Seamless Integration Of Power Virtual Agent With Dynamics CRM

Introduction

 

Power Virtual Agent is another offering by Microsoft empowering businesses to implement functional Power ChatBOTS with a perspective to assist the clients and employees to query the system through a basic chat.

 

Power Virtual Agent empowers an organization to implement ChatBot functionality with no AI expertise.

 

This article will be covering the implementation of Power Virtual Agent, from the perspective of an end-user who wants to create and update a basic account in the Dynamics CRM system. 

 

The bot once developed and published can be used on multiple channels including

• Microsoft Teams
• Demo Websites
• Custom Websites
• Mobiles Apps
• Facebook
• Skype

Application required

• Sign up for an account on Power Virtual Agent
• Sign up for an account on Power Automate
• Add an instance of Dynamics CRM wherein we need to create and retrieve records from.

Steps

• Login to the PowerVirtualAgent portal and please ensure that you select the required environment of your Dynamics 365 account
  
  
  
  
• Once the environment has been selected, click on NEW to create a new BOT, or if you already have a BOT in the environment you may directly create a TOPIC
  
  
• TOPIC can be defined as a TRIGGER point or a TRIGGER statement which will be starting the specific flow for your ChatBot

• In this article, make sure you have updated the GREETINGS TOPIC to act so when a user says HI, the BOT responds with a GREETING and offers two options either to CREATE A RECORD or RETRIEVE A RECORD
  
  
  
• Now the USER needs to select either of the options as per the need and requirement and let's say CREATE RECORD is selected, so as designed the bot will ask the appropriate questions and create a record
  
  
  
• For record creation, we have implemented an ACTION in Chatbot which in turns calls Power AutoMate Flow, passes the required parameters, and proceeds further to create a record in Dynamics CRM 
  
• Logic of PowerAutomate Flow has been kept simple, that is we are passing two parameters which are taken ahead to create a record of type account in Dynamics CRM
  
  
  
• On the same concept, to retrieve a record user needs to click on the Retrieve Record button, and this will trigger an action calling a Power Automate flow to which parameter will be passed and a record will be retrieved from Dynamics CRM instance 
  
   

Screenshot for final output of a record created in Dynamics CRM through Power Virtual Agent