executed through Joule. If the answer to this question is yes, then the next step is to ensure that a Joule Skill will be able to achieve the desired result.

Once you complete all the steps, you'll have a unique Joule Skill to assist you with your daily tasks using Joule.

What It Looks Like in Action:

1. List all employees that will be terminated within next X months

2. Add a user to a Permission Group

3. Give an estimation of the maternity pay for a user based on their country’s rules

4. Reply to HR related questions such as:

1. Vacation policy.

2. Travel policy.

All these examples might be simple, but they are not available in Joule by default. Developing Joule Skills can enable these functionalities and enhance Joule’s capabilities.

These are only generic examples, you need to review your business processes to identify specific use cases where Joule Skills could be beneficial.

The Takeaway

The real value of Joule Skills is not in the AI behind it, it’s in the freedom to design solutions that fit your business. It’s the ability to turn workforce intelligence into real action — in the exact way your organization needs. And that’s the kind of AI transformation that doesn’t just sound smart — it works.

Ready to explore Joule Skills?

We can help you:

• Validate your skills data quality

• Align job architecture and skills models

• Turn skills insight into workforce decisions

Let’s bring your skills strategy to life — one Joule Skill at a time.