[Virtual Agent] - Is there a way to automatically open virtual agent topics?

[jacque3]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently implementing virtual agent in our service portal and I would like to load a topic once I clicked a button.I know that we can use this URL  https://instance.service-now.com/$sn-va-web-client-app.do to load the virtual agent frame but I want to know if it's possible to add something like a parameter there that will load the topic

btw: I don't want to manually select the  topic in the menu 🙂 

Thank you

[Mark Roethof · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

You can open a topic directly thru adding to your URL:
sysparm_topic=<sys_id>

Example:
/$sn-va-web-client-app.do?sysparm_nostack=true&sysparm_stack=no&sysparm_topic=2a10809ddb593f40ceed9ce8db9619f4&sysparm_skip_load_history=true'

An example of this is in one of my Virtual Agent articles:
https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_article&sys_id=8fba850ddb6d3f84a39a0b55ca961...

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

Kind regards,
Mark

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[jacque3]

Thank you  Mark Ragavan, I have tested it and it's working in my end.

[Chris D]

Hi Mark,

I thought I was going crazy with a bug I found in New York that wasn't in Madrid but finally stumbled upon a few extra lines added to the "Configure the Service Portal chat client for Virtual Agent" documentation (at the very end of that page, pasted here, my emphasis in bold):

Note: Use the sysparm_topic parameter only to load the given topic in the Service Portal chat client or when using the IBM Watson Assistant chat integration (com.glide.cs.ibm.watson.assistant.topic plugin). This parameter doesn’t allow users to start a new conversation or transfer to a live agent. It also disables the context menu and doesn't support other third-party chat clients.

Basically, ServiceNow killed the only way (afaik) to directly start a conversation. I'm hoping there's some logic behind the scenes explaining this, but it makes no sense to me that users should be prevented from ending or changing conversations - or even starting a new one when the first is complete! - just because we specify the conversation to automatically kick off. Why wouldn't they have added a new parameter like sysparm_contextmenu=false instead of bundling additional unrelated functions into the existing parameter?? Especially when this functionality was different in Madrid.

Any thoughts on this?

[Mark Roethof]

Hmmm interesting one.

We did use the sysparm_topic before (London and Madrid), to start with a custom topic. In New York we completely rebuild this, because of the Setup Topics that were introduced.

I just started a new topic this week, with using the sysparm_topic (basically, someone scans a QR-code with mobile, and a URL is opened with sysparm_topic to go directly to that topic). I haven't done anything on this topic yet with Live Agent / Context menu, so I didn't experience it yet.

You could open a topic in the Virtual Agent community:
Virtual Agent and Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Kind regards,
Mark

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