Premium chat
Now Assist in Virtual Agent premium chat is a contextual chat experience that appears throughout the platform, adapting its behavior and interface based on where users are and what they're doing.
To access the Now Assist in Virtual Agent premium chat screen, select the Now Assist icon or enter text in the omnibar.
Chat input box features
The chat input box has these features:
- Multi-line input
- The chat input box starts as a single-line field and automatically expands to multi-line mode when text exceeds the available width.
- Plus sign icon
- Select the plus sign (+) icon to access additional options including web search and file upload.
- Web search
- When you select the plus sign icon, the Web search toggle appears. You can toggle the Web search option on to receive responses that combine both internal knowledge base results and web search results. You can toggle the web search on or off at any time during a conversation.
- File upload
- You can upload files by selecting the file upload icon or by dragging and dropping files directly into the chat input box. The premium chat screen displays thumbnails for the first three uploaded files and you can upload up to 20 files in a single interaction.
Navigating the chat window resizing options and controls toolbar
The Now Assist sub-header consists of four elements. The following figure and table shows an example and description of those elements.
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
1. Chats ( ) |
All chats appear. Chats are organized with the most recent conversations at the top. Selecting a chat opens the chat in the conversation area. If there are unread chats or notifications, a badge number appears on the Chats icon (
|
| 2. [Chat name] |
The name of the conversation. If you select a promoted asset or query, that asset's title appears as the chat name. If instead you enter an utterance into the Reply to Now Assist field, your initial utterance becomes the chat name. The chat name appears in both the Now Assist subheader and section. |
3. New chat ( ) |
A new conversation begins. You may be prompted with a greeting message along with any promoted conversational assets such as topics, subflows, and/or actions, or suggested queries. |
| 4. Support and settings ( |
Support contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses are listed. If live agents are available, an active Contact Live Agent button is displayed. Although multiple active conversations are possible, you can only have one live agent conversation at a time. Selecting Contact Live Agent begins a chat with a live agent. After a live agent enters the chat, the Contact Live Agent button becomes inactive. If live agents are unavailable, an inactive No live agents currently available button is displayed. Settings toggles for Audio notifications and Notifications appear. By default, audio notifications are turned on and notifications are turned off. If admins have enabled notifications within the guided setup, users can turn on the notifications. |
5. Interactive view ( or  ) |
Note:
This icon only appears in the sub-header whenever the interactive view is available. Open or close the interactive view. The interactive view appears towards the right of the conversational chat area. Interactive view is available whenever an organizational chart is an available option in a people citation popover. If multiple interactive views are available in the same conversation, for example, you opened multiple people's org charts in a conversation, a drop-down is available to switch between the different interactive views' tabs. |
). Confirm the chat deletion on the Delete this chat? modal to permanently delete the chat from the interface.Chatting with Virtual Agent
After the user enters an utterance and a search result is found, a synthesized response may appear. A synthesized response includes a brief summary of the requested information and search results along with Genius Results. For more information on how these search results are found, see Now Assist Actions Genius Results and Now Assist Q&A Genius Results.
If multiple results are found, you can follow inline citations to either begin an action or learn more. The option to Show sources appears at the end of the synthesized response for internal and external Knowledge Base articles. Virtual Agent can only return available catalog items that match a user's request when the Now Assist Multi-Turn Catalog Ordering skill is enabled.
Whenever only a single search result for topics is found, the synthesized response and options are bypassed by default and users are brought directly into that action's flow. You may consider bypassing the synthesized response and options by automatically launching catalog items, too. For more information on automatically launching single search result actions, search for the sn_nowassist_va.synthesized_autostart_items system property in Available system properties.
You can create a new query from within a Now Assist conversation using mid-topic discovery. For more information, see Mid-topic switching during Now Assist in Virtual Agent conversations.
If Now Assist Guardian is enabled and your request contains profane content, the Virtual Agent responds with a message prompting you to re-enter an appropriate request without profanity or offensive content. If your request is too ambiguous on the portal search, a synthesized response
appears along with an Ask a follow up option. Selecting the Ask a follow up option redirects you to a Virtual Agent chat. In the Virtual Agent chat, you can submit your follow-up question or request, but the synthesized response links are only available to select on the portal page and are unavailable to select in the chat window. If your
follow-up question or request is too ambiguous in the Virtual Agent chat, Virtual Agent asks a clarifying question and displays the go to search results icon (
) in the feedback panel.
). If the response wasn't helpful, select the dislike thumbs down icon (
).
When you select the thumbs up or thumbs down icon, you are prompted to provide detailed feedback by selecting one or more reason check boxes. You can also select Other to
add comments or suggestions (up to 300 characters). After making your selection, select Submit to submit your feedback or select X to close the dialog without submitting feedback. All
submitted feedback is captured, stored, and made available through analytic dashboards.) may appear in the feedback icons panel. This icon appears alongside synthesized responses in Virtual Agent, clarifying questions in Virtual Agent, and regular search results or Virtual Agent fallback topics whenever a synthesized response is unavailable. Selecting the go to search results icon () redirects you to the search results page and begins a search query using the last five chat utterances you entered. Additionally, a copy message icon (
) appears on received Virtual Agent responses.Responses generated in Now Assist in Virtual Agent can come from a combination of catalog items, Virtual Agent topics, subflows and actions, knowledge articles, attachments, external content sources, and people citations. Inline citations appear at the end of the relevant synthesized response sentence. Selecting an inline citation results in a popover containing either a link to an article or source, or a description and action to start the action. The following options may appear as synthesized response in-line citations depending on what search results are returned:
Response feedback
). If the response wasn't helpful, select the dislike thumbs down icon (). When you select the thumbs up or thumbs down icon, you are prompted to provide detailed feedback by selecting one or more reason check boxes. You can also select
Other to add comments or suggestions (up to 300 characters). After making your selection, select Submit to submit your feedback or select X to close the dialog
without submitting feedback. All submitted feedback is captured, stored, and made available through analytic dashboards.) may appear in the feedback icons panel. This icon appears alongside synthesized responses in Virtual Agent, clarifying questions in Virtual Agent, and regular search results or Virtual Agent fallback topics whenever a synthesized response is unavailable. Selecting the go to search results icon () redirects you to the search results page and begins a search query using the last five chat utterances you entered. Additionally, a copy message icon () appears on received Virtual Agent responses.Chatting with a live agent in Virtual Agent
You can chat with a live agent if you need more support. Select the Contact Live Agent button found in the Support and settings () option, enter a request such as Chat with live agent into the chat, or select the Request a live agent fallback option. After an agent has accepted your chat, the agent's name
and avatar appears at the top of the chat in a banner. Only one live agent chat at a time is permitted. To exit the live chat, select End live chat. The chat history then moves to the Closed chat section.
Fallback options
When you're using premium chat and you enter a search query through your portal's search bar, you’re redirected to the portal's search results page. At the top of the search results page, you see Genius Results in a synthesized
response generated by Now Assist. This synthesized response answer provides inline citations that appear at the end of each sentence. You can select citations and if applicable, such as for conversational catalog items, select whether to 
Request with form or 
Request in chat. Similar options also appear in the regular search results area, as indicated by the request in chat icon ( ) and request with form icon (). Depending on your selection, the catalog request flow launches within either the Virtual Agent chat or a form.
You can start the chat experience either through the chat icon on the portal's search results page or through the portal's chat widget button.
After selecting the chat widget button on the portal, the floating chat window opens and replaces the chat button. A greeting message appears, and a chat is created only after you have entered an initial utterance. If you have an active chat ongoing, the current active chat appears instead of a greeting message. You can select a predefined action, topic, suggested search query, start a new conversation, or view all options, if applicable. The View all options link only shows if more than one suggested search query or promoted topic is available.
If language detection is turned on and the initial utterance entered into the portal's search bar or chat differs from the user's profile language preference, the conversational language automatically switches to the detected language. For more information and examples of language detection in premium chat conversations, see Using language detection and dynamic machine translation in Virtual Agent enhanced chat conversations.