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Troubleshooting IBM Watson Assistant issues

This topic describes how to resolve issues that you might encounter while using IBM Watson Assistant.

 To troubleshoot IBM Watson Assistant service credentials

The administrator must know the Identity and Access Management (IAM) API key or username and password to configure the IBM Watson Assistant service in BMC Helix Innovation Studio. Validate the IBM Watson Assistant service credentials by performing the following steps:

  1. Log in to BMC Helix Innovation Studio and navigate to the Administration tab.
  2. Select Cognitive and chatbot > Cognitive Service.
  3. On the Cognitive Service page, go to the IBM Watson Assistant for natural language classification section.
  4. If you have the IAM API key, go to API Key tab and verify the IAM API key. 
  1. After verifying the credentials, click Test connection. If the Connection Successful! message appears, the credentials are validated. 
    Troubleshooting success.png
  2. If the following message appears, the credentials are not valid. In such a case, verify that you used the correct credentials.
    Troubleshooting fail.png

To troubleshoot IBM Watson Assistant Skill ID issues

Validate the IBM Watson Assistant Skill ID by performing the following steps:

  1. Navigate to BMC Helix Innovation Studio > Administration > Chatbot Configuration > Provider Configuration.

    1808_Bot Workspace_troubleshooting - French.png

  2. Verify that the IBM Watson Assistant Skill ID is configured, by using any one of the following methods: 
    • If you have access to the IBM Watson Assistant Skill by using IBM Cloud (If you have the correct account, and know which service the Skill resides in), you can find it in the skill itself.
    • To verify it without using IBM Cloud, follow the steps to retrieve the workspace JSON.

To retrieve IBM Watson Skill without an IBM Cloud account

There are times when it may be more convenient to directly download the conversation JSON definition from IBM Watson. This may be because you do not have an IBM Cloud account that has access to the service in question. Alternatively, you might want to retrieve the JSON and search through it without risking looking at the wrong Cloud account, wrong service, wrong Skill, and so on.

Before you begin

Ensure that you have the following prerequisites:

  • Access to BMC Helix Innovation Suite.
  • Knowledge of the service password. The username is exposed in BMC Helix Innovation Studio, but the password is not. 

To retrieve Skill

  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, go to the IBM Watson Assistant section.

  4. If you have the IAM API key, go to API Key tab and verify the IAM API key, or go to Username & Password tab and verify the username and password. 

    Note

    If you do not know the Password, you will need to obtain this if you did not originally configure the service and you wish to proceed.

    cs_ibm_watson_merge.png

  5. If you don't know the Password, you will need to obtain this if you did not originally configure the service and you wish to proceed.
  6. You will also need to know the Skill ID. This is also found in BMC Helix Innovation Studio Administration.
    bot_workspace.png
  7. With these three pieces of information, you can retrieve the entire JSON for the Skill using any web browser (or any HTTP client such as Curl or Postman).  

    1. The format of the URL is https://gateway.watsonplatform.net/assistant/api/v1/workspaces/{WORKSPACE_ID}?version=2018-02-16&export=true. Log in to the service dashboard and get the URL for your service.

      Note

      You get the URL along with the service credentials.

      For more information about obtaining the service credential and the URL, see Getting credentials.

    2. Note that the version parameter is required, but it's value may change over time.
    3. You use the username and password as basic authentication credentials. 
    4. If you have the IAM API key and do not have the user name and password, then enter apikey as the user name and the IAM API key value as the password. 
      For example, in a browser it will look like this when challenged. Remember to provide the service credentials here, NOT your IBM Cloud account credentials, if you happen to have one.
      18.05_Retrieving a conversation workspace without an IBM Bluemix account 2.png
    1. If all goes well, you have a long JSON blob showing up in the browser.  
      18.05_Retrieving a conversation workspace without an IBM Bluemix account 3.png

    1. It will help to read this if you get some JSON pretty-printer ready, such as https://jsonformatter.org/json-pretty-print, to make it more readable.
      18.05_Retrieving a conversation workspace without an IBM Bluemix account 4.png

To troubleshoot intents created in IBM Watson Assistant Skill

  1. Log in to IBM Watson Assistant Skills in which you want to test the intents. 

  2. Click Try it Watson_Try It.png and type the utterance that triggers the intent. 
    For more information, see Testing your intents in IBM documentation. 

Related topic

Troubleshooting