March 19, 2024

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Successfully Roll Out Virtual Agents in the Enterprise space

Day 2 of the Microsoft PowerPlatform Conference has just kicked, and what best tan starting with some Bots/Virtual Agents 😁

Why Bots/Virtual Agents ?

 

  • More natural human / computer interaction
  • Automate the repetitive tasks and free up the resources
  • Available all the time
  • Available where you are (Web, Mobile, Car, Desktop..)
  • Another way of providing support and supplement the existing help desk
  • Supports multiple channels/devices
  • Users are expecting the consumerization of the Enterprise
  • Remote work is going to be norm

When it comes to building your bots, there are two major players, Microsoft bot Framework and Power Virtual Agents.

 

Behind the scene, the architecture is as follow:

Case Study

A lot of tickets were getting to the helpdesk platform, and the customer did not have the capacity of funds to expand the service desk

Some of the requirements were:

Most importantly for this solution to be successful, it had to ensure certain aspects and requirements are met:

  • Security
  • Scalability
  • Integration
  • Reporting and Dashboard
  • User-Friendly
  • Administration
  • Maintenance

Which one to use:

  • Start with Power Virtual Agents
  • Use Microsoft Bot Framework
    • Where to host ?
      • Azure Bot Service (Recommended)
      • VMs
      • On-Prem Servers

 

Lessons Learned

  • Use Speech Recognition to have a Bot interaction which mimic natural human language as much as possible.
  • Handle Expectations.
  • Start Slow
    • Virtual Agents/Bot Development is fairly new
  • HelpDesk Bots are there to support existing teams, not to replace them.

 

 

by, Prashant G Bhoyar,

(MS AI & MS Business Applications MVP, MCT)