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.

Person record attributes	Chat context variables for Person data
First Name	$chatbot_firstName
Middle Name	$chatbot_middleName
Last Name	$chatbot_lastName
Job Title	$chatbot_jobTitle
Notification Language	$chatbot_notificationLanguage
NT Domain	$chatbot_ntDomain
Preferred Name	$chatbot_preferredName
Primary Email Address	$chatbot_primaryEmailAddress
VIP	$chatbot_vip
Location Name	$chatbot_locationName
Country	$chatbot_country
StateProvinceDistrict	$chatbot_stateprovinceDistrict
City	$chatbot_cityName

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:

Best practice

To modify the attributed provided for chat context, we recommend that you create a copy of the Custom Chat Context Variables Template process and modify the variables in the new 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:

Task	Role	Product	Action	Reference
1	Application business analyst	BMC Helix Innovation Studio	In the Process designer, modify a copy of the Custom Chat Context Variables Template process to select application data or Person data.	To select application data in a process
2	Application business analyst	IBM Watson Assistant	In Watson Assistant Skills, modify the dialog to include variables that get the application data or Person data for the chat context.	To add chat context variables to an IBM Watson dialog Building a dialog in IBM Watson documentation.
3	Administrator	BMC Helix Innovation Studio	In the Administration tab, configure the process name that should be triggered to get the chat context. Note: You can configure only one process.	To configure process name that gets the chat context

To select application data in a process

Log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio and navigate to the Workspace tab.
Click BMC Chatbot > Processes tab.
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.
Save the process by a different name.
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.
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

Important

You can configure only one process.

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