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Microsoft Power Virtual Agent

Microsoft Power Virtual Agent

Owned by Chitra Borker (Deactivated)
Last updated: Sept 07, 2023 by Trisha Tripathi (Deactivated)

This section details how you can set up your Digital Person to use Chatbots created using Power Virtual Agent from Microsoft. 

Connecting Power Virtual Agent to your Digital Person

To configure Power Virtual Agent to your Digital Person:

  1. Login to Digital DNA Studio and navigate to your project or create a new project.

  2. On the project screen, choose Conversation & Skills from the left navigation, look for the Manage Conversations and Skills section in the middle panel and click Browse Options.

     

  3. In the Base Conversation pop-up, scroll down and choose Beta Preview Microsoft Power Virtual Agent from the custom conversation list.

4. To connect you’ll need to obtain the Direct Line Speech Token Endpoint as described below.

 

Power Virtual Agent Configuration Screen

Note: Remember to Publish your PVA bot to see your most recent changes reflected in your Digital Person conversation.

Access Credentials

The Power Virtual Agent (PVA) Skill accesses the PVA Bot via a direct line connection. In order to configure the skill to your agent, you will need to copy down the direct line url. 

On the left hand side in PVA, select the “Settings” drop down, followed by the “Channels” option. This will provide several deployment options for your agent, but for our implementation, click on the “Direct Line Speech” option. This will generate a new URL for your agent, which you will copy and paste into the PVA Skill config in DDNA Studio.

 

Limitations

Currently, in Power Virtual Agent, there is NO support for:

  • Native content cards/media such as image or video. All supporting content must be added using the “Send an Event” action shown below.

  • “Ask a question” or “ask with an adaptive card”. Only the “send a message” function can be used to send a spoken response.

  • The “Speech” response type within Messages. Only “Text” response type is supported.

Content Cards

Content card payloads are generated through “events” in PVA. To create a new a new event when creating a new interaction, select “Advanced” from the menu, followed by “Send an Action”. Here, define your payload. Make sure that the name you give it is prefixed with “public-” and call it by name in the message using “@showCards”. You can learn more about Content Cards here.

 

 

Missing Events

If your PVA agent does not give you access to events, you may need to convert your bot to the newest version. This can be done in the overview page by clicking on the “Convert this bot” option. Once completed, you should now have access to the event activity, which will enable you to define content cards.

Using PVA with other Skills

Other Skills can be used with PVA as a Base Conversation. For example you could have a structured conversation built in PVA to step a user through a process and then fall back to the Generative Conversation Skill when the user asks an open ended question. To enable this you'll both need to:

  1. Have Microsoft Power Virtual Agent configured as your Base Conversation in DDNA Studio.

  2. Add the other Skills you want in DDNA Studio.

  3. Include an Event in PVA where ever you want to use other Skills instead of PVA. This Event needs to have the Name "fallback" and be returned without a message.