The excitement and anticipation soared as we unveiled new generative AI features which changed how you both create copilots and respond with them. However, organizations worldwide have been eagerly awaiting harnessing these powerful AI capabilities in their own regions.

Today, we are pleased to share that we have expanded Copilot Studio’s designated region availability for generative AI capabilities beyond the United States, complete with robust admin controls.

This expansion brings these cutting-edge capabilities to various locations, including:

• Europe
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• France
• Australia
• India
• Japan
• Asia Pacific
• South America
• Switzerland

What’s more, in the coming months we’re poised to introduce additional generative AI features across even more geographical areas, empowering users worldwide to fully leverage Copilot Studio’s potential.

You can keep up to date with the latest availability here: Enable copilots and generative AI features.

To build your own copilot with these latest generative AI capabilities, read this guide.

Admins have newfound control over data movement in non-US geographical environments through the Power Platform admin center controls. Learn more.

If you want to learn more about Microsoft Copilot Studio, visit these resources:

• Copilot Studio website
• Start a trial
• Try a demo
• Watch the video
• Product documentation
• Catch up on the Ignite on-demand session
• Join the community

I am looking forward to seeing your innovations come to life with Copilot Studio, which is available worldwide.

Thank you once again from the entire Copilot Studio team for your continued support and enthusiasm.

The post Microsoft Copilot Studio Expands Region Availability For Generative AI appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

This year at Microsoft Build 2022, we announced that Power Virtual Agents Customer Lockbox support is coming soon. Today, we are excited to announce the preview of Power Virtual Agents Customer Lockbox support.

Customer Lockbox enables administrators to control access to their organization data from Microsoft personnel during troubleshooting. Administrators can turn on the Customer Lockbox feature for their tenants from the Power Platform admin center, view Microsoft personnel’s data access requests, and approve or deny them as the final gatekeeper.

Watch below to learn how to enable the Customer Lockbox feature and approve or deny Microsoft personnel data access requests.

To learn about the Customer Lockbox feature, see the documentation here.

We’d love to hear about your experience with this feature! Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

If you have any idea requests, please submit them at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

Disclaimer

This feature is in preview, which means it is made available to you before general availability so you can test and evaluate them and provide feedback to Microsoft.

Preview may employ reduced or different privacy, security, or compliance commitments than commercial versions. As such, previews are not meant to be used with any “live” or production Customer Data, Personal Data, or other data that is subject to heightened compliance requirements. Any use of “live” data is at your sole risk, and it is your sole responsibility to notify your end users that they should not include sensitive information with their use of the Preview.

This preview, and any support Microsoft may elect to provide, are provided “as-is,” “with all faults,” “as available,” and without warranty.

The post Announcing the preview of Power Virtual Agents Customer Lockbox support appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Today we’re announcing the general availability of Microsoft Power Virtual Agents for US Government customers in Government Community Cloud (GCC) and Government Community Cloud – High (GCC High). These environments support compliance with US government requirements for cloud services, including FedRAMP High, and requirements for criminal justice.

Agencies can now use Microsoft Power Virtual Agents to address many major issues with chatbot building in the industry today. It eliminates the gap between subject matter experts and the development teams building the chatbots and the long latency between subject matter experts recognizing an issue and updating a chatbot to address it. It removes the complexity of exposing teams to the nuances of conversational AI and the need to write complex code. It also minimizes the IT effort required to deploy and maintain a custom conversational solution by empowering subject matter experts and departments to build and maintain their conversational solutions.

Below is a quick demo of Power Virtual Agents in GCC High.

For more information on how to get started, refer to the documentation here on Power Virtual Agents for US Government customers. To learn more about the supported compliance offering, visit the Power Virtual Agents compliance offerings.

We’d love to hear about your experience with this feature! Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

If you have any idea requests, please submit them at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

Happy bot building!

The post Announcing the General Availability of Microsoft Power Virtual Agents for US Government customers appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Last year, we launched the public preview of export and import chatbots using solutions, used by most Power Virtual Agents customers today. With this feature, customers can easily manage their Power Virtual Agents chatbot’s lifecycle to address change control, governance, data residency, and latency requirements by exporting and importing bots across environments. In addition, we also enabled Microsoft Teams users to export and import chatbots in Dataverse for Teams.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Power Virtual Agents export and import chatbots using solutions.

Besides many bug fixes and backend improvements, we augmented this feature with the following:

• New bot’s components (topics, flows, etc.) are auto-added to the bot’s current solution. Previously, customers needed to add new components manually using the “Add required components” feature, which caused import failures if they forgot that manual step.
• Skills environment variables are auto-added when a chatbot is added to a solution.
• Show the bot’s current solution name under the bot picker panel for easy access to solutions and troubleshooting. This is only available on the web app and doesn’t show the Default Solution name.

See current solution name under bot picker

You can continue going to the Power Virtual Agents web app settings page to open Power Apps solution explorer to export and import bots using the solution, like at the public preview.

Furthermore, you can use the Power Apps personal app in Teams, select the Build tab of the team where you want to export and import your chatbots. More information: Install the Power Apps personal app in Microsoft Teams.

Export chatbot using Power Apps personal app in Teams

To learn how to use export and import bots using solutions, see documentation here.

We’d love to hear about your experience with this feature! Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

If you have any idea requests, please submit them at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

Happy bot building!

The post Announcing the general availability of Power Virtual Agents export and import chatbots using solutions appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

1. Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP)

FedRAMP was established to provide a standardized approach for assessing, monitoring, and authorizing cloud computing products and services under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and accelerating the adoption of secure cloud solutions by federal agencies.

Microsoft’s government cloud services meet the demanding requirements of  FedRAMP.

By deploying protected services including Azure Government, Office 365 U.S. Government, and Dynamics 365 Government, federal and defense agencies can leverage a rich array of compliant services.

Power Virtual Agents availability in GCC plan is estimated to be generally available in June 2021.

2. Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST)

HITRUST is an organization governed by representatives from the healthcare industry. HITRUST created and maintains the Common Security Framework (CSF), a certifiable framework to help healthcare organizations and their providers consistently demonstrate their security and compliance.

The CSF builds on HIPAA and the HITECH Act, which are US healthcare laws that have established requirements for the use, disclosure, and safeguarding of individually identifiable health information and enforce non-compliance.

HITRUST provides a benchmark — a standardized compliance framework, assessment, and certification process — against which cloud service providers and covered health entities can measure compliance.

3. Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS)

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) is a global information security standard designed to prevent fraud through increased control of credit card data.

Organizations of all sizes must follow PCI DSS standards if they accept payment cards from the five major credit card brands:

• Visa
• MasterCard
• American Express
• Discover
• Japan Credit Bureau (JCB).

Compliance with PCI DSS is required for any organization that stores, processes, or transmits payment and cardholder data.

4. Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) Outsourced Service Provider’s Audit Report (OSPAR)

The OSPAR framework was established by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), which formulated IT security guidelines for outsourced service providers (OSPs) seeking to provide services to Singapore’s financial institutions. The ABS Guidelines are intended to help financial institutions understand approaches to due diligence, vendor management, and key technical and organizational controls that should be implemented in cloud outsourcing arrangements, particularly for material workloads.

To learn more about Power Virtual Agents compliance offerings, see the documentation here.

We’d love to hear about your experience with this feature! Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

If you have any idea requests, please submit them at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

The post Announcing that Power Virtual Agents is FedRAMP, HITRUST, PCI, and OSPAR compliant appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Today, we are happy to announce that Power Virtual Agents now supports many environment lifecycle operations like backup, restore, delete, recover, copy, and reset.

An environment is a space to store, manage, and share your organization’s business data, bots, apps, and flows. It also serves as a container to separate bots that might have different roles, security requirements, or target audiences. How you choose to use environments depends on your organization and the bot you are trying to build. For example:

• You can choose only to build your bots in a single environment.
• You might create separate environments that group the test and production versions of your bots.
• You might create separate environments that correspond to specific teams or departments in your company, each containing the relevant bots for each audience.
• You might also create separate environments for different global branches of your company.

Backup and restore bot environment

1.  Go to the Microsoft Power Platform admin center (https://aka.ms/ppac) and sign in with your administrator credentials.

2.  Select the Environments on the left nav panel and then select the bot’s environment you want to backup.

3.  Select Backups dropdown and select Create.

4.  To restore a bot environment, select Backups dropdown and then Restore or manage.

5.  Select the environment you want to restore from the list of backups and choose Restore.

You can find documentation of the remaining supported environment operations here.

We would love to hear about your experience with this feature! Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

If you have any idea requests, please submit them at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

Thanks!

The post Introducing Power Virtual Agents Environment Lifecycle Management appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Power Virtual Agents also acquired System and Organization Controls (SOC), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) certifications which are required by enterprise customers. You can find the SOC and ISO reports on Microsoft Service Trust Portal.

The HIPAA is a US healthcare law that establishes requirements for the use, disclosure, and safeguarding of individually identifiable health information. It applies to covered entities — doctors’ offices, hospitals, health insurers, and other healthcare companies — with access to patients’ protected health information (PHI), as well as to business associates, such as cloud service and IT providers, that process PHI on their behalf.

Customers can now create bots with Power Virtual Agents that can handle protected health information (PHI) when your organizations are bound by HIPAA (a US health information act). Scenarios that involve PHI include using a chatbot to:

1. Ask individuals to provide their health information (blood pressure, weight, and so on)
2. Capture health information and personally-identifying information (such as the customer’s IP address or email)

NOTE: PVA is still not intended for use as a medical device. See the disclaimer on PVA’s intended use and medical devices.

To learn more about Power Virtual Agents compliance, see documentation here.

We’d love to hear about your experience with this feature! Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

If you have any idea requests, please submit them at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

The post Power Virtual Agents is HIPAA, SOC, ISO, and CSA compliant appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Enterprise organizations can use different environments for different purposes, or employ ring-deployment methodologies. For example, they might have a specific environment where they test and validate bots, another environment where they test bots for only a subset of users, and a final production environment where they share bots with their customers and end-users.

You use solutions to export bots from one environment and import them into another. The solution acts as a “carrier” for the bots, and you can import multiple bots in one solution. Here is a quick look at how you can move a bot across the environments. Watch this short video to learn how you can export and import a bot across environments.

To learn how to use export and import bots using solutions, see documentation here.

We’d love to hear about your experience with this feature! Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

If you have any idea requests, please submit them at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

Disclaimer

This feature is in preview, which means that it is made available to you before general availability so you can test and evaluate them and provide feedback to Microsoft.

Preview may employ reduced or different privacy, security, or compliance commitments than commercial versions. As such, previews are not meant to be used with any “live” or production Customer Data, Personal Data, or other data that is subject to heightened compliance requirements. Any use of “live” data is at your sole risk and it is your sole responsibility to notify your end users that they should not include sensitive information with their use of the Preview.

This preview, and any support Microsoft may elect to provide, are provided “as-is,” “with all faults,” “as available,” and without warranty.

The post Export and import of Power Virtual Agents bots using solutions appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

In this blog, you can learn how to do that using a custom canvas. First, you’ll learn how to deploy a custom canvas that includes arguments that trigger the greeting. By default, the custom canvas calls the default system greeting topic. You can, however, create a new topic to be used as the greeting, although you will need to divert the default system greeting topic to a new topic.

Information: Having the bot start the conversation will show up in your analytics and increase your session count. If the user of your bot doesn’t engage with the bot (for example, they load the page but don’t ask the bot anything), the session will be marked as an unengaged session. This might impact your analytics.

You can also combine the customized greeting with customization to the look and feel of the bot.

Deploy a custom canvas for your bot

To make your bot start the conversation, you’ll need to deploy a custom canvas that includes arguments that cause the default system greeting topic to be displayed when the bot loads.

1. Create and publish a bot.
2. In the navigation menu under Settings, select Channels.
3. Select Mobile app.
4. Next to Token Endpoint, select Copy.
5. Copy-paste the HTML code below and save it as index.html.
6. In the index.html you created, enter your Token Endpoint at the line var theURL = "<BOT TOKEN ENDPOINT>".
7. Open index.html using a modern browser (for example, Edge) to open the bot in the custom canvas.
8. Test the bot to ensure you are receiving responses from your bot and that it’s working correctly. If you encounter problems, make sure you’ve published your bot, and that your Token Endpoint has been inserted in the correct place. It should be after the equals sign (=) at the line var theURL, and surrounded by double quotation marks (“).

Alternately, you can copy and paste the code below into the w3schools.com HTML try it editor to see how it works (remember to add your Bot ID).

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Contoso Sample Web Chat</title> 
    <!-- This styling is for the canvas demonstration purposes. It is recommended 
that style is moved to separate file for organization in larger projects -->
    <style>
        html, body {
            height: 100%;
        }
        body {
            margin: 0;
        }
        h1 {
            font-size: 16px;
            font-family: Segoe UI;
            line-height: 20px;
            color: whitesmoke;
            display: table-cell;
            padding: 13px 0px 0px 20px;
        }
        .heading {
            background-color: black;
            height: 50px;
        }
        .main {
            margin: 18px;
            border-radius: 4px;
        }

        div[role="form"]{
            background-color: black;
        }        
        #webchat {
            position: fixed;
            height: calc(100% - 50px);
            width: 100%;
            top: 50px;
            overflow: hidden;
        }
      </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div>
        <div class="heading">

            <!-- Change the h1 text to change the bot name -->    
            <h1>Contoso Bot Name</h1>

        </div>
        <div id="webchat" role="main"></div>
    </div>    
  <script src="https://cdn.botframework.com/botframework-webchat/latest/webchat.js"></script>
  <script>
        const styleOptions = {
           // Add styleOptions to customize web chat canvas
           hideUploadButton: true
        };

        // Add your BOT token endpoint below
        var theURL = "<BOT TOKEN ENDPOINT>";

        var environmentEndPoint = theURL.slice(0,theURL.indexOf('/powervirtualagents'));
        var apiVersion = theURL.slice(theURL.indexOf('api-version')).split('=')[1];
        var regionalChannelSettingsURL = `${environmentEndPoint}/powervirtualagents/regionalchannelsettings?api-version=${apiVersion}`; 

        var directline;
            fetch(regionalChannelSettingsURL)
                .then((response) => {
                    return response.json();
                    })
                .then((data) => {
                    directline = data.channelUrlsById.directline;
                    })
                .catch(err => console.error("An error occurred: " + err));

      fetch(theURL)
            .then(response => response.json())
            .then(conversationInfo => {
                window.WebChat.renderWebChat(
                    {
                        directLine: window.WebChat.createDirectLine({
                            domain: `${directline}v3/directline`,
                            token: conversationInfo.token,
                        }),
                        styleOptions
                    },
                    document.getElementById('webchat')
                );
            })
            .catch(err => console.error("An error occurred: " + err));
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Change the bot’s default greeting

The code in the index.html file causes a topic to be called automatically when the bot is loaded. By default, it calls the system greeting topic. You can also create a new topic and divert the default system greeting topic to that new topic.

In both instances, you make changes to the topic you want to call as you would normally.

We recommend you modify the system greeting topic so that you don’t have to edit the index.html code.

Modify a system topic (recommended)

1. Select Topics in the side navigation pane.
2. Under System Topics, select the Go to authoring canvas icon on the Greeting topic row.
   
3. Edit the text inside the Message boxes. You can also add or delete additional nodes.
4. Select Save when you’re finished editing the message.
   
5. Publish your bot.
   
6. You can now test your bot by going to the web page where you deployed your bot’s custom canvas. You’ll see the bot start the conversation by automatically showing the greeting topic.
   
   

Create a new user topic

Warning: Using a user topic to start a conversation will increase your billed sessions. A billed session is an interaction between a customer and a bot and represents one unit of consumption. The billed session begins when a user topic is triggered. More information: Licensing guide.

1. Select Topics on the side navigation pane.
2. Select New topic, and give it a name.
3. Select Go to authoring canvas.
4. Add the text inside the Message node.
5. Select Save when you’ve finished editing the message.
6. Select Topics again on the side navigation pane.
7. Under System Topics, select the Go to authoring canvas icon on the Greeting topic row.
8. Delete the message nodes on the Greeting topic.
9. To automatically divert the bot to a user topic, select + to add a node, and then Go to another topic.
10. In the flyout menu, select the user topic you created above.
11. Select Save when you’ve finished editing the message.
12. Publish your bot.
13. You can now test your bot by going to the web page where you deployed your bot’s custom canvas. You’ll see the bot start the conversation by automatically showing the new topic.
    

You can also find additional documentation here.

We’d love to hear your feedback. Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

And submit your idea requests at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

Disclaimer

You may install and use the sample code included in this documentation only for use with the Microsoft Power Virtual Agents service. The sample code is licensed “as is” and is excluded from any service level agreements or support services. You bear the risk of using it. Microsoft gives no express warranties, guarantees, or conditions and excludes all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

The post Make your Power Virtual Agents bot start the conversation using a custom canvas appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

To customize the default canvas, we have an advanced solution that requires software development. Our guidance for this solution is for experienced IT professionals, such as IT admins or developers who have a solid understanding of developer tools, utilities, and IDEs. To learn more about this advanced solution, go to the customize and host your chat canvas documentation.

However, it is hard for a business user to use the above advanced solution without involving their IT department. In this blog, we will show you a simpler way to create a custom canvas. You can copy-paste the HTML code in your tools (for example, Website, Intranet, or blog) of choice where you want to show the custom canvas. You can learn the following,

• Configure the canvas with your bot
• Change the bot icon
• Change the bot name

Configure the canvas with your bot

1. Create and publish a bot.
2. After a bot is created, get the Bot ID by going to the Mobile app under Channels.
3. Copy-paste the HTML code below in a notepad and save as an index.html.
4. Update the index.html file to enter your Bot ID under var BOT_ID = “<ENTER YOUR BOT ID>“.
5. Open the index.html using a modern browser (for example, New Microsoft Edge, Chrome) to open the custom canvas.
6. Test the bot to ensure you are receiving responses from your bot and that it’s working correctly.

Alternately, you can cut-paste the code below into the w3schools.com HTML try it editor to see how it works (remember to add your Bot ID).

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Contoso Sample Web Chat</title> 
    <!-- This styling is for the canvas demonstration purposes. It is recommended 
that style is moved to separate file for organization in larger projects -->
    <style>
        html, body {
            height: 100%;
        }
        body {
            margin: 0;
        }
        h1 {
            font-size: 16px;
            font-family: Segoe UI;
            line-height: 20px;
            color: whitesmoke;
            display: table-cell;
            padding: 13px 0px 0px 20px;
        }
        #heading {
            background-color: black;
            height: 50px;
        }
        .main {
            margin: 18px;
            border-radius: 4px;
        }

        div[role="form"]{
            background-color: black;
        }        
        #webchat {
            position: fixed;
            height: calc(100% - 50px);
            width: 100%;
            top: 50px;
            overflow: hidden;
        }
      </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div>
        <div id="heading">

            <!-- Change the h1 text to change the bot name -->    
            <h1>Contoso Bot Name</h1>

        </div>
        <div id="webchat" role="main"></div>
    </div>    
  <script src="https://cdn.botframework.com/botframework-webchat/latest/webchat.js"></script>
  <script>
        const styleOptions = {
           // Add styleOptions to customize web chat canvas
           hideUploadButton: true
        };

        // Add your BOT ID below
        var BOT_ID = "<ENTER YOUR BOT ID>"; 

        var theURL = "https://powerva.microsoft.com/api/botmanagement/v1/directline/directlinetoken?botId=" + BOT_ID;
      
       fetch(theURL)
            .then(response => response.json())
            .then(conversationInfo => {
                window.WebChat.renderWebChat(
                    {
                        directLine: window.WebChat.createDirectLine({
                            token: conversationInfo.token,
                        }),
                        styleOptions
                    },
                    document.getElementById('webchat')
                );
            })
            .catch(err => console.error("An error occurred: " + err));
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Change the bot icon

Once you get the canvas working with your bot, you will be able to customize it. If you need to do some simple styling, you can set them via styleOptions. Style options are a set of predefined styles that you can modify directly, and canvas will compute the whole stylesheet based on it. You can find the full list of all settings that you can easily modify in canvas on the defaultStyleOptions.js file.

Now to change the bot icon, update the index.html file with the following sample code. If you don’t have an image URL, you can use add a Base64 encoded image string instead. Replace the bot and user avatar images with your company images.

…
const styleOptions = {
           // Add styleOptions to customize web chat canvas
            botAvatarImage: 'https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/v4sdk/media/logo_bot.svg',
            userAvatarImage: 'https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/xyz'
       
 };  
…

Change the bot name

Now change the bot name in your canvas, update the <h1> text in the index.html file with the following.

…
<body>
    <div id="chatwindow">
        <div id="heading">
            <!-- Change the h1 text to change the bot name -->
            <h1>Contoso Bot Name</h1>
        </div>
…

We’d love to hear your feedback. Please visit our community forum at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsForum and share your feedback.

And submit your idea requests at https://aka.ms/PowerVirtualAgentsIdeas.

Disclaimer

You may install and use the sample code included in this documentation only for use with the Microsoft Power Virtual Agents service. The sample code is licensed “as is” and is excluded from any service level agreements or support services. You bear the risk of using it. Microsoft gives no express warranties, guarantees, or conditions and excludes all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

The post Change your Power Virtual Agents default canvas bot icon and name appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.