Virtual agent - if the users input is "hello how are you" or "hi", how can i configure the bot to respond back with a greeting

[Krissy]

Hello,

 if the users input is "hello how are you" or "hi", how can I configure the bot to automatically respond back with a greeting, without creating a new topic. 

[Muralidharan BS]

Hi Krissy,

Setup topics are not discoverable, Greeting is a setup topic. 

Alternatively, try this, you can duplicate the greeting and make it a topic add keywords you wish to be discovered and then publish it. But the downside is it would be visible to users when they click on "show me everything" 

Thanks

[Chris Armstron1]

I think you could just remove it from the topic picker / show me everything list by just toggling off 'Included in list of topics'  in the designer view

[Tricia Cornish]

It used to be like this, but this has been enhanced for custom chat experiences and multi-language environments. 

[Tricia Cornish]

Setup topics have their own NLU model and therefore you can make your greetings discoverable. 

In the attached example (custom greeting NLU), you can see that David sees a custom greeting, answers a question, then starts the conversation with "Hi Watson" which re-initiates the greeting. 

Setup (custom_set_topic_model.png)
1) Clone your Setup Topics Model (I would recommend ensuring you are in the in Global scope)

2) Edit your utterances to include greetings, perhaps your bot name (I used Watson as an example) 

3) Train and Publish.

4) Associate it to a custom setup greeting. 

5) Publish and associate that Greeting to your custom chat experience.