Create a chatbot

To create a chatbot using Power Virtual Agents, you can follow these steps:

1. Sign in to the Power Virtual Agents portal.
2. Create a new bot and configure its name and default language.
3. Create a new topic to define the main area of focus for your chatbot.
4. Within the topic, create message nodes to define what your chatbot will say to users.
5. Create question nodes to prompt users for input and gather information.
6. Add conditions to your chatbot to help determine the appropriate responses.
7. Use trigger phrases to enable your chatbot to respond to specific user input.
8. Test and refine your chatbot until it provides effective responses to user input.
9. Publish your chatbot and make it available to users.

When building your chatbot, it’s important to consider the types of questions and scenarios it will be handling, as well as the target audience. You can also integrate your chatbot with other systems and services using Power Automate, Azure Bot Service, or other connectors, to provide users with more advanced functionality.

Create a topic

To create a new topic in Power Virtual Agents, follow these steps:

1. Open the Power Virtual Agents portal and navigate to the chatbot you want to add a topic to.
2. Click on the “Topics” tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
3. Click the “New Topic” button in the upper right corner.
4. Enter a name for your topic.
5. Click on “Add a trigger phrase” and enter a phrase that will trigger this topic when typed by a user.
6. Add one or more actions for the topic. Actions can be used to provide information, ask questions, or perform other tasks within the chatbot.
7. Save your new topic.

Once you have created a topic, you can add it to your chatbot’s authoring canvas and link it to other topics, entities, and actions as needed to create a complete chatbot experience.

Call an action

In Power Virtual Agents, an action is a reusable unit of logic that can be called from different parts of a bot conversation. To call an action in Power Virtual Agents, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the authoring canvas of your chatbot and navigate to the topic where you want to call the action.
2. Click on the “Add node” button and select “Action” from the dropdown menu.
3. In the “Action” window, select the action you want to call from the “Action” dropdown menu. If the action you want to call is not available in the list, you can create a new action by clicking on the “Create new action” button.
4. Add any required parameters to the action by clicking on the “Add parameter” button and entering the parameter name and value.
5. Click “Save” to save the action node.

Once you have added the action node to your conversation, it will call the action when the user reaches that point in the conversation. The action will execute its logic and return a result that can be used in the conversation.

Launch a Power Automate flow from a chatbot

To launch a Power Automate flow from a chatbot created in Power Virtual Agents, you can use the “Call an action” feature. Here are the steps:

1. Open your chatbot in Power Virtual Agents and navigate to the authoring canvas.
2. Click on the “+” icon to add a new message node.
3. In the message node, enter the message text that will trigger the flow, and select the “Call an action” option from the “Action” dropdown menu.
4. In the “Action” configuration pane, select “Power Automate” as the action type.
5. Choose the Power Automate flow you want to trigger from the dropdown menu. If your flow is not listed, click the “Add a new connection” button to connect to your Power Automate account.
6. Configure any additional parameters for your flow, if necessary.
7. Click “Save” to save your changes.

Once your chatbot is published and active, it will trigger the Power Automate flow when the specified message is received from the user.