The RZ-Biene is taking flight.

Starting today, the University of Würzburg’s Computing Center IT support has been expanded to include an AI-powered chatbot. This service aims to provide staff (effective immediately) and students (starting in early October) with quick, straightforward initial assistance for IT-related questions—particularly outside of standard office hours and without wait times.

The IT support team is already the central point of contact for inquiries regarding the university's diverse IT services. With the "RZ-Biene" (Computing Center Bee), an AI assistant is now available to provide direct support to users facing issues. Developed in cooperation with the University of Passau, the chatbot uses artificial intelligence to answer questions and help users find solutions more efficiently. Users can simply enter their inquiry or describe their problem to receive an immediate, relevant response.

Please note that as the University of Passau’s first external partner implementation, the RZ-Biene is currently in beta status; this means minor inconsistencies in response quality may occur during the initial weeks. Although the support team has conducted extensive testing over many weeks, as with any new service, some further fine-tuning may still be required. The goal of this launch is to further improve support services while simultaneously easing the workload on the existing team.

Users also have the option to provide feedback after their interaction, helping to continuously optimize the service. Plans are also in place for a medium-term feature that would allow users to create support tickets directly if the RZ-Biene’s answers do not provide a satisfactory solution. Access to the RZ-Biene is initially restricted to the university network (or via VPN from off-campus locations). Additionally, users must log in with their university credentials before submitting their first question, though a guest mode will be available in the future. You can access the RZ-Biene directly via this short link: rz-biene

Crucially, all data remains on the University of Passau campus. The AI ​​models are also operated locally in Passau. Not a single cloud service is involved.

Alternatively, you can visit the  information page for further help.