HR/IT Virtual Agent Separation

[Jamie McGee]

We have an issue where conversations started (but not ended) on the ITSM virtual agent, continue in the on the HR virtual agent. So for example:

1) The user starts a new conversation on the ITSM virtual agent.
2) The user closes the browser window with the in-flight ITSM conversation still active.
3) Later, the user opens the HR Portal and looks to start a conversation with the HR virtual agent, however, instead of being presented with the HR virtual agent topics, the user is presented with the previous conversation from the IT virtual agent.
4) If the user ends the IT related conversation in the HR virtual agent, then they try to start a new HR related conversation they will find that the HR topics are not avaialable, only the IT topics are available. The only way to view the HR topics is to close the browser and reopen the HR portal/virtual agent.

Obviously this is confusing because from the end user perspective the IT and HR virtual agents should be separate entities. Is there a way that we can prevent this happening i.e. prevent non-ended ITSM conversations from appearing in the HR virtual agent and vice versa?

[michaelj_sherid]

Hi @Jamie McGee There is not a simple way to do this other than parsing the URL to understand where the employee is (portal-wise). Be that as it may, you would have to end the conversation so that it can be started new and only the relevant conversations are available based on what portal is accessed. This also, is not a recommended approach. We encourage customers to unify the portal to achieve the same experience agnostic to one application. I would encourage you to create an Idea by using the Idea Portal link within the Community header so others with the same use case can vote for this as a product enhancement for VA.

Regards,

Mike

[Mark Roethof]

Hi there,

You could think of applying skip_load_history=true. This would a part of your findings.

Obviously you need to choose this on purpose, as it also has effects which not all customers are after.

- 2022-05-23 Skip previous message history in Virtual Agent client

If my answer helped you in any way, please then mark it as helpful.

Kind regards,
Mark
2020-2022 ServiceNow Community MVP
2020-2022 ServiceNow Developer MVP

---

LinkedIn
Community article, blog, video list

[Jamie McGee]

Thanks for the suggestion.  skip_load_history=true does have the desired result in terms of starting a new chat, however it hides the chat history, which is not desirable in the eyes of our business stake holders.  I've tried to apply some logic to the setting of the skip_load_history.  It is possible to do a glide lookup on the sys_cs_conversation table to see if the user has an active conversation, this means that the user will see their conversation history if there isnt a current active conversation.