K20 Lab3000 - Use Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to Improve Virtual Agent Success Rates

[Joseph Baiocco]

This article is for questions and answers for K20 Lab3000 - Use Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to Improve Virtual Agent Success Rates. 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.

Use the link and article attachments to help you complete your lab.

• Digital Guidebook

[Simona Lewis]

You have the flexibility to use both. Needs depend on the use case, but for most the prevailing opinion is to use one or the other.

[maneesh_gupta]

Yes, you can configure steps in a conversation and the bot will take the user one by one through them, where the user will be asked to confirm whether the problem was resolved or not, before suggesting the next steps.

These steps can also include displaying knowledge articles.

Hope this helps.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Is the VA conversation history saved somewhere indefinitely? Just curious if we need to clean up the chat log… if VA gets a lot of usage.

[Simona Lewis]

It depends on what KBs are present in the instance, so the screenshots don't always align. So long as you got return KB, it indicates your VA flow is working well!! Keep going

[Shelly Laubert]

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

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Could you explain KB search from VA ..and flexibility to search from external sources ?

[Simona Lewis]

There are multiple NLUs with multiple intents each. When you create VA chat, you assign the NLU + the intent. The platform then handles the switching in the background. 

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  What is the piece that was used within the workflow to create an incident within the VA vs directing to the service portal to open an incident?

[Simona Lewis]

OOTB, there are many VA chats topics, each with assigned NLU. So long as you use OOTB topics, you don't have to do anything, just turn the topic on or off. If you create new chat, you have to use an NLU, but you can create one very quickly by copying an intent from existing NLU. 

[Simona Lewis]

Obscuring the bot's nature is not recommended, as it detracts from user experience. Testing shows that it is best to be upfront and let users know it is about. However the bot can be conversational, by using natural language and colloquialisms. 

[Shelly Laubert]

Virtual Agent course on the developer site:  https://developer.servicenow.com/dev.do#!/learn/courses/orlando#virtual-agent

[maneesh_gupta]

Its the 'action' utility , using the action type of create a record. 

You can then provide what tables and fields.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  how do we bring in unified experience between portal search and VA search for a topic?

[Simona Lewis]

Incident forms are a very common use case. Have a look at the OOTB ITSM VA chats, which provide guide guide, but you can add extra validations to steps to them.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Virtual Agent System settings are saved in what table (metadata)?

[Joseph Baiocco]

There's also Virtual Agent training in the developer portal.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  One of the thing came up recently is, when VA does the hot transfer to IT Agent, it does a small beep sound. Can we have that sound customize? or configure?

[Ricardo Medina1]

Hi I am not able to start a new conversation, how I do that?

Is Lab 5 step 7

[Elizabeth Turne]

Are there any other labs or sessions on virtual agent to look out for? 

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Can the VA search knowledge outside of platform, then use that to take actions in Platform? Is there any blog or some guidance available?

[Simona Lewis]

Lab3010 is another VA lab you might enjoy. https://developer.servicenow.com/connect.do#!/event/knowledge2020/LAB3010

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Does Watson come free or should I discuss access with my SN rep?

[Simona Lewis]

Top right if the chat windows there is a cross, if you click on it it closes the conversation. You can also type "bye" into the chat.

[Simona Lewis]

The experience is unified via the search function, as both rely on the same platform search capability. Anything which is available on the platform, is available to the chat. The chat is simply a more "conversational" guide which helps you navigate the platform without needing to navigate multiple screens.

[maneesh_gupta]

You will have to obtain access to Waston directly and not something you can buy via SN. SN only provides the ability to integrate with Watson, out of the box but you will still need to subscribe to Watson, separately.

[dangrady510]

It appears differently, but Yes the virtual agent will present the user with a list of all the things it can help the user with.

[Ben Barker]

Yes, that is supported. Bringing data intro the platform and accessing external sources real time is a core use case.

See below for integrating external knowledge and remote tables - dependent on your sources

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-servicenow-platform/page/product/knowledge-management/con...

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/newyork-release-notes/page/release-notes/now-platform-capabilitie...

Once you have the information, you can author the required logic within VA designer.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  When the catalog items are set up, do colors need to be manually coded by product so that the NLU recognizes the color and other descriptors?

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question: Does the NLU/VA have the ability to search meta data of catalog items?

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  What languages are currently supported with NLU/VA??

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Will VA support context-awareness anytime soon? NLU prediction should really help in topic discovery, but there are still users who prefers to look at a list, or even the surfacing VA in an external web site - we may need to limit available topics based on the page you are in or site the VA is launched?

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  How does it account for typos?

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  How does the VA Designer account for release upgrades? Are there many manual skips? If a Table is updated in other areas, does that impact the functionality of the VA?

[gtalreja]

As of now only English, may get more languages added in future versions.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Is there a report to see failed utterance to improve and retrain the intent?

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Can you use VA for HR only or does it have to be used in conjunction with IT?

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Will there be a way to group topics under categories under 'Show Me Everything'?

[gtalreja]

if customisation is done in the table make sure to do the mapping again in the flow with the correct fields/column again.

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Does the VA only show catalog items dependent upon if the user is allowed to order it, does it validate entitlement scripts on behalf of the caller?

[gtalreja]

if you are aware about the common typos, add it in the vocabulary, but this is in roadmap for future upgrades.

[NaAs]

entitlement scripts on behalf of the caller and if it is available to order via VA.
not sure how you defined 'user is allowed to order it'

[NaAs]

it is on the roadmap

[gtalreja]

Yes you do have VA capability with HR too, and some other dedicated portals like CSM etc.

[NaAs]

yes, can be used to a specific app only or more the same time

[NaAs]

the fallback is the topic that runs whenever the utterance fails. there is no OOTB report but you can build your own.

[davo]

@Nabil Asbi the user being not the VA

[NaAs]

English

[jaalstead]

any best practices for naming different items being added to the canvas?

[Shelly Laubert]

Student question:  Can you clone topics?

[Steve Kelly]

Any advice on best practices confidence threshold/phrases associated with topics? We have implemented VA with NLU, but we are seeing the wrong topic being picked on numerous occasions, leading to negative user feedback. We are on New York, upgrading to Orlando soon. Not sure if there have been any improvements in the NLU between versions. Thanks!