K20 Lab 3010 - Create Amazing Self-Service Experiences with Virtual Agent

[Joseph Baiocco]

This article is for questions and answers for K20 Lab 3010 - Create Amazing Self-Service Experiences with Virtual Agent. The lab is being presented multiple times throughout the live K20 event May 5 - 7, 2020. During the live event post your questions in the comments of this article and one of our lab gurus will be happy to answer it.

Don't forget your Digital Guidebook.

[NancyS1]

Switched to Firefox - working now. Thanks!

[sebastian_g_snc]

perfect 🙂

[NancyS1]

How would you filter out Lab Greeting when the user clicks on Show me everything?

[Michael Starkey]

Any luck on this one?

[sebastian_g_snc]

Removing the topic from the "show me everything" list:

on the table "sys_cs_topic" set the "Is Topic Visible" flag to false. Note: it will be re-enabled if you publish the topic anew.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  when i type a question like e.g., "can i take a leave" it gives me a result , however if i type "Can i take a leave?" it does not give result, do we know how VA is trying to check the topics or the question
 

[Johan van den H]

Is a special "role" available for personnel who are reponsible for desgning flows in Virtual Agent?

[sebastian_g_snc]

With VA these roles are installed:

Role title [name]	Description
Virtual Agent Administrator [virtual_agent_admin]	Users who can create and manage topics (bot conversations) using Virtual Agent Designer.
External App Install Admin [external_app_install_admin]	Users who can install external apps such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Workplace.

source: 
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-performance-analytics-and-reporting/page/administer/virtu...

[Shelly Laubert]

Here is a link to additional community  VA & NLU:  https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_forum&sys_id=bf5abf94db54e3c42be0a851ca961915

[NancyS1]

Is there a link for the virtual agent academy?

[robertkolic]

On "Enabling the Out of the Box Conversations" I encounter publish errors. Can this be fixed? 

Publish Errors:

com.glide.nlu.service.NLUServiceException: Unexpected http response 401. Method failed: (/assistant/api/v1/workspaces/sn_itsm_nlu_ITSM_NLU_for_VA/intents) with code: 401 - Invalid username/password combo. {"code":401, "error": "Unauthorized"} -- Provider Error: 401

[sebastian_g_snc]

It's the link Shelly published just above you 🙂 (ServiceNow Communities)

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_forum&sys_id=bf5abf94db54e3c42be0a851ca96191...

[David A_ Haught]

After I build the perfect VA on a Test instance.....What is the easiest way to transfer to a Production Instance?  Is this possible?  Thanks.

[Tim Kulhavy]

student question: do you have any config work book to help and support va implementation

[NancyS1]

Thanks!

[sebastian_g_snc]

The configuration is captured in update sets.
That is the way to move it to the test or production instance.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question: How can we automatically direct a user to a live agent immediately? To bypass virtual agent?

[gtalreja]

Student Question:How can we automatically direct a user to a live agent immediately?
To bypass virtual agent

[Marcel Clemens]

Update Sets:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-application-development/page/build/system-update-sets/con...

[Michael Starkey]

I have the same question.

[Patrick_Walmart]

Can you have multiple separate instances of the virtual agent?  For example, we want to isolate the agent that answers HR questions from the agent that answers IT questions.

[Marcelle Howard]

Hi Patrick - Can you describe your use case in more detail? This is possible, but it will help to understand the context of what you are asking to provide a helpful response of how to best accomplish this. Also, what release are you on or planning on using to deploy this?

[Patrick_Walmart]

For legal reasons, we have to separate what hourly users have access to while off the clock.  The easiest way to do this seems to be having separate virtual agents.  

[Duffy1]

Student Question: QQ: is this for HR related stuffs as well that VA can be put into out side SN platform?

[Venkat Iyer1]

Virtual Agent capabilities can be used for HR-related activities as well. There are out-of-the-box conversations built for HR, and these can be extended or configured for specific HR needs.

[Marcelle Howard]

Are you looking to have all topics available to hourly employees during their shift, and then limited topics available to them during non-working hours? Will the topics cover both IT and HR, and also include a live agent chat option?

Will the hourly employees be accessing VA in the same way they would during their shift as during non-working hours?

[Duffy1]

Student Question: Is there any user limit for VA?

[Duffy1]

Student Question: Can you have virtual agents appear only for certain topics? For example for ITSM, if a user selects a certain service, can that particular VA pop up?

[Duffy1]

Student Question: What is the current VA experience if you want to surface on your intranet as opposed to service portal?

[Angelo Surian]

What is the current VA experience if you want to surface on your intranet as opposed to service portal?

[Abhishek Jain2]

i think my question is, how would i plug SN VA to our slack or workplace as bot so that it would same as we have it in SN?

Also, is this possible to have chrome or opera plugin for VA?

[Anisa Chaudry]

According to Arnez, there is no user limit.

[Marcelle Howard]

At this time the user would need to go to the VA client for topic selection. You can choose which topics appear in the Show Me Everything menu.

By default this shows all topics, but you can hide them individually so only certain topics appear. If you are using NLU, the user's utterance would determine which topic would be invoked. 

[Marcelle Howard]

VA can live on multiple portals and provide a consistent user experience regardless of where a user decides to engage VA for assistance.

[Venkat Iyer1]

Yes, it is possible to do by putting Virtual Agent on your company intranet, and having it interface with ServiceNow. The web client can be iframed into a non-ServiceNow page.  Authentication would need to redirect the user to log into SN.  If this wasn't done the Virtual Agent would log in as a Guest user. 

[Marcelle Howard]

Please see app integration documentation: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-performance-analytics-and-reporting/page/administer/virtu...

[Venkat Iyer1]

Yes, it is possible to do by putting Virtual Agent on your company intranet, and having it interface with ServiceNow. The web client can be iframed into a non-ServiceNow page.  Authentication would need to redirect the user to log into SN.  If this wasn't done the Virtual Agent would log in as a Guest user. 

[Duffy1]

Student Question: does VA use the Default semaphores or the AMB semaphores?

[Duffy1]

Student question: Is all of this available in NY, or is it Orlando only?

[Anisa Chaudry]

Both Orlando and New York.

[Sheree1]

Topic blocks are only in Orlando. 

[Duffy1]

Student Question: Can we do the branding both mobile and web ?

[Marouane M]

NY except the Topic Blocks that are new in Orlando. 

[gordon_wu]

Can we display knowledge results immediately on the Virtual agent chat when a user types in their initial search?

For example, if a user types 'open my payslip' at the beginning of the chat, without having to create a dedicated payslips VA topic that contains the contextual search topic block, can we bring up existing knowledge articles that already contain the correct link to the Finance system for the user to see their payslip?

Thank you

[Marcelle Howard]

Yes, in the NY release you would configure the VA designer to perform a search to return KB results relevant to the user's intent. In the OOB Pay Discrepancy topic, we have 4 search nodes preconfigured. In Orlando, we have a reusable topic block 'contextual search' that can be reused across multiple topics. 

[Pravin Sale]

Hi, that is correct. The branding is applicable to both: Web and Mobile. 

[Angelo Surian]

And what would the experience be from the intranet? Would you be able to expose VA just like you do on service portal or would it have to be a link to get to VA?

[Jacob10]

I saw during the presentation that there is integration for 3rd party apps like Slack. Is there also an integration to offer VA via Zoom?

[Prakash31]

Hello from Sunny Surrey UK

[Marcelle Howard]

Welcome Prakash! Feel free to post your VA questions on this page.