Virtual Agent - Enhanced Order an Item topic

Hi there,

While the out-of-the-box Order an Item ITSM Conversation for the Virtual Agent is a rather small topic, it does provide users with a valuable chat. But what if we could raise the level of this conversation?
Some thoughts and experiences here to share with you.

Record Producers not shown

The Script Action Utility "Contextual Search" is filtering the results out if they match certain tables. The tables excluded are set in Script Variable "filter tables". Out-of-the-box filtered out tables are

sc_cat_item_content,sc_cat_item_producer,sc_cat_item_wizard,std_change_record_producer,sc_cat_item_producer_service

So missing a Catalog Item? Have look at these tables.

Carousel showing 5 results maximum

Again the Script Action Utility "Contextual Search"… amongst others, it's checking the value of Script Variable "limit". Results up to that value are shown. Out-of-the-box limit is set on:

5

Wish to see more results? Just increase the number.

Display top results first

Out-of-the-box there's no real clever thought about the display order for the results. It might be there are 9 Catalog Items about "SAP", though which ones are shown to you? Or even which aren't showed?

Our thought was: "Could we somehow display popular Catalog Items first?" Knowing there is an out-of-the-box "Service Portal Log Entries" available, we might be able to utilize that.

Just before the User Input Carousel "Catalog Item" we embedded a Script Action Utility with the below script. Most importend part is performing a GlideAggregate count on the "sp_log" table with a query on field "type=Cat Item View^ORtype=Cat Item Request". The result of the count will then be added to the JSON object, and the JSON object sorted on… the count 🙂

(function execute() {

    var result = JSON.parse(vaVars.results);

    for(var i = 0; i < result.length; i++) {
        var ga = new GlideAggregate('sp_log');
        ga.addEncodedQuery('id=' + result[i].sys_id + '^type=Cat Item View^ORtype=Cat Item Request');
        ga.addAggregate('COUNT');
        ga._query();

        if(ga._next()) {
            result[i].count = ga.getAggregate('COUNT');
        }

    }

    var sortByProperty = function(property) {
        return function(x, y) {
            return ((x[property] === y[property]) ? 0 : ((x[property] < y[property]) ? 1 : -1));
        };
    };

    result.sort(sortByProperty('count'));

    vaVars.results = JSON.stringify(result);

})()

Contextual search

The Contextual Search could be changed from within the Platform UI. Navigating to:
Contextual Search > Searchers > Catalog only, selecting "ITSM VA Catalog Item Search" from Related List "Search Contexts" will give you some nice options to play around with.

For example, notice checkbox "Enable wildcard searches". Aha, that's why I don't get any results chatting to the Bot "Note", while I do get results on "Notebook".
Or interested only in Catalog Items which are associated with some Catalogs? Have a look at record "catalog" under Related List "Resource Configurations", from there have a look at record "Catalog Name" under Related List "Search Resource Context Properties". You could, for example, add "Service Catalog" as value, which limits the results to just the Service Catalog.

Carousel exit

Though the Service Support video mentions "If none of those are correct, the user can select none of the above", you can't actually exit the carousel. (checked with HI!)

To be able to exit the carousel we've set up a workaround. Workaround being an additional last option which is added to the carousel which looks like:

The actual coding is not that difficult. Just add one option after the for loop in the "Carousel Item Expression":

    options.push(
        {
            'Name': gs.getMessage('Oops, this is not I was after'),
            'Value': 'stop',
            'Body': baseURL + '/' + 'qt-va-carousel-stop.png'
        }
    );

Blanc search term error handling

Out-of-the-box a consumer could just hit enter upon entering a search term. To provide some error handling, you could add a Decision Utility which checks whether the given value was blanc or not. We choose to do this Low Code and not No Code.
No Code just checks for blanc or not, while with Low Code you could trim the results for possible spaces entered.

(function execute() {
    
    return vaInputs.search_term.getValue().trim() != '';
    
})()

Chat satisfaction survey

And of course, at the end of the conversation, we've implemented our chat satisfaction topic. The chat satisfaction topic is explained in this community article.

Summary

The out-of-the-box Order an Item topic does offer a solid base to start with. Though, with some slight adjustments, you could enhance the topic a lot!

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Hope that this helps some of you! Questions or ideas? Let me know!

Kind regards,
Mark

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