Adding context to a chat conversation by using Person or application data

BMC Helix Chatbot can obtain certain attributes of Person data, such as preferred name, email, and job title, in a chat context without seeking this information from the end users. In addition to the out-of-the-box Person data attributes, an application business analyst and an administrator can configure any other application data to be added to chat context. As a result, chat users get faster resolution to their issues without having to answer obvious questions.

Out-of-the-box attributes provided for chat context

The following table provides the list of out-of-the-box attributes from the Person record definition and the corresponding existing and new chat context variables. 

Out-of-the-box process 

The out-of-the-box Get Chat Context Variables process includes chat context variables for each attribute in the Person record definition. 

The following image depicts the out-of-the-box Get Chat Context variables process:

Before you begin

To ensure that BMC Helix Chatbot can connect to BMC Helix Platform, you must add Watson credentials in BMC Helix Innovation Studio. For more information, see  Configuring cognitive service for custom applications by using IBM Watson activated by BMC .

Workflow for configuring application data to use as chat context

The following table provides the steps that an application business analyst and an administrator performs to configure data to be used as the chat context:

To select application data in a process

1. Log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio and navigate to the Workspace tab.

2. Click BMC Chatbot > Processes tab. 

3. Select the Custom Chat Context Variables Template process and copy the process.  
   To avoid errors in the process, do not edit the Custom Chat Context Variables Template process directly. 

4. Save the process by a different name.

5. Update the output variables of the process as required. 
   Start the output chat context variable names with chatbot_, for example, chatbot_country. Also, use only alphanumeric characters.

   Tip

   The chatbot usage reports displayed on the Chatbot dashboard are filtered by the Site—the default value mapped to the $chatbot_locationName variable.

   If you want to filter the chatbot reports by country, you can change the mapping of the $chatbot_locationName variable to Country. To learn more about the chatbot reports, see Viewing BMC Helix Chatbot reporting dashboard.

   
   

6. Save the process. 

To add chat context variables to an IBM Watson dialog

An IBM Watson dialog uses the intents that are identified in the user's message and gets the context from the application to respond to the user. An application business analyst adds the required chat context variables to the IBM Watson dialog. For instructions on how to add the variables in a dialog, see  Building a dialog  in IBM Watson documentation.

The following image shows an example of how the out-of-the-box chat context variables for Person data were added to an IBM Watson dialog:

To configure the process name that gets the chat context

1. Log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio and navigate to the Administration tab.
2. Select Configure My Server > Cognitive Service. 
3. On the Cognitive Service page, from the Configure list, select Chatbot. 
4. From the Chat Context Variables Process Definition Name, select the process that you want to use to get the chat context. 
5. Click Save. 

Related topics

Defining the application business logic through processes

Creating or modifying record instances using Record Service Tasks

Importing chat-enabled services from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced