Issue Auto Resolution use one NLU module and VA use another NLU module

[Lynda1]

Not sure which forum to post this question. I am researching and attempting to use the Issue Auto Resolution for Virtual Agent. In the documentation, it says ITSM Virtual Agent intents are the only Intents that can be used with a list of a small portion available to use for this. When we setup the Virtual Agent, we created our own module and copied all the Intents from ITSM Virtual Agent into our Module. I remember reading somewhere it is suggested to use one module for your Virtual Agent. That brings up the question.

I plan on creating Topics that are specific to the Issue Auto Resolution since we do not want the users to get to live chat. This way I can attach those Topics to the Intents in ITSM Virtual Agent module. If I leave these Included in Topic Discovery and Included in list of Topics off, I believe the NLU will ignore those Topics and never find them for the users using our Virtual Agent. I am guessing the Issue Auto Resolution will recognize the Topics since they will be mapped in the Configuration.

Just wanted to get some thoughts on this before I get too deep into building this out.

[Chris D]

I'm working off a basic understanding of IAR and am planning to spend more time, possibly implementing, it over the next few months so thanks for posting this... interesting to read from you that you have to use only intents from the ITSM Virtual Agent model - that certainly seems oddly limiting...

If that is the case though, I would say you don't have to worry too much about using multiple NLU models in your VA implementation. Agreed it's not ideal (in particular, it's difficult - maybe impossible? - to test from NLU Workbench), but it should be doable, and you can always test intents in VA Designer.

If you do want to hide the topics from end users accessing directly from VA, then, after you publish the topic, go into sys_cs_topic and set the topic's "Is Topic Visible" and "Is Topic Discoverable" to false. The former controls the visibility on "Show Me Everything" and the latter controls whether the topic will be suggested via NLU. I expect that IAR should still work with those two settings though I can't confirm that personally.

Hope that helps.

Fwiw, I would reconsider - if possible - your desire to create IAR-only topics and intents. If you do this, I think you are only doing yourself and users a disservice by not maximizing your use of resources. In other words, if you create a topic and it has the chance to help somebody before they even try to create an Incident, why not make it available? May just require some slightly creative design to address your desired no-live chat limitation, i.e. topic block or topic switching...

[Lynda1]

Figuring out this configuration, I discovered that the topics need to be "Topic is visible". I have a lot more figuring out to do and with the limitation on Intents, this might not be do-able for us. Still researching.

Here is the blurb on the Intents from this page.

Using Issue Auto Resolution for Virtual Agent (servicenow.com)

About Intent-to-Topic mapping

Users with the virtual_agent_admin or admin role can choose a subset of pre-built topics to be available for Issue Auto Resolution. The following ITSM Virtual Agent intents are supported by default and map to a pre-built Virtual Agent topic:

• Printer Issues
• VPN Connectivity
• Hardware Issues
• Reset Password
• RSA Token
• Email Issues
• Local Admin Access
• Troubleshoot Slow Computer
• Repository Access
• Software Installation
• Collaboration Software Issues

These intents are currently the only supported intents for Issue Auto Resolution. The default intents and matched topics are listed in the Auto-Resolution Intent Topic Maps tab.

[Chris D]

Oh wow that seems quite limiting... 😞

BUT I just looked on that page and I see that actually there is the following statement right after it...

Users with the virtual_agent_admin or admin role can create their own custom topics to use, instead of the pre-built topics. These custom topics must be mapped to a supported intent in the Auto-Resolution Intent Topic Maps for Auto-Resolution Configuration.

...for Rome and San Diego.

So, yes, if you're on Quebec, it seems you're out of luck, but once you upgrade to Rome/San Diego, you should get this update that adds this common sense functionality 🙂
(Seems like ServiceNow is agile and wanted to get some IAR functionality out in Quebec before they did part 2 and expanded on it...)

[Conrad7]

In my instance i got it to work on a test topic, however my topic is not related to the utterances in the designated intents and if I add utterances to those intents it assigns to VA briefly but then unassign because it could not find a matching Intent and Topic.

I was wondering if it is possible to add your own utterances to those Intents ?