Virtual Agent - Starting conversations in a custom way

Hi there,

Fancy the Virtual Agent, though not satisfied enough with how the conversations are starting? Maybe this can give you some food for thought!

Currently, we are working on the implementation of Virtual Agent into our production environment, though facing some issues, having limited branding options, several bugs, the conversation start which is not mature enough, etc..

About the branding, I wrote an article before (Virtual Agent - Changing the bot appearance). This time, starting conversations in a custom way.

The issues we are facing with the regular starting of conversations with the Virtual Agent:
- Users start typing pretty quickly. The Top selection message (default: "You can type your request below, or use the button to see everything that I can help with.") is barely being read. This causes users to not getting the result they are expecting, and even quitting to use the Virtual Agent.
- The Welcome message (default: "How can I help you?") can't be personalized. The welcome message is a string, and does not accept scripting like gs.getUser().getFirstName() or vaInputs.user.first_name
- Default the history of previous chats (up to 30-days) is shown.
- The topic order when selecting "Show Me Everything" can't be changed
- The text input bar displaying "Please type your request" can't be made (conditionally) read-only.

Chat history

Opening the Virtual Agent with/without the chat history is possible. Just by adding "sysparm_skip_load_history=true" to the URL, the history will not be loaded. You can add this to the options of the widget, directly in the server script of a (cloned) widget, or if you calling the virtual agent separately through URL.

https://<your-instance>.service-now.com/$sn-va-web-client-app.do?sysparm_nostack=true&sysparm_stack=no&sysparm_skip_load_history=true

Topic order

We dropped the topic order issue. Reason being the feedback we received from Hi:
"The development team has confirmed that PRB1331125 is fixed in New York release and the topics will be sorted alphabetically."

If you do want to have an alternative for this, have a look at an article Simon H wrote recently:
Virtual Agent - How to switch Topics

Top selection message

No matter what you type in the top selection message, users barely read the message, users start to type pretty quickly, users don't get the response they are expecting, and event drop the usage of the Virtual Agent.
Unfortunately, we can only change the top selection message text. It's just a string. We also looked at changing the "Show Me Everything" button, even though you can influence the text pretty easily with the Sys UI Messages, it's just a string. Disabling the text input bar is also no option, so users will keep typing. We can change the "Please type your request" message (again through Sys UI Messages), though also this does not limit users from typing.

Only if we could add some additional messages, an image, a custom start topic...

Welcome message

We would like to start the conversation with a personalized sentence. For example, "Hi Mark, ...". We can achieve this easily within topics, by using vaInputs.user.first_name. Though this is not possible with the welcome message system property, this is just a string.

Only if we could add some scripting somewhere, a custom step, a custom start topic...

Custom start topic

Starting with a different topic is a possibility. The bot can be started with several additional parameters. Parameters like "sysparm_debug=true", "sysparm_skip_load_history=true", "sysparm_topic=<sys_id>". Starting a custom topic is nice, but then you only have that topic available and nothing else. Or you would have to let the topic end, and it will start in the normal way like we are used to.

Only if we could tie topics to each other, if we could have something like a sub-topic, switching between topics...

Switching topics

Eureka! Credits to Simon H for this one. Simon responded to one of my other Virtual Agent articles, that he found a way to switch topics. Shortly after he wrote a nice article about this:
Virtual Agent - How to switch Topics

Our custom Start Conversation

1) How it looks like:

2) And after finishing a topic:

The technical bits and pieces

3) Because we are not using the Welcome message and Top selection message, we cleared these properties.

4) Setting up a custom topic.

Condition:

(function execute() {
    
    return '';

})()

(This way, the Start conversation will not be shown in the list of available topics.)

Topic Flow:

Bot Response Text, Response message:

(function execute() {
   
   return gs.getMessage('G\'day {0}, my name is Quinn, your Virtual Agent.', [vaInputs.user.first_name]);

})()

Utilities Script Action, Action Expression:

(function execute() {
    
    // Define variable(s)
    var languageStr = 'en';

    // Query record(s)
    var grUserPreference = new GlideRecord('sys_user_preference');
    grUserPreference.addQuery('user', vaInputs.user);
    grUserPreference.addQuery('name', 'user.language');
    grUserPreference.addQuery('value', '!=', 'en');
    grUserPreference._query();

    if(grUserPreference._next()) {
    	languageStr = grUserPreference.value;
    }

    // Define variable(s)
    vaVars.imageStr = gs.getProperty('glide.servlet.uri') + '/qt-va-core-welcome-' + languageStr + '.jpg';

})()

(Some extra coding has been added because we are displaying an Image with text. Though our instance is using English and Dutch. This script decides the language of the user, and which Image to display. The images are just added to the images table, Image: English, Image: Dutch.)

Bot Response Image Output, Image URL Link:

(function execute() {
    
    return vaVars.imageStr;

})()

If in a multi-language instance, create a Sys UI Message record with key:

G'day {0}, my name is Quinn, your Virtual Agent.

5) Switching to the start conversation topic, after ending a topic

Topic Flow:

Utilities Script Action, Action Expression:

(function execute() {

    var topicStr = 'Start conversation';

    vaSystem.switchTopic(topicStr)

})()

6) Opening the start conversation
Copy the sys_id of the Start conversation, and add it to the sysparm_topic.

Test this thru:
https://<your-instance>.service-now.com/$sn-va-web-client-app.do?sysparm_nostack=true&sysparm_stack=no&sysparm_skip_load_history=true&sysparm_topic=<sys_id>

Summary

A custom way to start your Virtual Agent conversations. It's a bit of work, and still not perfect. Hopefully, New York, Orlando, Paris will upgrade the Virtual Agent immensely. Though, until then, this custom way of starting your Virtual Agent conversations might help the user acceptance and user experience while working with the Virtual Agent.

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Kind regards,
Mark

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