Updated 26th of January 2020 with information about licences.
Microsoft talks a lot about citizen developers, but I still haven’t seen this in real life and to be frank I think both PowerApps and Power Automate can be hard to understand sometimes. But that doesn’t stop me – especially when I heard during Microsoft Ignite that I easily can create my bots without code! Of course I want a bot!
Microsoft Power Virtual Agents is a new tool where you can create and maintain bots with a no-code interface – very exciting right? When I heard that Microsoft Power Virtual Agents is available in preview, I thought hey, let’s see how easy this actually is!
Microsoft Power Virtual Agents might mostly be for virtual agents for companies who use Dynamics 365 and sell stuff, but I mean all companies have processes we could create a QaA bot for.
Follow along when I try to create a no-code bot and add it to Microsoft Teams. For this simple test I will see if I can get the bot to ask me a couple of questions.
1. Open https://powervirtualagents.microsoft.com/ and sign up for the preview. I did it in my tenant where I’m the global admin, but it should also work if you test it in a tenant where you aren’t an admin as long as the organization accepts custom apps
2. When you’re logged in (here’s the link if it doesn’t redirect you https://powerva.microsoft.com/) you will directly be prompted to create a new bot
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3. The bot is created! Microsoft will set you in the right direction by giving lot of helpful options such as giving links to documents
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I clicked X and felt that Customize your greeting sounded like a great start 😊 There are basically three main settings for your bot: deciding what it should do, publish it and monitor the performance
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4. This is basically your bot and it already has a lot of things there from the beginning, such as responding in a lot of different ways of saying hello
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The first thing I wanted to change was to change the boring welcome text, let’s make it a little bit friendlier 😉. Just click in the message box and write whatever you feel like
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To add more steps, you hoover over the line and a + will appear, when clicking it you’ll get a bunch of options.
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I’ve noted there are different options if you click a + in the middle or in the end. If you do it in the end of the flow you can add redirect to another topic but let’s go back to topics soon.
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I think it makes sense if my bot asks a question after the initial greeting, I’ll pick Ask a question
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I did the bare minimum and added a question and two options 😊 You can save the response and do more advanced things but that’s too much for now ha-ha. Adding two options in a question will create two branches in my bot flow chart. So, it’s really easy to see what’s going on.
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Another thing I like is that I whenever can test my bot by clicking Test your bot. That’s perfect for me, so I understand where things stop working <3
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When a part on my bot flow works it’s marked with a check and a green bar so it’s obvious it works!
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Let’s get back to topics as I promised! As it just grows bigger and bigger you can make it less big by dividing the bot flow into different topics. A topic is just what is sounds, grouping similar information to a topic.
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To redirect to another topic first it needs to be created, click Topics in the left side navigation
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Here you can see your topics and system topics. I’ll click + New topic in the top. Give it a nice name and description then click Go to authoring canvas
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There you’ll have an empty canvas to start creating new steps again!
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When you are ready click Save
Ok when I want to go back to my bot, I click the topic named Greeting that I can see under System Topics, hmmm maybe I should have added so much in it… well learning by doing.
Let’s connect my question with my new topic, I’ll click the + and pick Go to another topic, in the list I’ll see all available topics.
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It’s easy to see if I’m redirecting my bot to another topic
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For my other answer I just want to end the “conversations” with the bot, so I’ll add and end.
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But the standard ending is so boring, so I actually changed the system topic to be a bit more fun.
A super simple bot with a question, text and some links but nothing more. You can make connections to Dynamics365 but that feels too hardcore for me…
Let’s test my bot before I try to publish it to Microsoft Teams, to the left you’ll see the bot and to the right you’ll see the bot flow.
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5. When the bot is ready, the next step is to publish it. I clicked on Home in the left side navigation and then Go to Publish
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6. Click on Publish, this is what you click if you madev any updates any to the bot as well
7. After that you have to add it to a channel, so click Go to Channels
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There you’ll get lots of options, but I choose Microsoft Teams of course, but you could also add it to for example a custom website.
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Click Microsoft Teams, in the bottom there’s a button that says Add – click it!
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That will generate an App ID which you’ll need later.
8. Now it’s time to jump to Microsoft Teams 🌟. First thing is to install the Microsoft Teams App Studio app
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9. Once it’s installed open it
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10. In the App Studio click Manifest editor
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11. Click Create a new app
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12. Fill out everything that is mandatory, then click Bots under Capabilities
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Click Set up
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Here you’ll choose existing bot and paste the App ID we got earlier
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I chose Personal as scope.
13. Time to test and distribute it. Under step 3 Finish click Test and distribute
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There you can first decide to try it for yourself by clicking Install
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Then add it as a bot.
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But I’ll be bold, download it and make it available for my tenant. When I click download my bot will be downloaded as a zip file.
14. To add the bot to everyone in the tenant you open the app store, in the bottom, you click Upload a custom app > Upload for tenant
If you can’t see this, you don’t have the right permissions or settings.
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And then just choose the zip file you just downloaded.
15. Now I wanted my bot to be there for everyone in my organization and I had trouble understanding how to make my bot available to chat with for the users.
What I decided on doing in the end was to add the bot as an app by changing the app policy for Microsoft Teams. So, I added Amanda the bot and the next time Luchi logged in the bot was there to help!
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I noticed that the first time a user opens Microsoft Teams after the bot was installed the bot first messages are posted until a "stop" (in my case the question" appears. Not sure how to remove that but I guess that's fine.
Another issue I had which I haven’t been able to solve is that I can’t change the name and image of the actual bot writing. But that seems to be a limitation from Microsoft at the moment 😿. Makes it look really ugly.
For a first try I’m pleased, and it was actually a lot easier than I thought.
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My grade?
I actually think it’s quite easy to create a bot and make it do easy things. But I struggled with getting the bot out to everyone and also to change the name of it 😰. I hope Microsoft will make it possible to easily change this in the future inside Power Virtual Agents.
A few use cases I can see for the Power Virtual Agents are:
FAQ as replacement for an employee handbook
Bot for the IT department answering easy questions for example how to order a new computer and what models are available
Then there are a lot of exciting things to do together with Dynamics 365, but I’ll leave that for the D365 lovers to write about.
I couldn’t find when this will be in general availability. The licensing model will be decided when Power Virtual Agents comes closer to GA.
I think you should try it, if I can do it, so can you!
Link to read more
Update added 26th of January 2020
I just received my first email about my free trial being over, 1000$/month gives you 2000 sessions. This isn't optimal from my tenant where there is one use - me. I wish there were some more options.
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