Rajeev Pentyala – Microsoft Power Platform

Virtual Agent for Dynamics 365 Customer Service is a new cloud offering built on the Microsoft Bot Framework to create powerful bots using a guided, no-code graphical interface.

In this article, lets see how to get started with ‘Virtual Agent’ using a simple demo.

Prerequisite:

• Subscribe to a Dynamics trail .

Steps to Subscribe ‘Virtual Agent'(Preview):

• Go to ‘Virtual Agent’ Portal and click on ‘Try preview’

• Login with your O365 credentials.
• Continue by clicking on ‘Create’ link.

• You will be redirected to ‘Virtual Agent’ application with a ‘Create a new bot’ popup
• Provide the bot’s name and click ‘Create’

• Initial Bot set up would take 2-4 minutes and you would be notified post completion.

• Once the bot set up completes, you need to configure ‘Topics’ to start the bot conversations.

Create ‘Topics’:

• ‘Topics’ allows to set context of bot conversation. Its a combination of 2
  • Trigger Phrases – Prompts the conversation with BOT.  Phrases like ‘Hi’, ‘Hello’, ‘Help’, ‘Issue’ are sample phrases.
  • Conversation – Represents exchanges between bot and user.
• Lets create a simple ‘Topic’ by name ‘Welcome’ to wish the User by his name.
• Click on ‘Go to Topics’ link or ‘Topics’ tab.

• From the ‘Topics’ tab, click on ‘New Topic’

• Add the ‘Trigger Phases’
  • I added ‘Hi’ and ‘Hello’ as my Phrases to initiate the conversation.

• Click ‘Edit’ under ‘Conversation’ section
• Now you will be redirected to ‘Conversation’ flow page.
• Add ‘Bot Says’ control, to communicate to User from BOT.
• Add ‘User Responses’ control, to provide options to User to answer
  • For example, I am adding ‘Tampa’ and ‘Orlando’ as ‘User Responses’ to show the city names as options for User to pick.
• You can also create a variable to capture User response.
  • I created 2 variables to capture User’s ‘Name’ and ‘City’.

• Save the Conversation

Test the BOT:

• Once you configured ‘Topics’, you can test the BOT by clicking ‘Test your bot’ link on the footer.
• Turn on ‘Tracing’ to check the flow.

Deploy the BOT:

• Click ‘Deploy’ to configure Channel.
• For this demo, I am choosing, ‘Demo Website’ option, which hosts the bot to a sandbox demo website.
• Demo Website:

• Provide the details and click on ‘Publish’. You will be redirected to the demo website.

• Type ‘Hello’ phrase to initiate BOT conversation.
• BOT responds back asking ‘Please help with your Name’

• You can also see City options, which User can select instead of typing.
• Finally, Bot responds back wishing User by capturing Name and City provided by the User.

• Custom Website
  • This is the second deployment option.
  • Allows you to host the BOT in an IFrame control to your web site.
  • Copy the HTML content and paste it in your web site.

🙂