Brief Overview

Smart Highlights automatically surfaces relevant data from your enterprise systems inline, right where your team is already working. No tab switching. No searching.

The moment a user lands on a page, Smart Highlights scans the content, identifies key entities (people, companies, tickets, accounts), and pulls live data from connected enterprise systems directly into the browser.

The result is a subtle blue highlight that, on hover, reveals a rich data card instantly, because all the retrieval happened in the background before the user even moved their mouse.

How It Works

Smart Highlights runs entirely in the background. There's nothing to click, nothing to set up as an end user, and no extra logins required. It uses the sessions you're already logged into, so by the time you hover over a highlight, the data is already there waiting for you.

How to use Smart Highlights

1. Open any supported application (for example, your Gmail inbox or Outlook)
2. Look for blue highlighted text on the page. These are your highlights, and each one has live data behind it
3. Hover over a highlight to view the data card
4. Use the action buttons inside the card if you need to dig deeper, for example View org chart or Open in Salesforce (optional)

First-time login

If Smart Highlights detects an entity but you aren't logged into that source system yet, a login prompt will appear inside the card instead of the data.

Here's what the flow looks like:

1. A login prompt appears inside the card
2. Click Log in. An SSO popup opens in the background while the card shows a loading state
3. Authentication completes automatically. The popup closes and the card loads instantly with live data

From that point on, as long as your session is active, you won't see this prompt again for that system.

How Smart Highlights are detected

Here's what happens from the moment you open a page to the moment a highlight appears:

1. Page scan: Smart Highlights automatically reads the visible text content on your screen as soon as you land on a page
2. Entity detection: An AI model identifies key business entities like names, company names, ticket numbers, and invoice numbers
3. Validation check: Results are filtered based on how certain the AI is about the match
   1. Low-confidence matches, like a name that could refer to multiple people or a number that doesn't match a known format, are dropped silently before anything is shown to you
4. Data fetch: Smart Highlights reaches out to the relevant connected system in the background, using your existing session
5. Highlight: If the system returns data, the verified entities are wrapped in a blue highlight

Highlight Types Breakdown

Smart Highlights surfaces different types of data depending on the entity detected and the system it comes from. Here's what each highlight type shows:

Employee highlight (SuccessFactors)

WalkMe employee names are identified highlighted in blue. Hovering over a name opens an information card containing:

• Professional details: Displays the employee's role, manager, department, and location
• Reporting structure: Select the manager's name within the card to view that manager's professional details
• Actions:
  • View org chart: Opens the employee's reporting structure in SuccessFactors
  • View profile: Directs you to the employee's internal professional profile

Account highlight (Salesforce)

Customer account names are identified and highlighted in blue. Hovering over an account provides an account summary card with:

• Account context: ARR, renewal date, and number of open opportunities
• Internal team: The Account Manager and CSM assigned to the account
• Actions: Open in Salesforce
  • Opens the detailed account profile directly in Salesforce for further management
• Health score warning: If a customer's health score is below 50, a yellow warning banner appears at the top of the card. This allows you to immediately identify at-risk accounts that may require proactive outreach or special attention

Opportunity highlight (Salesforce)

Opportunity names are highlighted in blue. Hovering over a customer opens a card with:

• Deal details: Amount, close date, stage, and probability
• Internal team: The Account Manager and CSM assigned to the opportunity
• Actions: Open in Salesforce

Contact highlight (Salesforce)

Contact names are highlighted in blue. Hovering over a name opens a card with:

• Identity: Role, account name, and phone number

• Actions: Open in Salesforce

Ticket highlight (ServiceNow / Jira)

Jira tickets

Jira ticket numbers are highlighted in blue. Hovering over the ticket number opens a card with:

• Ticket summary: Title and current status

• Ownership: Assignee and support bucket

• Dates: Created date and close date

• Actions: Open in Jira

ServiceNow tickets

ServiceNow ticket numbers are highlighted in blue. Hovering opens a card with:

• Ticket summary: Title and current state

• Priority and impact: Urgency level and business impact

• Ownership: Assigned agent

• Dates: SLA due date and last updated

• Actions: Open in ServiceNow

Contract highlight (SAP Ariba)

Contract references are highlighted in blue. Hovering opens a card with:

• Contract details: Status and total value

• Dates: Start date and expiry date

• Owner: The person responsible for the contract

• Actions: Open in Ariba

Purchase requisition highlight (SAP Ariba)

Purchase requisition numbers are highlighted in blue. Hovering opens a card with:

• Requisition details: Status and total amount

• Dates: Needed by date

• Requester: The person who submitted the requisition

• Supplier: The vendor associated with the request

• Actions: Open in Ariba

Setup

Smart Highlights are configured by admins in the WalkMe Console. This includes connecting source systems, selecting which entities to surface, and managing which applications highlights appear on.

If you're an admin looking to enable or configure Smart Highlights for your organization, see the full setup guide here:

Smart Highlights Setup in Console

Smart Highlights Analytics

To track how users are engaging with Smart Highlights across your systems, including exposure rates, content views, and interactions by highlight type, see the AI Adoption Dashboard:

AI Dashboards

Technical Notes

Prerequisites

• Chromium-based browser: Google Chrome or any chromium-based browser

  • Firefox and Safari are not supported

• Company-distributed extension: Required for web applications. Not supported on “Store-based” extension

• WalkMe Menu: WalkMe Menu is required for highlights to work on desktop apps (for example, Outlook Classic)

  • Create a desktop system (if the customer doesn't already have one)

  • Install the latest desktop menu version (≥ 4.3.0)

• SSO Login: Smart Highlights uses the user's existing SSO session

• Third party cookies enabled: Must be enabled for the hidden iFrame mechanism to work

  • If your organization's security policy blocks third-party iFrames, Smart Highlights will not work

• The Action Bar widget must be present and enabled on the system for Smart Highlights to load

How Smart Highlights retrieves data

Smart Highlights uses hidden iFrames to fetch data from connected systems. When the feature loads, it creates invisible iFrames pointed at each provider's domain. These authenticate automatically using the user's existing SSO session and communicate with the main page via the browser's native postMessage API. Data flows directly from the source system to the user's browser and never touches WalkMe servers.

⚠️ If your organization's security policy blocks third-party iFrames or cookies, Smart Highlights will not function.

Supported systems

• Source applications (where data is pulled from):

• Display applications (where highlights appear):