Now Assist in Virtual Agent: How to automatically trigger Multi-Turn Conversational Catalog Request

[Mohith A]

Hi Community,

We are implementing Now Assist in Virtual Agent (Zurich) to handle catalog item submissions conversationally.

We want to utilize the native Now Assist Conversational Catalog Request (Multi-Turn Catalog Ordering) capability out-of-the-box so that users can request catalog items entirely through conversation without having to build a custom Autonomous AI Agent with custom scripts.

However, we are running into an issue with the routing/selection behavior, and we are looking for guidance, best practices, or reference documentation.

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The Problem / Current Behavior:

When a user opens Virtual Agent and enters an utterance with clear intent to request a catalog item (e.g., "I want to request data center equipment"😞

1. Instead of immediately launching into the catalog item questions, Now Assist routes to Search Q&A:

   "Let me look up information related to requesting data center equipment for you."

2. It generates a long GenAI summary of the catalog item's description (under View AI Steps).
3. At the end of the message, it places a citation/topic link: 💬 Data center Equipment request.
4. The conversation halts and waits for the user to manually click the link. Only after clicking does the catalog workflow start.

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Desired Behavior:

• Zero-click direct transition: When a user enters "I want to request [item name]" and there is a high-confidence single catalog item match, Now Assist should automatically bypass the synthesized Q&A response.
• It should immediately enter that catalog item's conversational flow and start asking the mandatory variables (turn-by-turn slot-filling) directly in the chat, for example:

  "Sure, let's get that data center equipment request submitted for you. Which Request Type would you like? [Option A] [Option B]..."

• We want to achieve this using native Now Assist Conversational Catalog Request, without having to create custom topic flows or custom Autonomous AI Agents.

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What We Have Checked So Far:

1. The catalog item exists in sc_cat_item.
2. "Turn off Now Assist conversation for this item" is unchecked.
3. The catalog item has standard variables (Choice, Single Line Text, Reference).

Any help, screenshots of configuration, or reference links would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
#NowAssist #AISearch #ConversationalInterface