Virtual Assistant

With a virtual assistant, it is possible to talk to several bots in one conversation and to create pipeline steps to allow a variety of features such as redaction and translation, among other conversational features.

A Virtual Assistant has the following components:

  • NLU Engine: NLP used for bot classification. NLU Config
  • Dispatcher: Manages orchestration of a multi bot configuration.
  • Bot Array: A set of bots that a dispatcher can route user input to.
  • Pipelines: A series of steps than can be done as messages are entering (IngressPipeline) or leaving (EgressPipeline) the ServisBOT system
  • Events: Actions tied to non-input related triggers such as session starts, or missed inputs
  • Endpoints: A default endpoint is created automatically when creating a virtual assistant. For additional endpoints make sure the target reference type is set to va.

NLU configurations

Creating a VA Tutorial

Example VA Configurations

{
  "Name" : "MoneyTransferVa",
  "Description": "A virtual assistant to aid monetary transfers",
  "DefaultBotId": "info-bot",
"Bots" : [
  {
    "Type": "BOTARMY",
    "Id": "info-bot",
    "Enabled": true,
    "Properties": {
      "Name": "info-bot"
    }
  },
  {
    "Type": "BOTARMY",
    "Id": "info-bot",
    "Enabled": true,
    "Properties": {
      "Name": "transfer-bot"
    }
  },
],
"NluEngines": [
  {
      "Id": "TestVADispatcher",
      "Type": "BOTARMY",
      "Properties": {
        "Secret": "srn:vault::netscapestg:aws-cross-account-role:awscontent-lex-x-role",
        "Nlp": "Lex"
      }
  }
],
"IngressPipeline": [
  {
    "Id": "CreditCardRedact",
    "Type": "REGEX_REDACT",
    "Properties": {
      "Regex": "(?:5[1-5][0-9]{2}|222[1-9]|22[3-9][0-9]|2[3-6][0-9]{2}|27[01][0-9]|2720)[0-9]{12}"
    }
  }
],  
"EgressPipeline": [],  
"Events": {
  "@SessionStart": [
    {
      "Id": "sessionStartMessage",
      "Type": "SEND_MESSAGE",
      "Properties": {
        "Message": "Welcome to the transfer VA. Type 'help' for more info about what I do, or 'transfer' to make a monetary transfer."
      }
    },
  ],
  "@MissedInput": []
},
"Persona": "ReportBOT",
"Tags": []  
}

VA Properties

  • Name: The name of the VA (Required)
  • Description: A description of the VA (Optional)
  • DefaultBotId: The ID of a bot to assign to the VA by default (Optional)
  • Bots: An array of bots that the VA manages (Required, minimum of 1 bot)
    • Type: The Bot type. Supported types are MOCK, BOTARMY, RASA (Required)
    • Id: A custom ID which is used to refer to this bot elsewhere in the VA config (Required)
    • Enabled: Controls whether a bot can be routed to by the VA or not
    • Properties: Other properties (Required)
      • Name: The name of the bot being referred to.
  • NluEngines: The NLU engine used to parse user input, allowing for natural language recognition. (Required)
    • Id: A custom ID used to refer to this NLU engine elsewhere in the VA config. (Required)
    • Type: The NLU engine type. Supported types are Lex and RASA. (Required)
    • Handlers: An array of different actions triggered by regex (Required)
  • IngressPipeline: A series of steps that occur when a message is sent to the VA. The steps here can include redaction for masking sensitive information, language translation, and more. (Optional)
  • EgressPipeline: The same as the IngressPipeline, just with messages that are sent out from the VA. (Optional)
  • Events: An array of events that trigger actions. (Optional) Supported events are:
    • @SessionStart: Triggers at the beginning of a conversation.
    • @MissedInput: Triggers when an incoming event cannot be understood and/or acted upon by a Bot or NLU engine.
    • @Exception: Triggers when a transient error occurs.
  • Persona: Sets the appearance of the bot in Portal (Optional)
  • Tags: Arbitrary tags for categorizing your VA. (Optional)