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    Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents: A practical guide to building intelligent chatbots with Microsoft Power Platform
    Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents: A practical guide to building intelligent chatbots with Microsoft Power Platform
    Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents: A practical guide to building intelligent chatbots with Microsoft Power Platform
    Ebook360 pages2 hours

    Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents: A practical guide to building intelligent chatbots with Microsoft Power Platform

    By Nicolae Tarla

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Power Virtual Agents is a set of technologies released under the Power Platform umbrella by Microsoft. It allows non-developers to create solutions to automate customer interactions and provide services using a conversational interface, thus relieving the pressure on front-line staff providing this kind of support.
    Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents is a guide to building chatbots that can be deployed to handle front desk services without having to write code. The book takes a scenario-based approach to implementing bot services and automation to serve employees in the organization and external customers. You will uncover the features available in Power Virtual Agents for creating bots that can be integrated into an organization’s public site as well as specific web pages. Next, you will understand how to build bots and integrate them within the Teams environment for internal users. As you progress, you will explore complete examples for implementing automated agents (bots) that can be deployed on sites for interacting with external customers.
    By the end of this Power Virtual Agents chatbot book, you will have implemented several scenarios to serve external client requests for information, created scenarios to help internal users retrieve relevant information, and processed these in an automated conversational manner.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPackt Publishing
    Release dateAug 13, 2021
    ISBN9781801072229
    Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents: A practical guide to building intelligent chatbots with Microsoft Power Platform

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      Book preview

      Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents - Nicolae Tarla

      cover.png

      


      BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

      Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents

      Copyright © 2021 Packt Publishing

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

      Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

      Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

      Publishing Product Manager: Pavan Ramchandani

      Senior Editor: Sofi Rogers

      Content Development Editor: Feza Shaikh

      Technical Editor: Saurabh Kadave

      Copy Editor: Safis Editing

      Project Coordinator: Ajesh Devavaram

      Proofreader: Safis Editing

      Indexer: Manju Arasan

      Production Designer: Aparna Bhagat

      First published: July 2021

      Production reference: 1070721

      Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

      Livery Place

      35 Livery Street

      Birmingham

      B3 2PB, UK.

      ISBN 978-1-80107-474-2

      www.packt.com

      Contributors

      About the author

      Nicolae Tarla is an independent consultant focused on business transformation through automation, enterprise architecture, and digital transformation. He has architected and implemented business solutions for over 15 years for the private and public sectors, at both enterprise and SMB levels. With a passion for CRM, he has worked with multiple platforms throughout his career and continues to recommend the best business solutions for clients.

      He was awarded the Microsoft MVP award for 4 consecutive years. He is actively involved in the leadership team for his local Dynamics 365 user group and participates in organizing local Dynamics 365 Saturday events. He continues to share his knowledge through his personal blog and other channels. His Twitter handle is @niktuk.

      About the reviewer

      Renato Romão de Souza is a Microsoft MVP who has been recognized as a valuable professional by Microsoft in the business applications category. He was recognized as Power Virtual Agents Community Founder and Power Virtual Agents Super User, for the contributions he makes in Microsoft forums on the Power Virtual Agents product. He is a senior Microsoft 365 developer focused on digital transformation with Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and other technologies.

      He has trained over 2,700 students in Power Virtual Agents through his courses. He is also the community manager of the CaquiCoders, organizing technical events with speakers from the technical community. Also, he is an associate at MTAC (Multi-Platform Technical Audience Contributor) Brasil, bringing technical content to non-profit organizations, communities, and students in Brazil and around the world.

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      Section 1: An Introduction to Power Virtual Agents

      Chapter 1: Introducing Power Virtual Agents

      What is a chatbot?

      A condensed history of bots

      Malicious use of chatbots

      Fast forward to today

      Impact on organizations

      What is Power Virtual Agents?

      The developer role in the chatbot space

      How does Power Virtual Agents add value?

      How does licensing work for chatbots?

      Summary

      Chapter 2: Licensing for Power Virtual Agents

      Introducing the licensing and pricing structure

      Understanding Power Virtual Agents and the Power Platform

      Getting access to Power Platform

      Power Platform licensing expanded

      Imposed limits on Power Platform

      Managing Power Platform licensing

      Understanding Power Virtual Agents in Microsoft 365

      Dataverse database capacity

      Dataverse file capacity

      Dataverse log capacity

      Licensing considerations

      The scenario

      Estimating usage

      Summary

      Chapter 3: Building Your First Power Virtual Agent Chatbot

      Completing the initial setup

      Creating a trial tenant for an organization account

      Creating a PVA trial

      Knowing your environment

      Creating a Power Virtual Agent

      Publishing a Power Virtual Agent

      Summary

      Section 2: Leveraging Power Virtual Agents on Your Website

      Chapter 4: Creating a Power Virtual Agent for Your Website

      Introducing a PVA for your website

      The Greeting Topic

      The Thank you Topic

      The Start over Topic

      The Goodbye Topic

      The Escalate Topic

      The End of Conversation Topic

      The Confirmed Success Topic

      The Confirmed Failure Topic

      Description of the business scenario

      Extending our basic PVA

      A look at decision logic

      Guiding the conversation

      Summary

      Chapter 5: Integrating a Power Virtual Agent into Your Website

      Testing the agent in the default demo website

      Where can we introduce a Power Virtual Agent?

      How to present our Power Virtual Agent

      One Power Virtual Agent versus many

      Summary

      Chapter 6: Handling Authentication and Personalization

      Providing generalized information to users

      Providing a personalized experience to users

      Authentication considerations

      Leveraging various data sources

      Summary

      Section 3: Leveraging Power Virtual Agents in Teams

      Chapter 7: Building a Power Virtual Agents Application for Teams

      Description of the business scenario

      Creating a Power Virtual Agents application for Teams

      Summary

      Chapter 8: Integrating the Power Virtual Agent into Teams

      Where can we introduce a Power Virtual Agent for Teams?

      How to present our Power Virtual Agent for Teams

      Sharing a bot with your organization by submitting it for admin approval

      One Power Virtual Agent versus many

      Summary

      Chapter 9: Serving Information from Various Sources

      The role of connectors in a Power Virtual Agents conversation

      Working with static data

      Working with dynamic data

      Retrieving data using available connectors

      Retrieving data from other sources

      Summary

      Section 4: Best Practices for Power Virtual Agents

      Chapter 10: Power Virtual Agents Governance

      General governance considerations

      Governance in the context of the entire Power Platform

      Security management

      Monitoring approach

      Application(s) management

      Tenant, environment, and application hygiene

      Governance of Power Virtual Agents for the web

      Governance of Power Virtual Agents for Teams

      Summary

      Chapter 11: Power Virtual Agents Best Practices

      Design and build best practices

      Putting together the right team

      Providing measurable value

      Power Virtual Agents life cycle

      Understanding your licensing constraints

      Handing off to support agents

      Defining the success factors to monitor for

      Alignment with organization goals

      Managing your starter template

      Understanding the environments

      Implementing best practices

      Starting small and building up

      Creation of the first bot versus additional bots

      Topics structured around one unit of conversation

      Writing topic trigger phrases

      Setting the expectations

      Asking questions

      Handling long-running processes

      Managing best practices

      Reviewing analytics for continuous improvements

      Deleting bots

      Known issues and working around them

      Summary

      Chapter 12: Power Virtual Agents Administration

      Managing Power Virtual Agents

      Working with environments

      Data locations for organizations

      Assigning and managing licenses

      Enabling and disabling Power Virtual Agents

      Modifying Power Virtual Agents

      Monitoring the success of Power Virtual Agents

      Troubleshooting issues

      Summary

      Other Books You May Enjoy

      Preface

      Power Virtual Agents is a set of technologies released under the Power Platform umbrella by Microsoft. It allows non-developers to create solutions to automate customer interactions and provide services using a conversational interface, thus relieving the pressure on front-line staff providing this kind of support.

      Empowering Organizations with Power Virtual Agents is a user guide to building chatbots without having to write code. The book takes a scenario-based approach to implementing bot services and automation to serve employees in the organization and external customers. You will learn about the features available in Power Virtual Agents to create automated bots that can be integrated into an organization's public site as well as specific web pages. Next, you will learn how to build bots to be integrated within the Teams environment for internal users. As you progress, you will explore complete examples for implementing automated agents (bots) that can be deployed on sites for interacting with external customers.

      By the end of this Power Virtual Agents chatbot book, you will have implemented several scenarios to serve external client requests for information, created scenarios to help internal users retrieve relevant information, and processed them in an automated conversational manner.

      Who this book is for

      This book is for organization representatives looking to automate processes, relieve the first-contact workload of their front-line agents, and provide actionable results to employees and customers. Business professionals, citizen developers, and functional consultants will also find this book helpful. Some understanding of the Modern Workplace and the Dynamics 365 family of products will be useful. Beginner-level knowledge of what the Power Platform is and its main modules will also help you to grasp the concepts covered in the book more effectively.

      What this book covers

      Chapter 1, Introducing Power Virtual Agents, introduces you to Power Virtual Agents. It provides an overview of the technology's purpose, as well as comparing the specific Microsoft offering against other similar competitors' products.  

      Chapter 2, Licensing for Power Virtual Agents, discusses the various licensing options available for implementing this functionality. 

      Chapter 3, Building Your First Power Virtual Agent Chatbot, introduces you to the most basic Power Virtual Agent scenario. The most basic chatbot we will create will greet you and engage in a basic conversation, leveraging your responses.

      Chapter 4, Creating a Power Virtual Agent for Your Website, leverages the basic knowledge we gathered in the previous chapter to extend the basic Power Virtual Agent we previously built to turn it into a fully functional agent. We will take a specific business scenario and create a more complex Power Virtual Agent. We will provide help to a user based on an existing knowledge library provided on a public site.  

      Chapter 5, Integrating a Power Virtual Agent into Your Website, discusses the various presentation formats and technical aspects of introducing a Power Virtual Agent into a public website. We will look at two different scenarios to present and trigger an automated agent on public pages. 

      Chapter 6, Handling Authentication and Personalization, delves deeper into the role of a Power Virtual Agent, with the ability to authenticate a user and provide personalized services. We will look at retrieving account details based on an already identified customer. 

      Chapter 7, Building a Power Virtual Agents Application for Teams, describes the process of building a Power Virtual Agent targeted at internal organizational stakeholders and team members. We will look at the differences between a public agent and an agent targeted at internal users.

      Chapter 8, Integrating the Power Virtual Agent into Teams, presents details on integrating and leveraging a Power Virtual Agent from within Teams. We will build a Power Virtual Agent that will provide services through Microsoft Teams. We will show in this scenario how to integrate a Power Virtual Agent into Teams.

      Chapter 9, Serving Information from Various Sources, discusses leveraging the available connectors to retrieve and present information in a conversation. We will look at a typical scenario for self-service when requesting information from your internal HR department. 

      Chapter 10, Power Virtual Agents Governance, looks at governance considerations when implementing the Power Virtual Agents functionality in an organization. 

      Chapter 11, Power Virtual Agents Best Practices, focuses on best practices when implementing Power Virtual Agents. 

      Chapter 12, Power Virtual Agents Administration, focuses on the administration of environments with Power Virtual Agents deployed. 

      To get the most out of this book

      To take full advantage of the material covered in this book, you should have access to a Power Platform environment. You can achieve this by creating a 30-day trial or using an environment already created by your organization.

      If creating a new trial environment, you should have some basic understanding of the Office 365 admin console, and the Power Platform admin console. Using these, you will manage users and environments as needed.

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