Debraj Ghosh, Author at Microsoft Copilot Blog

Power Virtual Agents Fiscal Year 2021 Review

Debraj Ghosh — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 15:00:00 +0000

When we launched Power Virtual Agents in 2019, we were excited about embarking on the journey to create the best low code chatbot service available in industry. Since our launch, the world changed and adapted to COVID-19, new norms were established in the workplace and many of the changes necessitated by the pandemic are permanent, and now simply an evolution in our working model. From a technology perspective, it has become clear that greater remote and hybrid work environments increase the need for low-code development tools, as more citizen developers must create solutions addressing their business challenges while central IT teams focus on governing the new decentralized networks of the modern enterprise.

The Power Platform has enabled citizen developers to create remarkable solutions in a variety of industries and use cases ranging from communications, consumer goods, field and consumer service, manufacturing, and many others. In many of these examples, we see how chatbots play an important and expanding role in enterprise operations and customer engagement. As our customers sharpen their focus on both low code development services and leveraging chatbots, we’ve ramped our efforts to continue adding new features and capabilities to Power Virtual Agents to ensure our customers have a best-in-class chatbot service. In the last fiscal year alone, we made significant enhancements to Power Virtual Agents and wanted to review some of the highlights.

Quarter 1

In the first quarter of FY21, we immediately enabled a larger number of citizen developers (business users) to create chatbots with Power Virtual Agents by seamlessly integrating the service with Microsoft Teams (see figure 1). A Forrester study found that bots (and apps) embedded within Teams significantly improved employee engagement, efficiency, and productivity. By offering Power Virtual Agents in Teams, users can easily create their own digital assistants within Teams and make them available to their colleagues for use.

Figure 1. Creating a chatbot with Power Virtual Agents in Microsoft Teams

To further enhance the citizen developer bot authoring experience, we made it easy to create and manage Power Virtual Agent bots from Microsoft Power Apps. We made it possible to seamlessly access a Chatbots component in the Power Apps maker portal in order to create and manage their Power Virtual Agents bots. Once the bot is created in an environment, makers can easily manage the bot from the Power Apps studio also.

At the heart of any development is the ability to easily collaborate with colleagues. To this end, we also made it possible to share bots with your teammates, allowing multiple contributors to edit and manage your bot. Subject matter experts on a team can collaborate on a bot. Additionally, we enabled the export and import of Power Virtual Agents using solutions. With this ability, administrators can now easily manage the chatbot’s lifecycle to address change control, governance, data residency, and latency requirements. Organizations can use different environments for different purposes, or employ ring-deployment methodologies (see video 1). To round out the quarter, we ensured that Power Virtual Agents met the standards and requirements of many of the most important global compliance standards including HIPAA, IOC, and SOC.

Video 1. How to export and import bots with solutions.

Quarter 2

We kickstarted the second quarter by adding Power Virtual Agents to our Power Platform Center Of Excellence (COE) starter kit. The CoE Starter Kit is a collection of components and tools designed to help organizations develop a strategy for adopting and supporting the Microsoft Power Platform. In 2020, we introduced inventory and basic telemetry information on Power Virtual Agents to the latest version of the CoE Starter Kit. The existing Power Platform Admin View and the CoE Starter Kit Power BI Dashboard were updated to include a Power Virtual Agents overview and detail page.

In quarter two we also took the exciting step of integrating Bot Framework Composer to Power Virtual Agents (see figure 2). With the addition of Bot Framework Composer to Power Virtual Agents, pro and citizen developers could more easily work together in fusion teams to create chatbot experiences. These hybrid teams are quickly becoming the norm in our industry and necessary for digital transformation success.

Figure 2. Bot Framework Composer used in Power Virtual Agents

Quarter 3

The third quarter began with further enhancements to Power Virtual Agents integration with Microsoft Teams with the launch of Single Sign-on (SSO) in Teams. With SSO in Teams, Bot makers can configure bots to automatically use Teams’ authentication, so end users don’t have to sign-in when chatting with a PVA bot in the Teams channel, streamlining the user’s experience. We capped quarter three with significant AI powered enhancements which included:

Topic overlap detection which helps bot authors identify and refine overlapping topics, reducing the need for the bot to ask clarifying questions
AI-assisted topic suggestions based on historical chat transcripts
AI which helps bots improve over time through user interactions
Personalized conversations crafted with information from Microsoft Graph and Microsoft Azure Active Directory, leveraging both to enhance and personalize future conversations (see figure 3)
Leveraging cutting edge natural language understanding models to enhance topic triggering performance

Figure 3. Personalized conversations using Power Virtual Agents

Get a deeper dive into the details of these AI powered enhancements.

Quarter 4

In the last quarter we introduced Environment Lifecycle Management to Power Virtual Agents. With the release of these features, users can backup, restore, delete, recover, copy, and reset their bots across environments. Briefly, with respect to the Power Platform, an environment is a contained space to store, manage, and share your organization’s business data, bots, apps, and flows. With Environment Lifecycle Management, users can more easily control environment lifecycle operations (see figure 4). You can read about the full scope of the lifecycle operations here.

Figure 4. Environment backup done from the Power Platform Admin Center

We further enhanced Power Virtual Agents by adding FedRAMP, HITRUST, DSS, and OSPAR certifications.

To round out the year, we added deeper integration of Power Virtual Agents across Dynamics 365 and Power Apps Portals. With chatbots now being utilized to provide customer support 24/7 and serve as the first line of service, we have worked to enhance our integration with Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service. To this end, we introduced integrated licensing by including Power Virtual Agents sessions in Omnichannel licenses. We also made it easier to get started by making Power Virtual Agents a first run experience as part of Omnichannel. Now, Power Virtual Agents bots to be automatically created, linked to the Omnichannel hub and added to the right workstream and queues making it extremely simple to get started (see figure 5).

Figure 5. Power Virtual Agents bot created as part of Omnichannel first run experience

We also have made it possible to add a Power Virtual Agents chatbot to any Power App Portal webpage without code. Chatbots are a great way to engage with customers on webpages and enhance the customer experience. With this integration between Power Virtual Agents and Power Apps Portals, we enable you to create an enhanced customer experience quickly and easily (see figure 6).

Figure 6. Adding a chatbot to a Power Apps Portals webpage

Begin Your Journey with Power Virtual Agents

We hope you explore the possibilities with Power Virtual Agents by starting a trial today. You can build your first chatbot in a matter of minutes and get started on delivering an engaging experience for your customers and employees. Also, make sure to follow our blog for the latest feature updates and use cases for chatbots. Please join our community to share your ideas, provide your comments, and even help drive the future direction of our product development. Below are some quick links to get started on your journey!

The post Power Virtual Agents Fiscal Year 2021 Review appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Power Virtual Agents enhancements showcased in new Microsoft Mechanics video

Debraj Ghosh — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 16:10:00 +0000

Power Virtual Agents is one of the foundational services of the Microsoft Power Platform. Power Virtual Agents enables everybody to author and publish chatbots utilizing the power of conversational AI. We recently shared a Microsoft Mechanics video which demonstrated the core capabilities offered with Power Virtual Agents. We’re excited to now share a new video (video 1) which highlights some of the exciting new updates to Power Virtual Agents, specifically focusing on Power Virtual Agents seamless integration with Microsoft Teams through Microsoft Dataverse for Teams and Power Virtual Agents amazing new native integration with Microsoft Bot Framework Composer.

Video 1. New Microsoft Mechanics Video showcasing updates to Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents’ New Enhancements

One of the most exciting enhancements to Power Virtual Agents is the new seamless integration with Microsoft Dataverse for Teams which provides a subset of the full Microsoft Dataverse. Millions of professionals use Microsoft Teams for collaboration, and with the addition of Power Virtual Agents to Teams, these users can create sophisticated chatbots for a nearly unlimited number of scenarios. One of the best attributes of Power Virtual Agents is the user-friendly maker canvas and we’re excited to offer this amazing canvas experience as part of the integrated Teams experience. Also, the chatbot maker experience remains easy and even those with non-technical backgrounds can create a chatbot in minutes. A chatbot can be scoped for a specific Team or even shared across the entire organization. With this powerful integration, users can quickly build customized chatbots for example an HR chatbot for frequently asked HR questions, to an IT service desk chatbot to handle basic IT questions. In our new Mechanics video, we demonstrate how quickly and easily a functional HR chatbot which provides information on an employee’s vacation balance can be created inside the Teams environment (figure 1). Importantly, this new avenue of creation abides by the strict security and governance standards offered with all Microsoft services. Dataverse for Teams leverages the data governance paradigms of Microsoft Power Platform and enables access control in the Teams Admin Center. The Power Platform admin center provides more detail, including monitoring dedicated capacity utilization and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies.

Figure 1. Power Virtual Agents chatbot created inside Microsoft Teams with the new Dataverse for Teams

The Mechanics video also demonstrates the new Power Virtual Agents’ native integration with Bot Framework Composer (figure 2). This integration with Power Virtual Agents makes it even easier for professional developers to collaborate with citizen developer counterparts, which helps ensure that your organization creates the most effective chatbots for any scenario. Bot Framework Composer is an open-source visual authoring canvas for pro-developers build chatbots. Composer integrates language understanding services such as LUIS and QnA Maker and allows sophisticated composition of bot replies using Language Generation. Power Virtual Agents with Bot Framework Composer enables you to create chatbots that offer adaptive conversations where a chatbot can seamlessly pivot between topics based on the context of the dialogue making the conversation more intelligent and more realistic. Learn more about extending your chatbot with Bot Framework Composer.

Both these new advances further strengthen the capabilities offered with Power Virtual Agents and expand the flexibility offered to developers of all skill levels. By enabling easier collaboration between end users who are closest to business challenges with the technical expertise of professional developers, Power Virtual Agents enables organizations to create the most adaptable and relevant chatbots required for business success.

Figure 2. Native integration of Bot Framework Composer with Power Virtual Agents

Begin Your Journey with Power Virtual Agents

Also, check out these other great Microsoft Mechanics videos featuring the Power Platform:

The post Power Virtual Agents enhancements showcased in new Microsoft Mechanics video appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Power Virtual Agents at Microsoft Ignite Virtual Conference

Debraj Ghosh — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 21:05:06 +0000

Power Virtual Agents at Microsoft Ignite Virtual Conference

Due to the unprecedented times we’ll be delivering Microsoft Ignite virtually this year, from Sept 22-24. If you haven’t had a chance to register yet, there is still time so we hope you will take a few minutes and register.

This Ignite we’re going to focus on how Power Virtual Agents empowers all your developers to help create powerful chatbots with conversational AI. Both the Power Virtual Agents sessions will be available on-demand with links directly to the sessions below. For pro developers, check out the session on how Power Virtual Agents will soon include the Bot Framework Composer, enabling pro developers to create sophisticated bot topics which support adaptive dialogs. These topics are designed by pro developers to respond to dynamic queries and enable the chatbot to intelligently adapt to a conversation.

We’re also very excited to enhance the experience for citizen developers by adding the Power Virtual Agents authoring canvas in Teams as part of our new Power Platform and Teams integration. Now Teams users can easily create fully functional bots inside the Teams UI. As Teams is rapidly becoming the productivity tool for organizations, we’re excited to add Power Virtual Agents into Teams so that users can quickly and efficiently create chatbots right from Teams, and also easily publish/distribute their bot in Teams for employees and teammates to use. PVA is now included in the Teams license so all Teams users can build PVA bots in Teams. Both these sessions will showcase the expansive capabilities offered with Power Virtual Agents, fully empowering both citizen and pro developers to create enterprise ready chatbots which are both easy to use, but can handle sophisticated use cases.

Below is a list of the sessions focusing on Power Virtual Agents and the Power Platform at this year’s Ignite. We hope you have a chance to join us for some of these great topics so you can learn more about the Power Platform and how it can enhance the efficiency of your organization.

Power Virtual Agents Sessions

Other Power Platform Live Sessions

Microsoft Power Platform: Fill the app gap and supercharge organizational agility
- Live Tuesday Sept 22: 9:30 – 9:50 AM PDT
- Replay Sept 22: 5:30 – 5:50 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 23: 1:30 – 1:50 AM PDT

Build Agile Business Processes with Power Apps
- Live Tuesday Sept 22: 11:30 – 12:00 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 22: 7:30 – 8:00 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 23: 3:30 – 4:00 AM PDT

Automate your desktop with Power Automate
- Live Tuesday Sept 22: 1:45 – 2:15 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 22: 9:45 – 10:25 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 23: 5:45 – 6:15 AM PDT

Amplify your pro developer skills with Power Platform
- Live Wednesday Sept 23: 12:15 – 12:45 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 23: 8:15 – 8:45 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 24: 4:15 – 4:45 AM PDT

How to responsibly scale Power Apps in your organization with a Low Code Center of Excellence
- Live Tuesday Sept 22: 1:45 – 12:15 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 22: 9:45 – 10:15 PM PDT
- Replay Sept 24: 5:45 – 6:15 AM PDT

Begin Your Journey with Power Virtual Agents

We hope you explore the possibilities with Power Virtual Agents by getting started here. You can build your first chatbot in a matter of minutes and get started on delivering an engaging experience for your customers and employees. Also, make sure to follow our blog for the latest feature updates and use cases for chatbots. Please join our community to share your ideas, provide your comments, and even help drive the future direction of our product development. Below are some quick links to get started on your journey!

The post Power Virtual Agents at Microsoft Ignite Virtual Conference appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

How to Use Conversational AI to Enhance Engagement

Debraj Ghosh — Thu, 28 May 2020 13:00:00 +0000

We launched Power Virtual Agents as the newest member of the low-code Microsoft Power Platform at the end of 2019. Power Virtual Agents empowers subject matter experts or citizen developers to create world-class chatbots without code. Power Virtual Agents is built on the following foundational values:

Democratizing Conversational AI – Empowering your subject matter experts to easily create powerful chatbots using a guided, no-code graphical interface. There is no need for developers or data scientists.
Engaging Naturally – Engage with customers and employees conversationally. Resolve routine issues easily, freeing staff to focus on more complex matters.
Taking Action – Easily connect your backend systems with a few clicks using the hundreds of connectors that come with Power Platform – or call APIs and custom workflows using Microsoft Power Automate.
Continually Enhancing – Leverage our AI on your website to automatically build chat topics and get started in a few clicks. Access powerful metrics and insights from your chatbot’s usage to help determine which topics to build next.

Learn the fundamentals of Power Virtual Agents

Check out how easy it is to build a chatbot with our new Mechanics Demo Bench for Power Virtual Agents. You’ll see one of our product leads, Emma Archer demonstrate many of its core functions and ease of use.

Begin Your Journey with Power Virtual Agents

With this robust set of capabilities out-of-the-box, Power Virtual Agents has provided unique chatbot solutions for many customers in the months since our launch. For example, TruGreen envisions using Power Virtual Agents to enhance the end-to-end customer experience. Also, more recently, Coca-Cola announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft which includes Power Virtual Agents as part of the broader initiative. Many other customers are in the process of completing POCs and beginning their Power Virtual Agents deployments as we continue to expand our capabilities and our customers continue to leverage the service for amazing chatbot experiences.

We hope you will explore the possibilities with Power Virtual Agents by starting a trial today. You can build your first chatbot in a matter of minutes and get started on delivering an engaging experience for your customers and employees. Also, make sure to follow our blog for the latest feature updates and use cases for chatbots. Please join our community to share your ideas, provide your comments, and even help drive the future direction of our product development.

Below are some quick links to get started on your journey!

The post How to Use Conversational AI to Enhance Engagement appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Power Virtual Agents at Microsoft Build Developers Virtual Conference, 2020

Debraj Ghosh — Mon, 18 May 2020 13:00:00 +0000

We hope everyone is remaining safe and doing well during these remarkably challenging times. Like some many other firsts that have happened during the last few months, this year, the Microsoft Build Developer Conference will be held virtually, kicking off on the morning of Tuesday, May 19^th. If you can join us, but have not yet registered, you still can. The Microsoft Power Platform will have several sessions at the Build conference focusing on how Pro Developers can use the tools and capabilities of the platform to combine their skills with the work of end users to create impactful business solutions. In our Power Virtual Agents session, we’ll show you how pro developers can leverage the AI and computing power of Azure to create building blocks for their citizen developer counterparts. We will demonstrate how the synergy between pro and citizen developers which is enabled with Power Virtual Agents can create world class chatbots in a matter of minutes. Empowering all your developers is critical to accelerating the digital transformation journey in any organization and an invaluable attribute of the Power Platform. Before diving into the session schedule, let’s quickly review the values of Power Virtual Agents.

Enhancing the Future of Work with Conversational AI

We launched Power Virtual Agents in 2019, adding it as the fourth member of the Microsoft Power Platform. Power Virtual Agents enables organizations to create chatbots with no code, which can engage conversationally with customers and employees. The service is built on the following foundational values (figure 1):

Democratize AI — Empowers your subject matter experts to easily create powerful chatbots using a guided, no-code graphical interface. There is no need for developers or data scientists.
Engage Naturally — Engage with customers and employees conversationally. Resolve routine issues easily which frees staff to focus on more complex or strategic matters
Take Action – Easily connect your backend systems with a few clicks using the hundreds of connectors that come with Power Platform – or call APIs and custom workflows using Microsoft Power Automate.
Continually Enhance – Leverage our AI on your website to automatically build chat topics and get started in a few clicks. Access powerful metrics and insights from your chatbot’s usage to help determine which topics to build next.

Figure 1. The Foundational Pillars of Power Virtual Agents

With that, let’s now preview the schedule for some select sessions at Microsoft Build.

Table 1. Power Platform and Power Virtual Agents Sessions at Microsoft Build Virtual Conference

Begin Your Journey with Power Virtual Agents

The post Power Virtual Agents at Microsoft Build Developers Virtual Conference, 2020 appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Power Virtual Agents at Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Virtual Event 2020

Debraj Ghosh — Mon, 04 May 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Our first wish is that everyone is remaining safe during these unique and difficult times. As with most things, most of us have adapted to new schedules and modes of work. This year the Microsoft Business Applications Summit will be held virtually, Wednesday May 6^th, 9AM PST. If you haven’t had a chance to register, you still can! Power Virtual Agents will have a significant presence at this year’s conference, with live virtual sessions with real-time Q&A and several on-demand sessions which will be available in content waves. Since Power Virtual Agents is still a new service, let’s quickly summarize its core values.

Enhancing the Future of Work with Conversational AI

Democratize AI — Empowers your subject matter experts to easily create powerful chatbots using a guided, no-code graphical interface. There is no need for developers or data scientists.
Engage Naturally — Engage with customers and employees conversationally. Resolve routine issues easily which frees staff to focus on more complex or strategic matters.
Take Action – Easily connect your backend systems with a few clicks using the hundreds of connectors that come with Power Platform – or call APIs and custom workflows using Microsoft Power Automate.
Continually Enhance – Leverage our AI on your website to automatically build chat topics and get started in a few clicks. Access powerful metrics and insights from your chatbot’s usage to help determine which topics to build next.

Figure 1. The Foundational Pillars of Power Virtual Agents

With that, let’s now preview the Power Virtual Agents Microsoft Business Applications Summit session list.

Virtual Sessions with Live Q&A: 28 min sessions, Wednesday May 6^th, 2020

“Empower Your Organization with the Microsoft Power Platform” 9:15 AM PST — The Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code development platform empowering your employees to solve today’s most challenging business problems with ease and within the bounds of your IT governance. The Power Platform leverages seamless automation, low-code application development, engaging conversational AI, and enhanced data analytics and visualization tools to help plan, execute, and analyze your organization’s challenges to produce unique and often unimagined solutions. The Power Platform includes Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents. In this session, we showcase the foundational elements of the Power Platform, discuss its latest capabilities and also demonstrate how the global healthcare giant GSK is using the Power Platform to address one of its real-world challenges. This session will open you up to the possibilities your organization can achieve with the Power Platform and the nearly unlimited potential it can offer you!
“Build a bot that integrates with your backend systems with Power Virtual Agents” 10:45 AM PST — Learn how to integrate Microsoft Power Virtual Agents with your backend systems to enable bots to act on behalf of your users. As part of this session, we’ll cover invoking Power Automate flows and call Bot Framework Skills from your bot.
“Empower subject matter experts to drive engagement in your business using Power Virtual Agents” 12PM PST — Learn more about how customers are improving engagement, productivity and reducing costs through personalized conversational intelligent virtual agents. In this session, you’ll get an overview of all new capabilities enabling your subject matter experts to build intelligent conversations.

On-Demand Session, Thursday May 7^th, 2020

“Best practices for building an intelligent bot with Power Virtual Agents” — Learn more about best practices that our customers follow to build successful virtual agents. This session will cover what it takes to build a Virtual Agent that provides best business outcomes, how to improve your virtual agent, and drive engagement.

Begin Your Journey with Power Virtual Agents

We hope you have had a chance to explore the possibilities with Power Virtual Agents by starting a trial today. You can build your first chatbot in a matter of minutes and get started on delivering an engaging experience for your customers and employees. Also, make sure to follow our blog for the latest feature updates and use cases for chatbots. Please join our community to share your ideas, provide your comments, and even help drive the future direction of our product development. Below are some quick links to get you started on your journey.

The post Power Virtual Agents at Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Virtual Event 2020 appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.