Open catalog form within the VA

[Steve Gibb]

Hi all, we are using the nowAssist VA.

I am not happy with how the catalog items work in a conversational way. The VA makes a mess of the questions on the forms. 

We have non mandatory variables such as "request for someone else "and "add user to the watchlist" - but the VA struggles with these. 

My question is, does anyone know how to render the actual catalog form within the VA itself? I know if we make it non-conversational, we can have it open in a pop up window, but that defeats the object of using a VA in my opinion. 

Most of the forms are simple and it take considerably less time to order the item with the form than to do it via a conversation. 

Thanks

Steve

[Chris D]

I feel you. Unless you designed your items to explicitly be VA-centric (which includes extreme simplicity and brevity), in so many cases, completing the form will be far more efficient (and user-friendly! don't forget about help text, required field indicators, reference field typeahead, etc.)

I stopped getting concerned by the ability to order catalog items in VA and just accepted that it's most user-friendly to just link users to the form, even if it feels frustrating. Do our users necessarily know that what we're offering - a link - is the best solution for them? No, ofc they want to do as little work as possible to get what they need, but it doesn't make it less true...

Anyway, to more directly answer your question - I've never used em myself and admittedly don't know much except they exist but - perhaps custom controls could be utilized...? (Note they might only be supported in the Portal, not Teams, etc., I'm not sure.) I'm imagining - at the simplest - maybe even just an iFrame of the catalog item form embedded in VA?? It natively supports mobile rendering, so if you can squeeze it down to a single column width so it'd fit in the VA chat window, maybe you could manage that?