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.

[arneznisperos]

Orlando enhancement: Topic Blocks


Microsoft Luis NLU Integration


Virtual Agent Notifications


Multi Branding Support


Virtual Agent Interaction Records


Multilink


Topic Designer

Table View


Chat Attachments


IBM Watson Assistant Integration V2


Understanding Topic Published Status


Virtual Agent SSO 3rd party integration


Enhanced NLU Model Testing

[Zayd Patel1]

To accurately address the question, we would need additional context on your use case to provide a helpful response. However, ServiceNow Docs provides additional guidance surrounding performance metrics of Asynchronous Message Bus (AMB). 

Thanks!

[Marcelle Howard]

Adding:

NLU dashboard

Prechat / Postchat capabilities for live agent connection

[Marouane M]

Hi Jacob. 

Zoom is not a general messaging software like MS Teams or Skype. All communications go through dedicated meeting rooms. 

ServiceNow provides an integration with Zoom using IntegrationHub to manage zoom sessions. This means you can use this to orchestrate the creation of a zoom session via Virtual Agent to maybe start a session between the requestor and the agent. 

[Prakash31]

Could you Google NLU for VA?

[Marcelle Howard]

Google would be a custom integration at this time. OOB we support MS Luis (Orlando+) and IBM Watson (NY+).

[Pravin Sale]

Hello, please go to the customer success center at https://www.servicenow.com/success and search for Virtual Agent. You would find the ppt document describing implementation readiness. You would also find more information in Now Learning for a certification on Virtual Agent. Let us know if there are additional questions. 

[Marouane M]

Here is the link of the integration : https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/5192d6d90b4233006237818393673a...

[Marouane M]

Hello from South of London UK 🙂

[Duffy1]

Student question: why do we use the 'reusable topic block'

[Pravin Sale]

The Mobile app branding is available in Orlando release. This is specific to Mobile App branding. Virtual Agent branding is also available but it is separate configuration from Mobile app branding. in short, branding is available for both Virtual Agent as well as Mobile Apps. 

[Marcelle Howard]

As @Venkat Iyer mentioned the user would need to authenticate into ServiceNow if using VA from the corporate intranet. VA can be exposed with the same look and feel on the intranet as on the service portal.

[Duffy1]

Student question: Can you use Google NLU for VA?

[Marcelle Howard]

Reusable topic blocks are designed to be blocks of 'subflows' contained within the larger VA flow. Prior to Orlando, you would have to create subflows - search KB, connect to live agent, etc - for each VA topic. Reusable topic blocks allow you to now create this once and plug it into multiple VA topics.

[Duffy1]

Student Question: Is the Virtual Agent Multi-Language for NLP?

[Duffy1]

Student question: Where can we find resources after this Lab to use Virtual Agent with other integrations, like Teams?

[Joseph Baiocco]

Currently, no.

[Marcelle Howard]

Product docs or the VA community forum are both great places to find information. https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-performance-analytics-and-reporting/page/administer/virtu...

[gordon_wu]

I suppose the use case here is when I already have a knowledge base with 100+ articles that are helpful in answering employees' questions and encouraging self service. It would be a big task (and some duplication of effort) to try and create VA topics that cover all these knowledge articles. When implementing virtual agent, how can a 'catch all' be built in so that if a relevant VA topic hasn't yet been created for the user's question, we display knowledge results instead. We can't expect the user to find and select a topic called 'Search knowledge'.

Perhaps this can be an update to the Fallback topic? But in that case is there a way to pass the user's initial query through to the fallback topic when that is triggered?

Sorry I hope the question makes sense.

[Marcelle Howard]

We currently only support English for NLU. We plan to release additional languages in the future. For multi-language support using NLU, we suggest the MS Luis integration or IBM Watson integration. Otherwise you can use VA Keyword with in-platform translations. https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-performance-analytics-and-reporting/page/administer/virtu...

[Sheree1]

Student question: There are 3 different options for NLU what is the difference between those?

[Sheree1]

For NLU you can use - our NLU, IBM Watson, or MS Luis. If you need NLU to support multi-language today, MS Luis or IBM Watson are recommended. Our NLU supports our OOB topics with delivered intents, utterances, and entities.

[Duffy1]

Student Question: When the request is submitted from the virtual agent, how are the variables of the request auto-populated. After the rim is created.

[Donna11]

Can the topics on VA Designer be viewed as a list to allow for bulk publishing/activation?

[Duffy1]

Student Question: is there a course available in ServiceNow that provides some basic idea on natural language related to the ITSM space

[Venkat Iyer1]

There is this link that provides additional information on this topic, as well as a podcast discussing Virtual Agent/ Natural Language Processing in ITSM: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-it-service-management/page/product/itsm-virtual-agent/con...

[Duffy1]

Student Question:  will the chat of the virtual agent is posted as public comments or inactivity of the ticket?

[Venkat Iyer1]

There is also a Virtual Agent certification course here: https://www.servicenow.com/services/training-and-certification/virtual-agent.html

[Marcelle Howard]

Yes this makes sense and thanks for providing additional context. No need to create VA topics to cover 100+ KB articles. You are correct, the Fallback setup topic is designed for this purpose. Fallback will trigger automatically if an utterance is not recognized.

Let's say the user enters in an utterance that is not supported by an active VA topic, VA would then default to the Fallback setup topic. You can configure the Fallback setup topic to include a keyword search to return relevant articles to direct the user to helpful content.

I've seen customers use cheeky responses such as "I am still learning" or "you've outsmarted me" in the Fallback topic configuration to provide a positive response given the user's topic is not supported.

Topic blocks can be used in any of the setup topics as they utilize VA designer. Keep in mind they are designed to automatically invoke at certain points in the conversation.

[Marouane M]

There a few free selfpaced courses on the Now Learning  like this one : 

Virtual Agent Fundamentals, Implementation and Natural Language Understanding : https://nowlearning.service-now.com/lxp?id=overview&sys_id=9de2ecd31babc4506d6c7550cd4bcbeb&type=cou...

[Marcelle Howard]

The user would enter in components such as - item requested, opened for, delivery - these variables are captured and fed into the RITM. VA would create the request using the information entered.

[Marcelle Howard]

This is captured in the Interaction records.

[Lauren Palmer]

Where do you start troubleshooting installing the Virtual Agent with a third-party messaging app integration? I am trying to install using the Teams option on Collaborations > Messaging App Integrations and I am getting a "installation failed" webpage as soon as I log into Teams and give permissions. Is the dev instance limited to not using this integration? The "installation failed" webpage doesn't provide any additional details, and the O365 admin side doesn't show that Virtual Agent has attempted to be installed.

[Marcelle Howard]

Best course of action is to log a support request through HI to make sure the root cause of the issue is addressed.

[Duffy1]

Student question: what subscription is the virtual agent a part of?
how long are our lab instance available for?

[Marcelle Howard]

Generally, the Pro and Ent SKUs have VA entitlements. You may want to validate this with your account representative as there may be exceptions with custom SKUs. 

Lab instances are available 30 min after the lab ends.

[Angelo Surian]

TY for the info. If I have SSO integrated with my SNow instance, would user still be prompted to login?

[Lauren Palmer]

Thanks Marcelle, another question - I am trying to go through our lab from today on a dev instance and all of the out of the box conversations don't seem to be available in my dev instance. Example - "Open IT Ticket" is missing. How do I get this in my instance so I can demo it to my teammates? 

[Marcelle Howard]

You'll want to install these plugins for domain-specific topics: 

CSM: com.sn_csm.virtualagent

ITSM: com.snc.itsm.virtualagent

HRSD: com.sn_hr_virtual_agent

Keep in mind the NLU models have their own respective plugins for each of the above group of VA topics.

Open IT Ticket is part of the ITSM offering OOB.

[Joseph Baiocco]

FYI, here are the plugins we used for the lab. You can see that there is some overlap with the list Marcelle provided. We weren't concerned with CSM, but we did want to include Watson and MS Luis. BTW, ignore the O:D when searching for plugins. That just means they're for Orlando and have demo data.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Joseph Baiocco]

Here are the plugins we used for the lab. There is some overlap with Marcelle's list, so depending on your needs you may want to combine her list with specific plugins from mine.

BTW, when searching for the plugins, ignore the O:D, which simply means Orlando, demo data in my configuration.

Hope this helps.

[Juan Federico M]

Hi! I need some hlep to finish K20 LAB3010 it on 99% 

I had made a CS0042384

[Lynda1]

Where is this feedback timing configured?