Create UI parameters for your Virtual Agent link

Create UI parameters to pass information from your record into Virtual Agent so that your users get the information they need for their issues.

Before you begin

Role required: admin

Procedure

1. From the Mobile App Builder home screen, select the Functions category and then select New.
2. In the Action item area of the form, select New.
3. In the Data parameters area of the form, select New.
4. In the Name field, enter the name of the data parameter.
   You can have multiple parameters with the same name, so choose a name that you can distinguish easily.
5. From the Type list, select the type of the parameter.
   • Integer: Uses a numbers-only keypad for input.
   • String: Uses a full keyboard for input. Use the String type for list parameters, such as priority or state, or for reference fields, such as Assigned to or Caller.
   • Decimal: Uses a numbers-only keypad for input.
   • Boolean: Uses a true or false selection option.
     Note:

     Making a Boolean mandatory has no effect. Boolean fields are always considered to have a value. A selected check box has a value of true and an unselected check box has a value of false. Either of these values satisfies the requirement of a mandatory field.
   • DateTime: Uses a calendar with an exact time selector.
   • Date: Uses a calendar.
6. Select Save.
7. Navigate back to the action item using the menu.
   Confirm that the Data Parameter you created in Step 3 through 6 appears in the Data parameters section of the Action Item form.
8. Select Save.
9. Optional: Repeat steps 3 through 6 to create additional UI parameters for any other information that you want to pass to Virtual Agent.
   You can direct your mobile users to a specific Virtual Agent topic by creating a search_text UI parameter. You can create this parameter using the preceding steps, with the following changes:

   Table 1. UI parameter form

   Field	Description
   Name	Name of the UI parameter. For this example, enter search_text.
   Input Type	Location where the user will input data for the parameter. For this example, select Constant.
   Constant Value	Value that matches a keyword from one of your Virtual Agent conversations. When your users tap the chat button, they are directed to the matching topic.

What to do next

The UI parameters that you created are available to your Virtual Agent topics within the vaContext object. You can access these parameters in Virtual Agent Designer by entering vaContext. followed by the name of your UI parameter. For example, you can access the incident_caller UI parameter by entering vaContext.incident_caller. For more details on using context variables in Virtual Agent, see Virtual Agent scripts.