Overview
Welcome to Bot Development with the Microsoft Power Virtual Agent. During this entire article series, we will learn how to create a Chatbot using Microsoft Power Virtual Agent without writing a single line of code. From this series you will learn the complete end to end process from development to deployment.
I have divided this article series into five parts:
Use Case
In this article, we will develop a chat bot to manage our IT Admin Process. Let’s say in an organization, an employee wishes to enter a ticket for their hardware, software, device or VM related issues and needs quick help from their IT admins.
So, now let’s get started!
First, we need to create a new chat bot.
Step 1
From Top Header, click on Bot Panel. Click on New Bot.
Step 2
Give the name of your Chat Bot, select an environment and click on the Create button.
This will show the progress bar and this process will take some time.
Once your chat bot is created you can see the following sections.
- Menu bar
- Test a Bot
- Manage Bot steps
- Create topics
- Publish your bot
- Monitor Performance
Step 3
Click on Customizing your greeting option.
This will show the following pattern with some OOTB messages.
Now, let’s change the messages and delete some nodes and set greeting message like below. We changed the above two messages.
Save the Greetings message.
Now, let’s test the Greetings.
Enter “Hello” in the chat bot window.
This will show the updated message that we have set in the greeting section just now.
Step 4
Click on the Topic option from the Menu bar to create a new topic. This will open a topic window.
Click on New topic to create a new topic.
Give the name of the topic. In our example the name of topic is – “IT Admin Process.”
The topic should be triggered when user enters the following inputs. Check (2) from screenshot.
(Note: Here, we need to think the most used natural terms which people can use to ask a question).
Click on go to authoring canvas. (3) from the screenshot.
It will open the following Canvas chart.
Here, we can see the steps and the + icon on which we can have following actions.
- Ask a Question: When we wish to take some user input and wish to give some message to end user, use this option.
- Call an action: We can trigger the flow using this option. We will learn more about this in the third part of this article series.
- Show a message: When we wish to show only some output result, use this option.
- Go to another topic: Currently, we are creating a simple on topic application. Suppose, you need to divert from one topic from another, we will use this option.
- End the conversion: This will end the chat bot conversation.
Now, click on Ask a Question option.
Enter a question. “Please enter your email address”.
Now, in Power Virtual Agent there are lots of OOTB Entities available. We will use those OOTB entities to fetch the email address from our app.
So search for the Email and select email.
This will add Email and change the variable name as Email.
Now, in response, let’s print a simple message like – “Your email address is like this”. To do so, click on the + icon, and select “Show a message”.
Select Multiple choice options, from type select Multiple choice option. Click on the Ask a Question option.
Enter a question.
Select Multiple choice options.
Enter the following options.
Rename the variable.
This will create the following hierarchy. Now, at the end of this second part, we have created a canvas like this.
Now, in my next article, we will take some input from the end users and trigger a flow to send an email notification to the IT admin about the problem so, the ticket will be generated automatically.
Conclusion
I hope you love this article! Stay connected with me for the entire chat building process.
Happy Chat Botting!!!!!