Tray.io Unveils Merlin AI to Instantly Transform Large Language Model Outputs Into Complete Business Processes

SAN FRANCISCO – Tray.io, the leader in low-code automation and integration, today unveiled Tray Merlin AI, a new natural language automation capability in the Tray platform that instantly transforms large language model (LLM) outputs into complete business processes, without the need for LLM training or exposing customer data to the LLM. This new advancement makes the Tray platform the first iPaaS solution that brings together the power of flexible, scalable automation; support for advanced business logic; and native generative AI capabilities that anyone can use. Leveraging OpenAI technology and Tray.io’s extensive workflow, authentication, connector and API technologies, business technologists, front-line employees and developers across the enterprise can now more quickly and efficiently build, iterate on and improve sophisticated workflows that transcend the software stack. By simply asking Merlin—in the same way a team member would ask a colleague—users can obtain answers at the point-of-decision and automate critical business tasks. Additionally, Merlin eliminates the need for any IT and engineering involvement in what typically entailed weeks to months of integration effort to build automations or answer queries. This new advancement builds on Tray.io’s vision to lower the barriers that prohibit enterprise-wide automation in the face of the unintended consequences of digital transformation.

All final workflows created by Tray Merlin AI are presented visually in a low-code format to allow the user to modify, improve or augment its functionality, as necessary, and share with others for reuse. Unlike many other applications that interface with LLMs, the operational capabilities of Merlin AI and the underlying Tray platform are self-contained, meaning Merlin only needs to fetch small pieces of information from the LLM on an as-needed basis during the integration building process. As a result, customer data is never exposed or sent to the LLM. 

"The outcomes enterprises can achieve with LLMs, such as those of OpenAI, are only as good as a user's ability to take action on the results of the query," said Alistair Russell, co-founder and CTO at Tray.io. "Tray Merlin AI completely changes the game as it instantly automates business processes and answers queries through natural language instruction. Think of Merlin as giving the LLM 'brain' a Tray 'body'—a body that can take action without passing customer data back to the LLM and requires no further training to execute complex business tasks."

Tray.io Taps AI to Address the Unintended Consequences of Digital Transformation 

As businesses continue to grapple with the unintended consequences of rapid digital transformation efforts—such as technical debt, complex tech stacks and business process inefficiencies—every department is under enormous pressure to deliver fast results that not only meet customers' demands for timely, high-quality services, but also help the company remain profitable in the most efficient way possible. 

Leaders must overcome IT and developer bottlenecks by tapping into a hidden talent opportunity—employees who have technical skills, but are not using them in their primary job function. Equipping these employees with self-service AI automation is a critical enabler to driving digital initiatives at speed. According to Gartner®, “Almost half of all non-IT employees are now business technologists, and companies that successfully enable them are 2.6 times more likely to achieve digital business goals.”1 

"Generative AI is currently one of the most disruptive forces in iPaaS,” said Alexander Wurm, Senior Analyst at Nucleus Research. “Vendors who embrace AI in their platforms provide an incredible step-change in ease-of-use that boosts the productivity of experienced users. When done well, it delivers immediate value to many users in the enterprise for which the benefits of the technology were previously out of reach. Companies who adopt iPaaS solutions with native generative AI capabilities will be at a substantial velocity, efficiency and agility advantage."  

Tray Merlin AI: Natural Language Automation to Accelerate and Improve the Execution of Complex Tasks 

A core element of the Tray platform architecture, Merlin AI works seamlessly with Tray.io’s connector, workflow and API technologies—and other platform capabilities including data transformation, robust authentication mechanisms and support for advanced business logic—to deliver a flexible, low-code and AI-augmented automation builder.

With Merlin, anyone—regardless of their level of technical expertise—can build complete integrations with the assistance of, or solely using, NLP, radically simplifying the automation building process for all users and supercharging team productivity. For example, Merlin can act as an autonomous assistant capable of executing complex tasks, such as collecting or moving information across disparate systems, answering questions or building automated workflows to complete a business process. 

“AI is revolutionizing automation, and Tray.io is at the forefront of this movement. The arrival of generative AI and the pace of innovation it enables will spell the end of the iPaaS architectures that were built for a different time,” said Rich Waldron, co-founder and CEO at Tray.io. “Tray Merlin AI brings together the power of flexible, scalable automation and AI to accelerate and improve automation outcomes for our customers, enabling them to solve business problems better, faster and more independently than ever before.” 

Tray Merlin AI powers the following new capabilities to accelerate automation and integration projects across the enterprise, while reducing the burden on business technologists and developers:

• Securely build out automation details and iterate or improve existing processes: Marketing Ops teams can refine their lead delivery processes by reducing the time it takes to deliver high-value leads to sales reps, enabling them to respond to prospects promptly. Using just natural language instructions, the person building marketing automations can improve their current process by asking Merlin to build a workflow to capture lead scoring data from Marketo, assign qualified leads to reps in Salesforce immediately any time it’s over a certain threshold, build the Outreach sequence and notify reps via Slack or Teams of the newly qualified lead. When finished, all the steps are displayed in the low-code visual builder through which the user can review and make any modifications, if required. 

• Quickly build or augment more substantial workflows: Business technologists who are proficient at building on the Tray platform can type their request and parameters and Merlin will automatically build a workflow with the relevant business logic. Sales and customer success teams who want to deliver a more frictionless customer experience by streamlining the pre- and post-sales processes, can use natural language instructions to create a workflow that will automatically update their project management system every time a deal closes with the relevant client information from their CRM and notify the professional services team via email. With Merlin, teams can ensure there’s no delay in project execution, which results in higher levels of customer satisfaction. 

• Obtain answers at the point-of-decision with on-demand, AI-powered automation: For non-technical employees, such as department managers, C-level executives and business users, who are not and do not need to be familiar with the Tray platform, Merlin can be used to quickly answer urgent business queries. A CMO seeking to optimize social media investments can query Merlin to identify the top lead sources for the largest “Closed Won” accounts by revenue and cross-reference the results with LinkedIn followers. To accomplish this, Merlin integrates the company’s CRM, marketing automation platform and social media management platform to deliver the result instantly. Additionally, sharing these results with the marketing leadership team via Slack or Teams can be built into the workflow based on the CMO’s natural language instruction. Merlin automatically knows when and where to search for authentications, displays all the actions it plans to carry out and obtains confirmation from the user before executing these actions.

By tapping into the power of AI via a natural language interface, Tray.io further unlocks the full potential of automation and makes building automated workflows across many use cases even more accessible to all employees, significantly increasing employee efficiency and productivity.

“Builders in our organization already rely on Tray as they rapidly develop the low-code workflows needed to improve operational processes across our business,” said Brendon Ritz, Senior Director of Marketing Ops at ThoughtSpot, the leading AI-powered analytics company. “With the addition of Merlin AI to the Tray platform, our business technologists can interface with Tray using natural language instruction to build faster and build better. Even more impactful is the ability for us to put the power of automation in the hands of our front-line employees and managers so they can instantly get answers to business queries that would have otherwise required weeks or months of development to work out the required integrations.”

Tray.io will begin deployment of Tray Merlin AI to customers this month. To learn more:

• Watch the demo 

• Register for the Tray.io Megacast: An in-depth look at Tray Merlin AI 

• Read our CTO’s AI blog 

1. Gartner, 5 Ways CIOs Can Improve Talent Management for Technologists Outside IT, 6 September 2022, CIO Research Team.

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