{"id":2128,"date":"2022-05-24T07:55:59","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T14:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-copilot\/blog\/copilot-studio\/whats-new-the-evolution-of-power-virtual-agents\/"},"modified":"2025-01-10T10:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T18:17:09","slug":"whats-new-the-evolution-of-power-virtual-agents","status":"publish","type":"copilot","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-copilot\/blog\/copilot-studio\/whats-new-the-evolution-of-power-virtual-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s new: The evolution of Power Virtual Agents"},"content":{"rendered":"
Updated: October 11th, 2022<\/em><\/p>\n This year at Microsoft Build 2022, we are excited to announce a set of transformative and new capabilities for Microsoft Power Virtual Agents<\/a>.<\/p>\n Power Virtual Agents\u2019 new intelligent bot authoring experience now unifies the sophistication of Microsoft Azure Bot Framework Composer\u2019s pro-code capabilities with the simplicity of Power Virtual Agents\u2019 low-code platform<\/strong>\u2014making it even easier for professional developers and subject matter experts to collaboratively build a bot in one unified Microsoft bot building studio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can try out the Power Virtual Agents click-through demo now!<\/span><\/a> Last year we enabled bot builders to use Azure Bot Framework Composer and Power Virtual Agents together to build bots. Both products are optimized for different audiences and have a complementary set of strengths:<\/p>\n Bot builders have used the existing integration between Power Virtual Agents and Bot Framework Composer to create advanced conversational experiences for over a year now\u2014and it\u2019s proven very popular. So, that\u2019s why I\u2019m excited to announce that we\u2019re bringing these complementary strengths together into one, single unified bot building studio<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This new bot building approach combines\u00a0the advanced functionality of Bot Framework Composer with the ease-of-use and end-to-end bot building experience of Power Virtual Agents. Now, professional developers and subject matter experts can easily collaborate within the same studio<\/strong> to build powerful conversational bots.<\/p>\n And with this evolution\u2014and the deep and continuing integration of Bot Framework Composer and Microsoft Cognitive Services\u2014it\u2019s also the single, unified conversational AI studio from Microsoft for subject matter experts and developers alike.<\/p>\n Gartner\u00ae describes digital fusion teams as \u201cmultidisciplinary teams that blend technology and other types of domain expertise and are often designed to deliver products rather than projects\u201d. With this growing trend, Gartner also claims that at least 84 percent of companies have set up fusion teams.<\/strong>1<\/sup>\u00a0We believe these fusion teams of collaborative builders are pivotal to the success of digital projects such as conversational bot building.<\/p>\n As Power Virtual Agents is part of the Microsoft Power Platform suite, we are continuing to invest in making collaboration across fusion teams easier with capabilities like multi-authoring, Office-like commenting, and more\u2014furthering the vision of Power Virtual Agents as a collaborative bot building tool for teams.<\/p>\n Our third area of focus is adding rich and powerful authoring capabilities\u2014from developer focused features for complex dialog management to low-code experiences such as engaging multi-media responses. These include:<\/p>\n I\u2019m excited to announce that authors can create multi-channel dialogs\u00a0to handle speech scenarios side-by-side with messaging,\u00a0meaning you can truly build once and use anywhere. This will include\u00a0sophisticated capabilities like inserting Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) to tune speech characteristics\u00a0and additional customizations including silence detection, configurable timeouts, and the ability to choose from a variety of voice fonts.<\/p>\n Get access to the powerful governance management and compliance capabilities of the Microsoft Power Platform. Admins can utilize the unified admin center to control their bots and data, all within an easy-to-use multi-tenant SaaS. Features coming soon include:<\/p>\n All of these capabilities continue to be available in Power Virtual Agents globally distributed, multi-tenant SaaS. There\u2019s no infrastructure to manage, no services to stand up, no models to train\u2014just sign up, work together with your subject matter experts and developers to build your bot, connect it to your backend systems, publish it to Microsoft Teams, Websites, Facebook, or the channel of your choice, and get built-in analytics and insights on what to build next\u2014all from the same pane of glass<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And with that SaaS, of course, comes all the powerful governance, management, and compliance capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform. Power Virtual Agents is available in government clouds and is Fedramp certified. It\u2019s Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) certified for healthcare scenarios. It\u2019s payment card industry (PCI) compliant to handle payment scenarios. It is available across geos, has configurable data loss prevention policies, and gives admins complete control over their data.<\/p>\n You can launch the Power Virtual Agents click-through demo<\/a> to explore the features we\u2019re bringing to Power Virtual Agents.<\/p>\n Be sure to watch these sessions below to learn more or continue reading to find out more about the features we\u2019re lighting up in each of the themes above.<\/p>\n Power Virtual Agents\u2019 authoring canvas has been designed and re-built from the ground up, with powerful new capabilities for authoring bots.<\/p>\n Pro developers will now be able to access the advanced functionalities they know and love from Bot Framework Composer right in Power Virtual Agents, including features for working with complex logic and connecting to their external line of business applications.<\/p>\n This existing integration has been very popular amongst bot creators, but the seams between the two separate products remain a source of friction.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why we\u2019re bringing these complementary strengths from both platforms together so all bot creators can build within a single, unified bot building studio.<\/p>\n Retaining the intuitive experience that exists today, the new canvas will feature an expanded set of improved and entirely new node capabilities for topics, discoverable through a new menu and flexible property pane.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can even easily move between the visual editor and code, depending on your needs. You will be able to view and edit the code behind your topics, which is great for sharing and re-using topic logic between developers and bots.<\/p>\n\n\nWhat’s new<\/h2>\n
\nThis evolution focuses on four major themes:<\/span><\/p>\nUnified bot building for Microsoft<\/h3>\n
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Fusion teams and collaboration<\/h3>\n
Advanced authoring<\/h3>\n
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Multi-modality with speech authoring<\/h3>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n
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Feature deep dive<\/h2>\n
Unified bot building for Microsoft<\/h3>\n