21.02 enhancements

BMC Helix Virtual Agent provides a self-service solution for users to resolve their issues. The chatbot provides support by interacting with users through natural language, understanding the conversation context, and performing tasks on behalf of the user.

Review the BMC Helix Virtual Agent 21.02 enhancements for features that will benefit your organization and to understand changes that might impact your users.

The following video (1:50) provides a summary of some of the new features and enhancements in BMC Helix Virtual Agent version 21.02:

 https://youtu.be/EReoEZp9Pnc

Product name changes in BMC Helix Platform, Remedy platform, and Remedy ITSM applications

Consult the following tables for changes to the product and component names starting with version 21.02.

While the product names have changed in 21.02, some instances in the product documentation still refer to the previous product name.

BMC Helix Platform and applications

Remedy platform and ITSM applications

BMC Helix Innovation Suite for Service Management applications

Starting with version 21.02, Service Management applications run on a single environment named, BMC Helix Innovation Suite. With the new BMC Helix Innovation Suite, we bring together the capabilities of Action Request System and BMC Helix Innovation Studio.

As an Action Request System user, use the Action Request System components and clients. Leverage Service Management applications or build a custom application by using Developer Studio.

As a BMC Helix Innovation Studio user, use the the Service Management applications or build a custom application by using BMC Helix Innovation Studio. 

BMC Helix Innovation Suite provides the following benefits:

• A single-tenant common platform for Service Management applications.

• A shared database between AR System and BMC Helix Innovation Studio.

• A common Foundation data for applications that run on the BMC Helix Innovation Suite. 

• The ability to interoperate between AR System and BMC Helix Innovation Studio. For example, you can call a process defined by using BMC Helix Innovation Studio in AR System. The process is called by triggering a filter written in Developer Studio.

Leverage common Foundation data in BMC Helix Virtual Agent

BMC Helix Virtual Agent leverages a common Foundation data for all the applications deployed on BMC Helix Innovation Suite.  As an administrator, you can onboard Foundation data one at a time or load the data in bulk for all the service management applications. 

By leveraging common Foundation data, you no longer need to perform the following actions:

• Foundation data sync from Remedy ITSM to BMC Helix Virtual Agent applications is not required.
• Normalization of the data between applications is not required.
• Modifications to the existing out-of-the-box chat context variable process, and chatbot channels such as SMS and WhatsApp that use Foundation data is not required.

To learn about the common Foundation data, see  21.02 enhancements .

Leverage BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround in BMC Helix Virtual Agent

Use BMC Helix Knowledge Management by ComAround as the default knowledge search for chatbot and boost your knowledge base with an extensive Article-Pack. The preloaded articles in the Article-Pack supports service desk agents and customers using software from Microsoft, Google, Adobe, and Zoom. End users can benefit from the BMC Helix Knowledge Management democratized knowledge authoring that increases knowledge quality and search relevancy. The enhanced cognitive and natural language processing search capabilities find the most relevant knowledge article for the end users.

As an administrator, you can synchronize articles from BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management to BMC Helix Knowledge Management and continue to create, edit, and update articles to make them searchable for chatbot users in BMC Helix Knowledge Management..

For more information, see Configuring BMC Helix Knowledge Management in BMC Helix Virtual Agent.

Support for WhatsApp as a chatbot channel

The following image shows how end users can use WhatsApp to communicate with BMC Helix Virtual Agent:

Administrators can configure BMC Helix Virtual Agent to work with WhatsApp as a chatbot channel. To utilize this capability, use the programmable messaging service provided by Twilio. 

For more information, see Enabling WhatsApp in a chatbot application.

Additional locale support provided by real-time language translation

Use real-time translation to localize chatbot conversation in languages that are unsupported by BMC Helix Innovation Suite, but are supported by translation providers such as Google Cloud Translation Services or Microsoft Translator API.

For more information, see Localizing chatbot conversations by using real-time translation.

The following image shows how you can interact with chatbot in Hindi, one of the unsupported languages of BMC Helix Innovation Suite, by using real-time translation:

Enhanced experience of importing services from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced

As a business analyst, you leverage the following enhanced capabilities of the Publish Chat-enabled services wizard to import services from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced to BMC Helix Virtual Agent:

Include service fulfillment answers with data lookups

As an application business analyst, you can enable chat for services that include answers with data lookups: type ahead or predicted text. Lookups enable end users to easily provide accurate answers to service-related questions without typing the complete text. 

To learn how to import services from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced to BMC Helix Virtual Agent, see Importing chat-enabled services from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced

The following image is an example of how end users can request for a service that includes lookups:

View the last published state of service definitions when republishing the services

The following image is an example of how previously published values are displayed for a service:

As an application business analyst or an administrator, when you republish a service from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced to BMC Helix Virtual Agent, you can view previous customizations made to the service in the Publish Chat-enabled Services wizard.

Retaining the last published state of the service helps you in the following ways:

• Save incremental updates to the service. 
• Retain the last-published values and save time in re-entering them.
• Easily decide to modify or retain the last published values of the service.

To learn how to republish a service, see Importing chat-enabled services from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced.

To learn about a scenario for republishing services, see Utilizing chat-enabled services from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced in BMC Helix Virtual Agent.

Change the branding of BMC Helix Virtual Agent by customizing chatbot animation

BMC Helix Virtual Agent is animated when it loads for the first time. As an application business analyst or an administrator, you can change the branding of BMC Helix Virtual Agent by customizing the animation.

To learn how to customize the chatbot animation by using a sample SVG file, see Branding BMC Helix Virtual Agent for your company.

The following image shows a custom chatbot animation:

View and generate chatbot usage reports by using BMC Helix Dashboards

Create interactive reports for BMC Helix Virtual Agent in BMC Helix Dashboards, a subscription-based service. BMC Helix Dashboards offers unified reporting that gives you a consolidated view of the data from BMC Helix Virtual Agent. You can easily export and share the chatbot reports with users within or outside your environment.

For more information, see Viewing and generating chatbot reports in BMC Helix Dashboards.

Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer version 11 is deprecated

As  announced , support for Microsoft Internet Explorer version 11 is now deprecated. We encourage you to switch to other fully supported browsers listed for BMC Helix Innovation Suite in BMC Solution and Product Availability and Compatibility utility .

For a complete list of BMC products that no longer support Internet Explorer 11, see the  BMC Customer Support Communities page .

What else changed in this release

From this release, note the following significant changes in the product behavior:

Update	Product behavior in versions earlier than 21.02	Product behavior from version 21.02
Request ID for service request definitions (SRDs) imported from BMC Service Request Management.	A provisional request ID is displayed to the end users for the following service request: An SRD is imported from BMC Service Request Management to BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. BMC Helix Virtual Agent creates a request for the imported SRD. The following image shows the provisional request ID:	A request ID from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced is displayed to the end users for the following service requests: An SRD is imported from BMC Service Request Management to BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. BMC Helix Virtual Agent creates a request for the imported SRD. End users can now track their request by using the actual request ID from BMC Service Request Management. The following image shows the request ID displayed to end users: For more information, see Submitting service requests or searching knowledge articles.
Chat context variables process reads from the CTM:People form.	Chat context variables process read from the Foundation data > Person, Site, Geography - Country, Geography - City, and Geography - State/Province/District in BMC Helix Innovation Suite.	Chat context variables process to read from the CTM:People form.
End-user phone numbers for SMS and WhatsApp channels mapped to the CTM:People form.	End-user phone numbers for SMS and WhatsApp channels mapped to Person data.	End-user phone numbers for SMS and WhatsApp channels mapped to the CTM:People form.