Ask EM is available now in Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai, starting with Release Update 4. Whether you're a seasoned DBA or new to the platform, it's designed to make your day-to-day operations faster, more intuitive, and measurably smarter.
Example prompts: "How is the performance of my database?" or "How do I troubleshoot buffer busy wait?" — Ask EM handles both with the same natural-language interface.
Managing mission-critical databases and applications across hybrid environments has always demanded deep expertise and fast reflexes. Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) has long been the backbone for those operations. Now, with the introduction of "Ask EM" in EM 24ai, that backbone just got a whole lot smarter.
Ask EM is a conversational chatbot powered by the Cohere Large Language Model (LLM) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It lets you interact with your operational environment—and its documentation—using natural language, no SQL or navigation required.
What can Ask EM do?
Ask EM operates across two core domains, available as tabs in the chatbot interface:
Telemetry
Query the live health of your monitored targets, diagnose performance issues, and run root cause analyses—all in plain English. Results are rendered as interactive widgets you can pin to build dashboards.
Documentation
Ask any EM documentation question and receive a contextually rich answer using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), complete with clickable links back to the source docs.
How it works under the hood:
When Ask EM launches from your on-premises EM 24ai console, it initializes a chatbot session and opens a secure WebSocket connection directly from the browser to Oracle's Ops Insights service in OCI. Critically, only the text of your question is transmitted—no EM data ever leaves your environment.
Architecture flow
The GenAI “Ask EM” feature is included in EM 24ai Release Update 4 (RU4). After applying EM 24.1 RU04 or a later patch, the “Ask EM” chatbot icon becomes available in the EM 24ai console, as shown below.
$OMS_HOME/OPatch/opatch lsinventory | grep -i "24.1"
/u01/app/oracle/oemp/middleware/oms_home/OPatch/opatch lsinventory|grep -i "24.1"
For telemetry questions, a similarity search runs against Oracle Database 23ai to surface the most relevant operational data. That data is passed to the Cohere LLM, which augments it into a tailored response and returns interactive widgets to the EM console.
For documentation questions, all public EM docs are pre-ingested into Oracle Database 23ai. RAG retrieval finds the most relevant passages and the GenAI Agent composes a natural-language answer with source links for deeper reading.
No firewall changes are needed on-premises. If your browser can reach the internet, Ask EM can connect to Oracle Cloud.
What you need to get started
Getting Started with Ask EM
Before you start exploring the power of Ask EM, a few prerequisites need to be in place to ensure a smooth setup and experience.
First, you’ll need an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) account. You can either sign up for a new account or use an existing one. Make sure your OCI tenancy is subscribed to the Generative AI service in the US Ashburn region (us-chicago-1), as Ask EM currently relies on this region. Support for additional regions will be introduced in future updates.
Next, ensure you have an active subscription to OCI Ops Insights. At least one resource—such as a host or database—must be enabled within Ops Insights. This service, part of Oracle’s Observability and Management suite, plays a key role in powering Ask EM’s intelligent chatbot interactions.
You’ll also need to configure the appropriate Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies within your OCI tenancy. Add the following policies to grant the necessary permissions:
allow group <em-genai-user> to manage opsi-genai-em-session in tenancy
allow group <em-genai-user> to manage opsi-genai-em-docs-session in tenancy
Once these prerequisites are met, Ask EM requires a one-time initial setup. The first time you access the feature, the Super Administrator will be prompted to provide OCI credential details to establish the connection.
Powered by Generative AI
Ask EM brings the power of Generative AI directly into Oracle Enterprise Manager by leveraging the Cohere Large Language Model (LLM) running on OCI. This enables intelligent, context-aware interactions to help you manage and monitor your enterprise environment more efficiently.
To use Ask EM, ensure that the browser accessing EM 24ai has internet connectivity to communicate with OCI services. Importantly, the OMS host itself does not require internet access—simplifying deployment in more restricted environments.
Setting it up: three steps:
Once the patch is applied, clicking the Ask EM icon in the EM console launches a guided configuration wizard:
1. Review requirements
Confirm your OCI account, Ops Insights subscription, and IAM policies are all in place.
2. Configure credentials and region
Create or select an OCI named credential, choose your GenAI-supported region, and run a test connection. Optionally enable audit logging to track all Ask EM activity.
3. Set access controls (optional)
Super administrators have access by default. Extend access to additional admins by assigning them the EM_ASKEM_ADMIN role.
The architecture of Ask EM is designed to deliver powerful Generative AI capabilities while maintaining the security and integrity of your enterprise environment. The following diagram illustrates how Ask EM integrates Oracle Enterprise Manager with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services in a seamless and secure manner.
Breaking Down the Architecture
Let’s walk through what’s happening behind the scenes:
1. User Interaction (Enterprise Manager Console):
The journey begins in the EM 24ai console, where the user interacts with the Ask EM chatbot. Queries such as system health checks or performance insights are entered directly into the interface.
2. Secure Communication over the Internet:
The request is transmitted securely over HTTPS via the public internet. Importantly:
The communication originates from the user’s browser, not the OMS host
This design eliminates the need for outbound internet access from the Enterprise Manager infrastructure
3. OCI Ops Insights as the Gateway:
Once the request reaches OCI, it is handled by the Ops Insights Cloud Service, which acts as the orchestration layer. It:
Manages GenAI session requests
Connects enterprise telemetry data with AI processing
Ensures secure and policy-controlled access
4. Generative AI Processing (LLM + Agent)
The request is then processed within OCI’s Generative AI stack:
The GenAI Agent interprets the user’s query
The Cohere LLM generates intelligent, context-aware responses
Relevant enterprise context is fetched when needed
5. Data Sources and Context Enrichment
To provide meaningful insights, the system may leverage:
Oracle 23ai Database for structured data
Documentation and widget metadata for contextual assistance
This ensures responses are not just generic—but tailored to the Enterprise Manager environment.
6. Response Returned to User
Finally, the generated response flows back through the same secure channel and is displayed in the Ask EM chatbot interface—typically within seconds.
How “Ask EM” Works: Behind the Scenes
When Ask EM is launched from the on-premises EM 24ai console, a chatbot session is immediately initialized. At this point, a secure WebSocket connection is established directly from the user’s browser to Oracle’s Ops Insights service running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
This session is assigned a unique identifier, which is used for all subsequent communication throughout the interaction. This ensures a continuous, secure, and seamless conversational experience between the EM console and OCI services.
Secure, Browser-Based Connectivity:
The connection is established over the public internet, but importantly:
No changes are required to on-premises firewall configurations
No additional ports need to be opened
EM 24ai does not need to operate in any special “online mode”
As long as the user’s browser has internet access, Ask EM can securely connect to OCI services.
A key security principle is maintained throughout the process:
Only the user’s actual question (for example, “How is the performance of my database?”) is transmitted to OCI. No additional EM telemetry or sensitive enterprise data is sent outside your environment.
What Happens in Oracle Cloud
Once a question reaches OCI, Ask EM follows two primary processing workflows depending on the nature of the query:
1. Telemetry-Based Insights Workflow
For operational and performance-related queries, Ask EM leverages enterprise telemetry data through the following steps:
A similarity search is performed using Oracle Database 23ai to identify the most relevant operational data
The selected data is passed to the Generative AI service and LLM for augmentation and contextual reasoning
The LLM enriches the response with domain-specific intelligence tailored to the user’s query
The GenAI service returns contextual widgets back to Enterprise Manager
Within the EM interface:
Clicking the Findings button opens a dedicated side panel
Relevant widgets are rendered along with smart filters
Users can:
Interact with widgets dynamically
Modify filter values in real time
Pin important widgets for later reference
As users continue asking follow-up questions, new relevant widgets are generated while pinned widgets remain persistent. Over time, these pinned insights can be used to create customized dashboards—built directly from conversational exploration.
2. Documentation Intelligence Workflow
Ask EM also provides powerful AI-driven documentation assistance.
All public Oracle Enterprise Manager documentation is ingested and indexed in Oracle Database 23ai. When a user asks a documentation-related question—such as:
“How do I troubleshoot buffer busy waits?”
the system uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to:
Search across relevant documentation sources
Retrieve the most contextually accurate content
Generate a natural-language, easy-to-understand response
The chatbot also provides:
Clickable reference links
Direct navigation to official documentation in a new browser tab
Support for follow-up questions for deeper exploration
This ensures users get not just answers, but verifiable and traceable guidance from official sources.
Key Takeaways:
- Secure WebSocket connection is established directly from the browser to OCI
- No inbound or outbound changes are required on the EM infrastructure
- Only user queries are transmitted—no additional EM data is shared
- Two core workflows power Ask EM:
- Telemetry insights via GenAI + Ops Insights + 23ai
- Documentation Q&A via RAG over indexed EM docs
- Interactive widgets and dashboards transform insights into actionable monitoring views
Ask EM Setup Wizard:
Step 1: Review the required OCI account, Ops Insights subscription, and IAM policies requirements.
Step 2: Create a new OCI named credential or select an existing OCI credential. If you are unsure where to locate these values, helpful links are provided for each field to guide you through the process. Choose your GenAI-supported region, then click Test Connection and Save to verify. Optionally, enable Audit to track all “Ask EM” activities.
Step 3 (Optional): By default, super administrators have access to use “Ask EM”. To extend access to additional administrators, simply click on ‘Select Users’. The chosen administrators will be assigned the ‘EM_ASKEM_ADMIN’ role, allowing them to access “Ask EM”.
Finalizing the “Ask EM” Setup
Once you have completed the three key steps—subscribing to Oracle Cloud and OCI Ops Insights, configuring credentials and selecting the appropriate region, and setting up the required access control—your Ask EM interface is fully ready for use.
At this stage, Ask EM is successfully integrated into your Oracle Enterprise Manager environment, enabling a seamless GenAI-powered experience.
The benefits in practice:
- Faster issue resolution—diagnose problems through conversation instead of navigating menus
- Reduced reliance on support teams for common operational and documentation queries
- Data-driven decisions backed by live telemetry surfaced as interactive, pinnable widgets
- Full auditability with built-in activity logs for every Ask EM interaction
- Privacy-first design—only your typed question is ever sent to Oracle Cloud
