Exercise 4 - Publish the Business Application Access / Support service

After a service is finalized and tested by using BMC Helix Digital Workplace, you can proceed to publish the service to a specific chatbot instance by using the 'Publish Chat-enabled Service' wizard in BMC Helix Innovation Studio by using the following the steps: Note: You must have your chatbot already configured with the correct IBM Watson Assistant API Key and Workspace ID (also referred to as the Skill ID in Watson), before proceeding. For more information on how to set this up, please refer to the following doc link: Setting up BMC Helix Chatbot.

1. From BMC Helix Innovation Studio select the Chatbot workspace where your Chatbot skills are referenced. For example, our Chatbot skill is referenced in the BMC Chatbot workspace.
   
   
   
   
2. Then, from the Action menu, select "Publish Chat-enabled Service".
   
   
   
   
3. This will open the Publish Chat-enabled Service wizard. From here, select the Chatbot Name, which for our example is IT Chatbot given that this is an IT use case.
   
   
   
   
4. Then select the service that you want to publish, which is Business Application Access / Support.
   
   
   
   

5. Next, we will be creating a list of the different ways that we expect users to ask for this service from the chatbot. This list, referred to as Request Variations in the wizard, equates to different utterances that will be created for this service in IBM Watson as values for a given intent. (Note that, each service creates a single corresponding Intent in Watson).
   
   
   

   Success

   Tip

   The list of Request Variations created here will only be stored within the corresponding IBM Watson Intent as values or utterances. You can make updates to this list from IBM Watson after the service is published. Therefore, you do not need to create the finalized list here. Here the Intent name will default to "businessApplicationAccessSupport" as shown in the image above.

   For this use case we will create the following request variations:

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     • Business Application Access/Support (this is the default which matches the name of the service as defined in BMC Helix Digital Workplace)
     • I need access to an application
     • I have an issue with an application
     • I have a problem with an application
     • Application is unavailable
     • There is a performance issue with an application

   For detailed information regarding the complete list of utterances, please review the intent that is included in the IBM Watson workspace for this service.

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   Tip

   One item to note here, is that we have not created utterances using the business application names. This is intentional as we will be using a specific IBM Watson Entity, containing the business application names, as a variable within our utterances. The IBM Watson Entity containing the business application names is created from the question in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace questionnaire where we had listed the business application names.

    We will cover the use of entity variables as part of the Intent values (or utterances) in more details within the IBM Watson Assistant implementation section of this use case below.

6. Next, we will be going through the questions, that we previously created in the Catalog. From the wizard we will be able to modify the text for the questions as well as add chat variables to enhance the questions. Note that this will be the question text displayed by the chatbot.

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   Tip

   Typically, the question text is not modified. However, if there is a need to change this, then you will need to track these changes as they will get overwritten the next time the publishing wizard is used to republish the service. In addition, we will be able to enable the feature 'Display of the possible answers to the questions as selectable buttons/options' within the chatbot as well as extend the answer variations. 

   The list of Answer Variations created here will only be stored within IBM Watson as synonyms to the entity values (which are the answers to the question). You can make updates to this list from IBM Watson after the service is published. Therefore, you do not need to create the finalized list here. Here the Entity name will default to "@businessApplicationAccessSuppor_***" where *** equates to the question text as each question will have its own entity in Watson.

   For example, the first question is "What is the nature of the request?", where the possible answers are:

   1. "I want to report an issue"
   2. "I want to request access"

   
   
   

   For this question we will enable the 'Display the possible answers to the questions as selectable buttons or options' as shown in the image above so that the answers to these questions are displayed to the user as buttons when using the chatbot.
   In addition, for the first answer, "I want to report an issue", we will also add some answer variations such as:

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     • I want to report an issue (leave this as the default synonym)
     • I have an issue with
     • performance
     • slow
     • not responding
     • problem
     • can't connect
     • etc.

   This way if the user states "I have a problem…" or "I can't connect to…" etc. the chatbot will be able to automatically identify this answer and select it for the user.
   
   

   
   

   For the second answer, "I want to request access", we will also add some answer variations such as:

   
   

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     • I want to request access (leave this as the default synonym)
     • need login
     • need a login
     • need access
     • request login
     • request a login
     • get access
     • get a login
     • get login
     • have access
     • have a login
     • have login

   
   

   This way if the user states "I need a login…" or "Can I have access…" etc. the chatbot will be able to automatically identify this answer and select it for the user.
   For the remaining questions, we will enable the 'Display the possible answers to the questions as selectable buttons/options' as shown in the image above so that the answers to these questions are displayed to the user as buttons whilst using the Chatbot.
   In addition, for the last two questions, that represent the impact and urgency respectively.

   • 
     
     • Who is impacted by this?
     • When do you want this to be resolved?

   We will show you how to leverage existing entity content for common questions that are used across two or more use cases. There are two separate implementation instructions that will follow. On that is compatible with version 20.08 and one that is compatible with the 20.02 version.

   For version 20.08:
   We will be using two existing entities, that ship with the starter kit, instead of having the publishing wizard create new entities for these questions and their corresponding answers in Watson. The two existing entities are:

   
   

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     • @bmcImpact_whoIsImpactedByThis
     • @bmcUrgency_whenDoYouWantThisToBeResolved

   Leveraging existing entities makes it easier to maintain the Chatbot content in IBM Watson Assistant, as there is only one place you need to update should you wish to extend the entity by either adding or removing synonyms. Ensure that, when selecting a new entity in the chatbot publishing wizard, the corresponding, 'Display of the possible answers to the questions as selectable buttons/options', option is still enabled.
   These two questions have been called out as they are two common questions used in many of the Catalog services that ship with the starter kit. The two entities mentioned above have been preconfigured to include a wide list of synonym values to enable the Chatbot to autofill the question's answer based on the user's utterance.
   The following steps describes how to leverage existing entities while publishing a service:

   1. From the Questions section of the publishing wizard select the Replace menu to search for existing entities in IBM Watson Assistant.
      

   1. For the "Who is impacted by this?" question we select the Entity "bmcImpact_whoIsImpactedByThis".
      
      
      
      

   2. For the When do you want this to be resolved? question we select the Entity "bmcUrgency_whenDoYouWantThisToBeResolved".
      
      

      For version 20.02:
      We will be leveraging two existing entities that ship with the starter kit to enhance the published versions for the entities created for the impact and urgency questions.The two existing entities are:

      1. 
         
         • @bmcImpact_whoIsImpactedByThis
         • @bmcUrgency_whenDoYouWantThisToBeResolve

      From the publishing wizard, we will let the wizard publish the following two entities, for their respective impact and urgency questions. i.e.:

      • 
        
        • @businessApplicationAccessSuppor_whoIsImpactedByThis
        • @businessApplicationAccessSuppor_whenDoYouWantThisToBeResolved

      In the following IBM Watson Implementation details section for this use case, we will show you how to leverage the entity values from the existing corresponding entities previously mentioned. Note: the method used in version 20.08 is different from the method used in version 20.02, because it's not supported in 20.02.

      The following table below summarizes the Answer Variation configurations made to all the service questions (including the questions previously described above):
      
      

      Service Question	Question Answers	Answer Variations
      What is the nature of you request?	I want to report an issue	I want to report an issue (default synonym) I have an issue with performance slow not responding problem can't connect timing out unavailable broken unable to access can't login
      	I want to request access	I want to request access (default synonym) need login need a login need access request login request a login get access get a login get login have access have a login have login
      Please select the application	Education / Learning	Education / Learning (default synonym) wbt web based training web training learning education ethics compliance compliance and ethics soft skill softskill training
      	Expense Management	Expense Management (default synonym) expense concur
      	Jira	Jira (default synonym)
      	Rally	Rally (default synonym)
      	Salesforce	Salesforce (default synonym) Lightning
      Please select one of the following Education / Learning application topics	Web Based Training	Web Based Training (default synonym) WBT web training
      	Soft Skill	Soft Skill (default synonym) Softskill
      	Compliance and Ethics	Compliance and Ethics (default synonym) Compliance Ethics
      	Others	Others (default synonym)
      Please select one of the following Jira application topics	Create New Project	Create New Project (default synonym)
      	Integration	Integration (default synonym)
      	Workflow	Workflow (default synonym)
      	Other	Other (default synonym)
      Please select one of the following Expense Management application topics	Concur	Concur (default synonym)
      	Expense	Expense (default synonym)
      Please select one of the following Salesforce application topics	Account Assignment	Account Assignment (default synonym)
      	Account Directory Application	Account Directory Application (default synonym)
      	Administration	Administration (default synonym)
      	Data Load	Data Load (default synonym)
      	Reporting	Reporting (default synonym)
      	Lightning	Lightning (default synonym)
      Please provide additional details.	n/a as this is just a text field	n/a
      Who is impacted by this?	Only me	For version 20.08 - Use existing entity bmcImpact_whoIsImpactedByThis For version 20.02 – leverage the values from the entity bmcImpact_whoIsImpactedByThis For more information regarding this entity, review it by using your instance of IBM Watson where this starter kit has been installed.
      	Me & my team
      	Multiple teams
      	Everyone
      When do you want this to be resolved?	Next week or two	For version 20.08 - Use existing entity bmcUrgency_whenDoYouWant ThisToBeResolved For version 20.02 – leverage the values from the entity bmcUrgency_whenDoYouWant ThisToBeResolved For more information regarding this entity, review it by using your instance of IBM Watson where this starter kit has been installed.
      	Five working days
      	Today
      	Now

      Warning

      Note

      There is no service question for Rally as this application did not have any additional application items, like the other applications.
      Again, keep in mind that you do not have to complete or finalize the Answer Variations within the wizard. When you start to test the intents and entities in IBM Watson using different utterances, you will find opportunities to add or remove Answer Variations (or entity synonyms as they are referred to in Watson). We will cover this is more detail within the IBM Watson Assistant implementation section of this use case.

7. The last step is to Publish the service to the Chatbot.