With AI and low-code development tools, IT teams can tackle the problems they know best on their own, without additional assistance from outsider developers. Putting AI-powered low-code development tools in the hands of pro developers is like handing over the keys to a solution machine. With vast, built-in app-building knowledge and conversational language prompts that guide beginners and turbo-boost pros, AI can speed the time to build solutions for the unique needs of your IT department.

By using AI and low-code development, IT teams can build smart, fast solutions to their own problems—problems exacerbated by growing demands on data. CIOs who can bring AI-powered low-code and no-code solutions to their employees are putting their organizations in prime position to drive innovation.

Use cases for an AI-powered, low-code development platform abound, especially in an organization’s IT department, but we’ll focus on the five things we’d imagine IT teams would want to start doing if they were empowered with those tools today.

1. Offloading boring, repetitive, and mundane tasks to custom AI assistants

Imagine getting your team to use a low-code development platform to build a self-service assistant capable of handling the most common IT support requests in real time.

Instead of writing code, beginner and pro developers on the team can use simple, everyday English to guide the development process, speeding things along. And if your platform can connect with knowledge base systems like Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio do, then they can build a tool that automates the retrieval of documentation, FAQs, and previous support tickets so employees who need help can get accurate support without the need for human intervention.

Even if your organization still relies on legacy IT systems, AI and low-code can build bridges to older tools with UI, API, DPA, and RPA automation capabilities that can help automate tasks like data entry, report generation, and system monitoring that would otherwise dominate time and tie up people.

To find out how Copilot Studio can help your organization’s IT department, try a demo today.

2. Providing a secure, streamlined process for resetting employee passwords

To dig deeper into AI and low-code development to build tools that automate mundane tasks, consider the process for resetting employee passwords—something that comes with considerable security implications.

With AI-powered low-code development tools, an IT team can create a secure, streamlined process for resetting employee passwords that gets employees back online while enhancing overall identity management.

For instance, a system could be built that verifies user identity through multi-factor authentication (MFA) and biometric checks. Once the requester has been reviewed and approved as authorized, reset instructions could be passed along automatically, minimizing downtime for the employee requesting the reset while allowing IT support staff to focus on other tasks.

The system could also analyze user patterns to detect and flag suspicious activity, like too many reset attempts or reset requests originating from an unusual location, adding an extra layer of protection. With low-code platforms, these complex identity verification processes can be implemented quickly and efficiently, reducing the burden on IT staff while maintaining high security standards.

3. Empowering employees to troubleshoot technical issues through self-service

Some technical issues require human intervention, but many don’t. To free your human experts for your organization’s most challenging problems, help them design the self-service solution that could handle the most common requests that dominate their time.

For example, consider a complaint about a slow computer.

A generative AI-enabled self-service tool developed with AI on a low-code platform hears the user’s “slow computer” complaint, and then runs a series of diagnostic tests to determine the issue. Once the issue has been identified, the tool can generate instructions on what to do next.

This allows your IT experts to focus on more complex and critical problems, improving overall productivity and support quality within the organization.

To see how your IT department can use AI-powered low-code development to build a self-service help desk assistant with Copilot Studio, try a demo today

4. Making sure the right human beings get assigned the right tasks

About those complex and critical problems requiring human intervention—AI can actually help with making sure incoming helpdesk requests get to the right human agents.

Take the self-service tool we described above. Through the process of scanning incoming helpdesk requests, it can identify details that could help with prioritization and delegation. Once an issue’s urgency, complexity, and possible impact on the organization has been considered, the tool can direct tasks requiring human assistance to the teams or individuals best suited to help.

That way, team members can focus on what they do best, swiftly resolving critical issues and timely handling of less urgent tasks. This not only optimizes resource allocation, but also enhances overall service quality and response times within the IT department.

5. Logging service tickets and providing automatic status updates

Finally, instead of having to field status questions from waiting users, the IT team can build itself a tool for handling the task automatically.

On low-code platforms like Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio, for example, the process would be easy. Without extensive coding knowledge, an IT team member could build an AI assistant that connects to whatever IT service management (ITSM) platform the company uses, and runs through the steps of creating, assigning, and updating tickets automatically, providing update notifications to employees via email, Teams, or other communication platforms.

If the team integrates its assistant with a network monitoring tool, it could even detect some likely issues before they have a chance to impact users. For example, if a connected monitoring tool detects an issue, the helpdesk assistant can create a ticket in the ITSM system that includes details from the monitoring tool alert, assigns an accurate priority level, and enables swift resolution of the issue.

Integrating AI and low-code can transform your IT strategy

We’ve walked through just a few examples of how IT departments can begin with AI-powered low-code development right away, but many more use cases, workflows, and connections are possible.

Integrating AI and low-code development tools revolutionizes IT departments by streamlining processes, enhancing productivity, and enabling rapid innovation. From automating repetitive tasks to improving ticket resolution times and empowering self-service troubleshooting, AI-powered low-code solutions unlock immense potential for IT teams.

By adopting these tools, organizations can optimize resource allocation, facilitate timely responses, and drive continuous improvement.

Start using AI-powered low-code development today to transform your IT strategy and stay ahead in the digital landscape. To find out how Copilot Studio can help your organization’s IT department, try a demo today.

The post 5 ways IT departments can get started with low-code and AI  appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Many organizations use SharePoint to power their employee-facing websites, delivering experiences that streamline the way employees interact with the organization and with each other. SharePoint is also the content management platform behind OneDrive, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services.

In 2023, we announced Generative AI features in Microsoft Copilot Studio that transform the traditional model of bot development and allow makers to build copilots that respond to questions, simply by pointing the copilot at knowledge sources like public websites or content stored in SharePoint and OneDrive. Given all the content that is already managed in SharePoint, the Generative Answers capability makes it easier than ever to create an employee-facing, conversational AI experience, that can answer questions on topics like personal time-off, perks and benefits or company policies.

Copilots created with Copilot Studio can be easily published to Microsoft Teams and other channels. However, many use cases would benefit from copilots deployed directly on SharePoint sites, allowing a conversational experience grounded in the sites’ pages and documents. For example, think about a SharePoint site consolidating HR related information, with an embedded copilot answering employee questions and referencing the relevant HR policies.

This can be achieved using the new code sample: the component included in the sample allows copilots created with Microsoft Copilot Studio to be wrapped and published to SharePoint sites as a floating widget. The component also supports SSO, so users would do not have to provide their credentials or use the validation code required by the standard copilot canvas.

How does the new code sample work?

This sample includes a SharePoint Framework Extension (SPFx) component which acts as a wrapper for copilots created with Microsoft Copilot Studio.

A user accessing a SharePoint site has already signed-in using their Microsoft Entra ID credentials. The SPFx component, embedded natively in SharePoint sites, acquires a token for the user, and exchanges the token with the copilot, allowing the copilot to access protected data sources, like SharePoint and OneDrive, on the user’s behalf.

For example, a user with access to a SharePoint site dedicated to Perks and Benefits will be able to interact with an embedded copilot, by asking questions like “do we get reimbursed for professional training?”. The copilot will answer the user’s questions based on the site’s pages and documents, but only those to which the user already has access. Most of this flow is made possible by the Generative Answers capability, with the SPFx component handling single sign-on, so users do not have to enter credentials or a validation code.

How can I deploy the component on my SharePoint site?

Creating a wrapper for Copilot Studio that can be deployed in SharePoint, with SSO support, can be somewhat of an involved process. It requires an understanding of the SPFx framework, as well as setting up the required permissions in Azure.

Luckily, the code sample comes with a step-by-step guide, with detailed instructions on how to:

• Set up the app registration configurations required for SSO.
• Set up a Generative Answers node for your copilot, over a SharePoint or OneDrive data source.
• Build the SPFx component from scratch and bind it to your copilot.
• Upload the component to the tenant app catalog and deploy on a site.

Suggest feedback or report issues related to the sample here

The post Deploy a custom copilot to SharePoint, with a seamless single sign-on experience appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Following this feedback, we’re thrilled to announce the Copilot Studio implementation guide. This detailed guide is designed to help customers, partners, and Microsoft teams review copilot projects and architectures for a smooth and effective implementation journey.

Get ready for a comprehensive review of your Copilot Studio project

The Copilot Studio implementation guide provides a framework to do a 360-degree review of your project. Through probing questions, it highlights potential risks and gaps, aims at aligning the project with the product roadmap, and shares guidance, best practices and reference architecture examples.

Users of the implementation review are guided at each step of the journey with the side pane that provides more context on the questions or features, shares best practices, and includes links to additional resources.

Inspired by the Success by Design framework – a tried and tested Microsoft methodology used for Business Applications implementations – this review aims to detect bad patterns, identify risks, share best practices, and showcase example implementations.

Key principles behind the review

The Success by Design framework, the backbone of this review process, is centered around three critical principles:

1. Early Discovery: Identifying and dealing with potential issues at the earliest stage.
2. Proactive Guidance: Giving robust advice ahead of issues emerging, preventing potential problems.
3. Predictable Success: Providing a roadmap for success, using tested strategies and methods, and avoiding common pitfalls and anti-patterns.

Areas covered by the review

The Copilot Studio implementation guide covers these chapters:

• An overview of the project
• Architecture overview
• Language
• AI functionalities
• Integrations & channels
• Security, monitoring & governance specifications
• Application lifecycle management
• Analytics & KPIs
• Gaps & top requests
• Dynamics 365 Omnichannel (optional)

How is the implementation review typically delivered?

While it was initially delivered by Microsoft, the Copilot Studio implementation guide can now be used autonomously by customers and partners. It is designed to be a living document that can be updated throughout the project lifecycle.

Get the Copilot Studio implementation review today!

Download the Copilot Studio implementation review and provide feedback directly on GitHub, using this issue template.

We are confident that this tool will be beneficial to those implementing Copilot Studio and eagerly anticipate your feedback. Here’s to empowering more successful transformations with Microsoft Copilot Studio!

The post New Microsoft Copilot Studio implementation guide appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Bot builders now have two ways of utilizing the Azure OpenAI Service within Power Virtual Agents. First, out of the box within Power Virtual Agents (SaaS) with features like Generative Answers/Actions and Copilot. Secondly, configure your own Azure OpenAI Service from the Azure AI Studio (PaaS) and connect it to PVA.

Keep reading to learn more about the scenarios and use cases for each technology.

What was previously announced?

At Microsoft Build, Power Virtual Agents showcased its latest generative AI feature, Generative Actions, that chains together requests using the Azure OpenAI Service to automatically detect and use plugins to best answer the questions being asked, with no prior topic building. It doesn’t stop there; the feature can generate clarifying questions to ask a customer or employee for additional information where it is missing from the selected plugins.

Power Virtual Agents has two additional features that utilize the Azure OpenAI Service;  Generative Answers, which allows for boosted conversational coverage by dynamically generating multi-turn answers based on an organization’s content in real-time and Copilot, which helps build, design, and modify bot topics through natural language. With all three features, companies can leverage these technologies together with the brand-new authoring canvas in Power Virtual Agents to get started creating and authoring meaningful conversational experiences in days.

The Generative Answers, Generative Actions and Copilot features use the Azure OpenAI Service and come ready to use in Power Virtual Agents. Azure OpenAI Service (AOAI) is a PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering by Microsoft that is provisioned and hosted by Microsoft Azure. Power Virtual Agents is Microsoft’s SaaS offering that takes a dependency on AOAI and by doing so creates a layered, managed feature set that works seamlessly. Both features work collaboratively together to solve those problems to provide superior conversational experiences for customers, agents, and internal employees.

What do both products do?

Both Power Virtual Agents (PVA) and Azure OpenAI Service aim to solve key business problems such as increasing deflection and reducing the cost to serve, while still providing detailed and accurate responses and reducing development time to allow organizations to quickly iterate and adapt to customer’s needs.

Power Virtual Agents is Microsoft’s modern and generative bot-building platform. Power Virtual Agents acts as a conversational and generative AI platform, making the process of creating, publishing and deploying a bot to any number of channels simple and accessible for every organization to use. From developers to business users, Microsoft Power Virtual Agents empowers everyone to create intelligent bots in a single experience.  Additionally, integration with over 1000+ Power Automate connectors makes integrating with your own enterprise services easy, including your own APIs, to provide contextual information within a bot experience. Power Virtual Agent utilizes the Azure OpenAI Services and provides extensive functionality in those features.

Azure OpenAI Service (including the new On Your Data feature) allows professionals to utilize a GPT model and to be used alongside existing business technology. Using Azure OpenAI Service on your data feature, organizations can target their organizational data and provide the same deployment experience as web app or API. Today, IKEA and Volvo are two Azure customers experimenting with the new feature in public preview. For both product types, more advanced configuration and customization can be done through fine tuning, prompt engineering and chunking.

Each of these technologies has distinct benefits based on the use cases, potential future needs and maintenance to support those use cases. Generative AI ‘question and answer’ scenarios, also referred to as ‘Retrieval Augmented Generation’ (RAG), leverages data sources to provide background context or in some cases domain specific knowledge to ‘ground’ the question being asked to increase the likelihood of a more accurate response. ‘Grounded’ data is a term used so that the question is grounded to the content and configuration you have provided, therefore more relevant to your organization.

Discovery Guidance

With that in mind, the following questions can help provide guidance to support determining a path based on what data you as a company want to use to ‘ground’ the question:

•   Security model: how is this data secured and protected?
•   What level of control do you require: How much control is needed over the searching of the data, prompts and output format? Additionally, consideration in this section includes the ability to manage and buy additional cloud services and data pipelines.

Both Power Virtual Agents and Azure OpenAI Service on your data provide the capabilities for ‘grounding’ your queries and customer data are not used for training, and it is not retained. 

The diagram below provides an overview of three core Conversational AI services by Microsoft and outlines a comparison of features focused on the three themes highlighted above to help support these discussions within your organization or with your customers.

To further support the discussion within your organization or with your customers, let’s review possible implementations where Power Virtual Agents is used with out-of-the-box features and then also extended with Azure OpenAI services.

Using PVA with Generative Answers (utilizing Azure Open AI)

•   Datastores :
  • Public Websites
  • Internal Documentation on SharePoint and OneDrive
  • Specific documents to be uploaded and
  • File Upload
  • 3^rd Party Data at runtime based on connectivity with Power Automate and using GPT answers at node level (see below)
•   For data elsewhere, it would depend on where that is, access and if that data is going to be moved. Added complexity occurs with multiple data stores. Azure OpenAI on your Data offers more flexibility for use cases where that is a requirement.

You can use PVA together with the Generative Answers and additionally use the Azure OpenAI Service:

•   Azure OpenAI Service APIs
  • Trained on the internet, can use any data and not specifically your company’s data.
  • Can include fine tuning etc.
  • Requires organizations to build and manage their own data pipelines & cloud services.

Azure OpenAI APIs can be used with Power Virtual Agents as an API and built into workflow logic and data architecture, for example, to be used as a plugin/action within specific topics using Power Automate.

•   Azure OpenAI Service On Your Data
  • Not trained on the internet and only on data you specify (‘grounded’)
  • Can include fine tuning etc.
  • Currently available using direct files, Blob storage and Azure Cognitive Search
  • Can be used as an API and built into your workflow logic and data architecture for example, to be used as a plugin/action within specific topics.

Azure OpenAI Service on your data can also be used with Power Virtual Agents as an API and provides a distinct experience of only utilizing the grounded data specialized. As with all implementations of AI, Responsible AI principles are important, and you can utilize Microsoft’s Responsible AI guidelines and tools here.

Extending the generative AI experience within Power Virtual Agents in scenarios where organizations require customization and fine tuning provides Bot Authors with the capabilities to use the low code authoring canvas in Power Virtual Agents, out of the box generative AI features, and where there are organizational requirements that require more customization, we are making it even easier to leverage Azure OpenAI on your data to meet those requirements with the ability to connect Azure on your Data directly by adding the connection string from Azure OpenAI on your data service within the node, providing the capability to ‘directly deploy’ from Azure OpenAI on your data to Power Virtual Agents from within the Azure OpenAI Studio.

Get started building your Conversational Experiences today!

Get started today with Power Virtual Agents with generative AI experiences:

• Sign up for Power Virtual Agents
• Try Generative Answers directly in your browser!
• Review of the latest features in Power Virtual Agents in our latest training material
• Take a look at Azure on your Data in Microsoft Azure today here!
• Read how to connect Power Virtual Agents with Azure on your data.

Thank you to all the teams involved in making this interoperability possible between products to help drive positive customer outcomes including Jeff Derstadt, Jim Lewallen, Neta Haiby, Mai Nguyen, Jack Rowbotham, Andy Beatman, Pavan Li and Ben Ufuk Tezcan

The post Create Generative AI solutions with Power Virtual Agents and Azure OpenAI Services appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

With this announcement comes some big updates to Power Virtual Agent’s supporting materials and documentation covering the latest functionality.  Customers and partners can now use the latest content including Power Virtual Agents in a Day (PVAiaD) student and instructor content.

What is a Power Virtual Agents in a Day event?

Power Virtual Agents in a Day is part of Microsoft’s In a Day (XIAD) program that is a one-day hands-on Partner led workshop for end users that provides new skills to help customers use and adopt Power Platform products, and advocate within their organization. Organizations can also choose to take the content and run their own events internally within their company and can be used generally by anyone who wants to use it for learning and training.

PVAID includes specific lab content for students, and for instructors, materials for them to run the event for their students. Microsoft Partners can become an XIAD Partner by reviewing the material on how to sign up as a XAID Partner, the program requirements and follow the process to create Microsoft affiliated events on the Microsoft Events page for people to sign up.

Power Virtual Agents in a day – Reimagined

As a result of the new release and the feedback we have received for both Power Virtual Agents latest features and pilots we have run across the last 6 months in the XIAD Communities, the product group have taken the time to review the opportunity we have to serve all the areas that the product operates in, including Low Code, Data and AI, Business Applications and Modern Work and create flexible material that can be catered for all these different areas and domains, especially where Microsoft Partners also have different specialisms and areas of expertise that should be promoted and utilized within the events they run.

To take this feedback into consideration, we are excited to share the latest version of Power Virtual Agents in a Day has been refined with the following updates:

• Labs are no longer dependent on each other and instead have ‘recommendations’ on pre-requisite labs that are not mandatory. Students can move to the next lab without finishing the lab if required and would not be ‘stuck’ as there are no dependencies in an environment to complete a lab.
• We have created a format where foundational product content that covers fundamentals can be covered in approx. half a day and extended using elective modules based on the type of event and expertise of the Partner. There will be upcoming guidance on a ‘standard’ or ‘typical’ format if the Partner did not want to customize the agenda themselves.
• By providing flexibility for extensive modules, these will be published within an elective library with the instructor material and within Microsoft Learn when the content is created and updated. Catering for the extensibility of the product to support additional applications.
• We have expanded on the fundamental content and created brand new fundamental content to highlight key features including NLU, Generative AI Features and Labs, including Generative Answers and Copilot, and Power Automate, in addition to “how to plan for a PVA project” using the Power CAT PVA Playbook
• The Lab material is now on Microsoft Learn to help distribute content easier for students.

The new Instructor material includes:

• The main instructor deck that is used to walk through the labs with the students now includes a brand new introductory session that the instructor presents which includes Conversational AI fundamentals, approaches, and considerations when working with Power Virtual Agents and a core introduction to PVA to help set the scene for the day and educate on key terminology that students may not be familiar with
• The initial Train the Trainer deck has been updated and covers the latest updates and how to run a PVAIAD event.
• Instructions on setting up environments and users (unchanged from previous material)

Next steps:

Get started with Power Virtual Agents in a Day and ensure you are signed up to be a PVAIAD Partner. As a Microsoft Partner, you can generate interest and thought leadership in the latest AI features for customers within Power Virtual Agents. If you’re a customer, either consider joining a Partner led event or run your own internal event using this content!

• As a student, check out the Microsoft Learn Power Virtual Agents in a day NEW Lab Content here
• Review the latest Instructor material.
• Microsoft Partners to check out the latest content on the Power Platform Hub
• Provide feedback on PVAIAD – Power Virtual Agents in a Day Updates – Feature Requests | Product Roadmap

For more information reach out to xiadevents@microsoft.com

The post Power Virtual Agents in a Day Update – New Canvas, New Content! appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

We heard from our community that you want to be able to try out Power Virtual Agents’ new features before buying. Well, now you can by combining Microsoft’s 365 Developer plan, Power Apps Developer plan, and the Power Virtual Agents trial.

Follow these four easy steps below to get set up and try out all the new features like advanced topic management, interactive adaptive cards, multi-media responses (images, videos, quick replies), PowerFX, variable management, and more! 

Getting started:

1. Obtain a personal account

Use a personal account that you’re happy to use for signing up for the Microsoft Developer Account. If you do not have a personal account, you can create a new one with Outlook.

2. Sign up for a Microsoft 365 Developer Account

Use the personal account to sign up for the Microsoft 365 Developer Program.

By signing up for the Microsoft 365 Developer Account, you will receive new credentials ending with ‘onmicrosoft.com’. This account is not to be confused with your company’s login. These will be your credentials for the next step.

The Microsoft 365 Developer program provisions the tenant, Office and other supplementary apps.

Tip: Incognito/InPrivate browsers work best when logging in to prevent login conflicts between any accounts already logged in.

Note: When making a new Microsoft 365 Developer Account from a brand new personal account, you may need to wait a few hours for your account to be completed.

3. Attaching the Power Apps Developer plan to your account

This Microsoft 365 Developer account is used to attach both the Power Apps Developer Plan and the Power Virtual Agent Trial to.

What’s included in the Power App Developer plan?

• Free development and testing of Power Apps/ Power Automate – Easily share and collaborate with others. (Step 4 adds Power Virtual Agents)
• Developer-friendly – Utilize Power Automates’ 900+ data sources, including premium connectors like Azure, Dynamics 365, and custom APIs.
• Dataverse included – A fully managed, scalable, Azure-backed data platform. 

To attach the Power Apps Developer Plan, follow the instructions outlined here – Create a developer environment using the ‘onmicrosoft.com’ work credentials from the previous step.

4. Get creating with Power Virtual Agents

Once you have set up the Power Apps development environment, go to the Power Virtual Agents trial, log in with your new credentials and complete the sign up.

Since the Power Apps Developer Plan includes Microsoft Dataverse, it means you can use Power Automate and Dataverse to connect to Power Virtual Agents, which unlocks even more of the possibilities within your bots!

Now you should be all set up to create your first bot and get testing!

Don’t forget to share your creations!

Be sure to share your latest Power Virtual Agents creation with our Twitter and LinkedIn channels. As a reminder, please do not share any sensitive data via screenshots/videos.

Happy bot building!

The post Signing up for a developer plan for Power Virtual Agents appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

But what truly made this feature release a success? The power of COMMUNITY!

We love working with our global community members who bring best practices, technical skills and opportunities to shine, share and celebrate Power Virtual Agents.

Keep reading to see all of the fantastic resources that the Power Platform community members have created.

Kevin Stratvert: Power Virtual Agents Chatbot Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial, Kevin shows how you can build your own intelligent chatbots using the new Power Virtual Agents unified authoring canvas.

Follow Kevin Stratvert on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, website.

Rishona Elijah (MVP) gives a tour PVA unified authoring canvas

In this article, Rishona gives an overview of changes and new features:

• Use Power Fx to handle additional logic
• Create adaptive cards from the PVA interface
• Add multiple message variations
• Easily insert images & videos

Article: Power Virtual Agents unified canvas: overview of changes and new features.

Follow Rishona Elijah on Twitter, LinkedIn, website, Microsoft MVP profile.

Dian Taylor (MVP) advanced authoring canvas preview

Dian’s article and video gives the new unified authoring canvas a deep-dive on setting variable nodes, using Power Fx formulas, handling list variables, and how to dynamically retrieve and use values from Dataverse and Dynamics 365 in her chatbot.

Article: Power Virtual Agents: advanced authoring canvas preview.

Follow Dian Taylor on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, website, Microsoft MVP profile.

Ben den Blanken blogs about adding vertical buttons with the new canvas

Ben shows you how to add Vertical Buttons to a Power Virtual Agents question by using the new advanced authoring canvas to do so. This used to require Bot Framework Composer, but not anymore!

Article: Adding Vertical Buttons to Power Virtual Agents – Revisited.

Follow Ben den Blanken on Twitter, LinkedIn, website.

Daniel Christian (MVP) gives an overview of the new PVA features

In this video, Daniel demonstrates some of the new unified authoring features, with a look at the overall new design changes, the enhancements in the messages and controls focusing on the basic and adaptive cards, the Power Fx functions available and the new topic management capabilities.

Follow Daniel Christian on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft MVP profile.

Joe Gill (MVP) explains how to use Power Fx in the latest version of Power Virtual Agents

In Joe’s article, it includes how to use Power Fx in the authoring canvas and how it greatly enhances the ability to add capabilities like data validation and manipulation directly in your bot rather than relying on Power Automate.

Article: Power Fx -Power Virtual Agents.

Follow Joe Gill on Twitter, LinkedIn, website, Microsoft MVP profile.

Kent Weare (Microsoft) checks out the new PVA unified experience

In this video, Kent checks out the new PVA unified experience that includes support for Adaptive Cards, Setting Variables, message variation and much more.

Follow Kent Weare on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, website.

Gary Pretty (Microsoft) showcases the new PVA on Power CAT Live

In this discussion between Gary Pretty and Phil Topness, Gary shows what’s new and what’s coming to give you more control over your bots and include the power of Bot Framework Composer in Power Virtual Agents. Power Fx is now integrated across the Power Virtual Agents canvas and gives you more power than ever.

Follow Gary Pretty on Twitter, LinkedIn, website.

Power Virtual Agents featured at the Power Platform French Summit

Power Virtual Agents also got a lot of coverage at the Power Platform French Summit with customer testimonials and deep-dives and demos of the new unified authoring canvas.

More no-code/low-code power in the new version of PVA (in French)

Follow Henry Jammes on Twitter, LinkedIn.

PVA used for employee gamification at Bolloré Transport & Logistics (in French)

Follow Clément Aumeunier on LinkedIn.

Follow Laurent Joseph on Twitter, LinkedIn.

Follow Cheick Diallo on LinkedIn.

Use virtual agents to optimize employee and customer service (in French)

Follow Henry Jammes on Twitter, LinkedIn.

PVA as one of the use cases to integrate the Power Platform with SAP (in French)

Follow Rémi Chambard on LinkedIn.

Follow Raphaël Botzon on LinkedIn.

Want to be part of the Power Virtual Agents community? check out the forum to connect with peers, share ideas, and learn from experts

The post Power Virtual Agents + Community = Best practices for the new advanced authoring canvas appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Process Advisor is a feature of Power Automate that allows you to gain a better understanding of your business processes so you can optimize them. Process advisor offers task mining and process mining capabilities to do this.

To help get you started, process advisor offers several templates, including one for Power Virtual Agents.

What’s new compared to the previous template?

The process advisor offers a dialog map of how conversations have flown between topics, redirects, and their outcome. It focuses on activities that can be easily isolated versus the previous template that focused on individual, truncated, user and bot text messages.

The new template also comes with performance improvements, allowing it to run on large volumes of conversation transcripts.

The analytics tab of the Process Advisor Power Virtual Agents Template

What data does it use?

When using the Power Virtual Agents template, you can optionally provide a bot id. Process advisor then retrieves the conversation transcripts that are stored in the current Dataverse environment you are deploying the process advisor template in.

What are the available metrics?

The new power Virtual Agents process advisor template surfaces the session indicators below from your conversation transcripts.

• Triggered topics
• Redirects (either dialog or topic)
• Events when no topic is identified or when a “did you mean” is thrown.
• Confirmed success or failure
• CSAT scores
• Outcome of the session (resolved, escalated, abandoned).

A few additional attributes are also surfaced to further slide and dice:

• Activity Type
• Bot ID
• Bot Name
• Component Name
• Component Schema Name
• Component Type
• Conversation ID
• Conversation Start
• Conversation Transcript ID
• Session End
• Session Outcome
• Session Start
• Session Turns
• User ID

Process advisor also offers additional out-of-the-box insights and metrics that you can use to identify the activities that take the most time with your users.

Join our Power Virtual Agents community to share your ideas, provide your comments, and help drive the future direction of our product development.

The post New Process Advisor template enables deeper insight into bot conversation flows appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

Hear from Gary Pretty and Phil Topness on the new capabilities now available within the Power Virtual Agents studio.

Here are some of the things that are new in the Preview:

Unified bot building for Microsoft

Professional developers and subject matter experts can easily collaborate within the same studio to build powerful conversational bots together. Developers are already familiar with the sophisticated functionality of Bot Framework Composer and subject matter experts and fusion teams have long used Power Virtual Agents to easily create and manage their bots end to end. Those capabilities are now unified within a single, powerful building experience – making Power Virtual Agents the single bot building tool for professional developers and subject matter experts alike.

Showcasing the new Power Virtual Agents canvas re-designed from the ground up

Advanced authoring

Rich and powerful authoring capabilities, including developer-focused features for complex dialog management to low-code experiences. Some highlights:

• Support for interactive adaptive cards and multi-media responses (images, videos, quick replies) help make conversations richer
• It is now incredibly easy to store, transform, reuse, and work with data that a bot gathers through the conversation – a common need for professional developers. Using the integrated Power Fx editor, builders can connect to a backend custom API using Microsoft Power Platform connectors, receive a response, parse it, extract the necessary information, and easily transform the information using Power Fx for use within the conversation. For example, asking a user for their employee ID, connecting to a backend payroll system that returns a blob, cracking it open and extracting salary information, and presenting it to the user is now all possible within the graphical experience.
• Advanced flexibility for common conversation behavior, such as fine control over how your bot disambiguates a user intent or handles fallback and escalation scenarios. Bot builders now have control over dialog behavior, including custom validation rules, the number of times to re-prompt following an invalid answer, and what the bot should do if your users get stuck.
• Enabling your bot to react to event, such as when a spot opens up or a package arrive, with event extensibility and contextual triggers (coming soon).

Fusion teams and collaboration

Throughout the industry, bots are increasingly being built and managed in-house by multidisciplinary teams of subject matter experts, developers, and IT power users. Power Virtual Agents is an ideal conversational AI studio for teams working together to build bots and conversational experiences because users can easily collaborate within the graphical canvas, with multi-authoring support and powerful, Office like collaboration and commenting capabilities.

Governance, management, and compliance

Power Virtual Agents provides bot builders access to the host of powerful admin, governance and self-management capabilities that Power Platform offers: lifecycle management, a unified admin center, and configurable data loss prevention policies to control bots and data. Additionally, Power Virtual Agents comes with numerous compliance and regulatory certifications that users commonly need:

• For government users, Power Virtual Agents is Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certified. Learn more
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) certified for healthcare scenarios
• For payment scenarios, Power Virtual Agents is PCI compliant to handle payments.
• Other compliance offerings include System and Organization Controls (SOC), multiple International Organization Standards (ISO), and many more.

Full compliance offerings available here.

Configurable data loss prevention policies in the Power Platform Admin Center

You can also read about all the new features in detail here

Getting started

1. Go to aka.ms/tryPVA and login in to your existing Power Virtual Agents account or sign up for a free trial (or even explore the click-through demo)
2. After you land in the product, click the ‘Create’ tab in the left navigation menu.
3. Click the option to ‘Try the unified canvas (preview)’ to create a bot with the new capabilities.
   

   Power Virtual Agents’ new unified canvas button

4. Select ‘Continue’ to continue with creating a new preview bot. Once ready, you can begin exploring the new capabilities.

Limited time offer

Power Virtual Agents and additional chat sessions are available at a limited-time price of $200 (base) and $100 (add-ons) respectively.

This is the equivalent of 10c per virtual agent session (100 turns of conversation, or about 0.1c cents per turn), including full Power Virtual Agents features and connected Power Automate cloud flows with 1000+ prebuilt connectors.

You can purchase directly via the website or speak with your Microsoft or licensing solution provider.

Beginning your journey

As always, these new capabilities continue to be available in Power Virtual Agents’ globally-distributed, multi-tenant SaaS, backed by the full power of Power Platform and the Microsoft cloud.

There’s no infrastructure to manage, no services to stand up, no complex AI models to train — just sign up, work together with your subject matter experts and developers to build your bot within the graphical studio, connect it to your backend systems with hundreds of pre-built connectors and the built-in capabilities of Power Automate – and start talking with your users in Microsoft Teams, websites, Facebook, or the channel of your choice. You can even access built-in analytics on how your bot is performing and insights on what to build next—all from within the same pane of glass.

The launch of our new unified authoring canvas is another step along our continuing journey to democratize conversational AI. With the continuing integration of Bot Framework capabilities and Azure Cognitive Services into Power Virtual Agents, bot creators of all stripes – from subject matter experts to developers – have a single, unified conversational AI studio from Microsoft for all their bot-building needs.

Happy Bot Building!

Omar Aftab
Vice President, Conversational AI

Got questions?

Check out the community page to ask, share and collaborate on the solutions you’re building. 

The post Power Virtual Agents’ new advanced authoring canvas appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

In this 32-page playbook, we will discuss the following topics:

• Engagement Principles
• Project Team Structure
• Stakeholder Management
• Sample Project Overview
• Workstreams
• Bot Development Lifecycle
• Testing
• Capacity Modeling
• Go-Live Readiness
• Post Go-Live Support
• Reviewing Goals (Outcomes)
• Licensing
• Sample Templates

The playbook is available now at https://aka.ms/pvaplaybook.

Additional Power CAT resources:

• Power Virtual Agents – Architecture Series
• ‘Build a Bot’ YouTube Playlist

The post Announcing Power Virtual Agents Customer Playbook appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.