Published Release Notes

Improved rich user interface controls in IVA for Web Chatbot

In Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Web Chatbot, you can use additional rich user interface controls, such as the time and date picker or a simple form, to help users accomplish tasks more quickly and to limit errors. IVA for Web Chat can now also display a welcome message in the chat window, for example, to inform the user about the person with whom they are chatting.

For more information, see Streamline conversations in IVA for Web Chatbot with rich user interface controls.

Upgrade impact

The new Ul controls for Web Chatbot are enabled by default upon upgrade. If you do not want the controls enabled, you must disable them.

Also, if you have changed the styles for the welcome message, you may need to make changes to the welcome message to incorporate the new areas in the bot conversation area (such as quick replies).

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

Existing channels will behave as they did previously, so you should determine whether you want to use the new UI controls. If you want to use the new Ul controls, configure the new design-time options.

If you have changed the default styles for the welcome message, review the new settings to ensure that the welcome message is configured properly. 

Ability to import and export Intelligent Virtual Assistant or Email Bot training data

You can now copy Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) or Pega Email Bot™ training data between Pega Platform™ application environments by performing an export and import action. Importing and exporting training data between Pega Platform application environments results in greater accuracy of entity detection. Entities are detected by the system in a chat conversation, including attachments, to help respond to the user correctly, and consist of proper nouns that fall into a commonly understood category such as a person, organization, or a ZIP code. The ability to copy training data also makes it easier to maintain IVA or Email Bot, and build its artificial intelligence.

For more information, see Copying training data to another environment and Copy training data and model to another IVA or Email Bot environment.

Support for seamless transitions between IVAs and customer service representatives

To ensure the best user experience in chat sessions with a Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA), customer service representatives (CSRs) can now step in and take control of a chat session multiple times, when the chatbot is not capable of correctly answering the user. After the user problem is resolved, the CSR can seamlessly switch control of the chat session back to the chatbot.

Unified Messaging Desktop integration with Pega Platform

You can now use the Pega Unified Messaging Desktop™ customer service solution with a Pega Platform™ application so that customer service representatives (CSRs) and other users, such as managers, can respond to user requests more quickly and in a more consistent manner. With integrated Pega Unified Messaging Desktop, CSRs can escalate user requests from Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistants™ (IVAs) by using case processing and artificial intelligence alongside Pega Customer Service™

For more information, see Develop a single IVA channel to chat across different messaging platforms.

Reports with visualizations of performance and automation levels for the email bot

In the Email Manager portal, you can now use built-in reports to visualize Pega Email Bot™ performance and the automation levels that are related to received emails, triaged cases, and created business cases. You can plug the reports to display the report data in other portals, for example the Case Manager portal. Based on the information displayed in the reports, you can adjust the machine learning models to achieve greater automation in the system.

For more information, see Viewing the reports for the Email channel and Built-in reports for the email bot.

Improved experience when building an IVA and Email Bot in App Studio

Build your Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) and Pega Email Bot™ while working only in App Studio. This approach makes the design process easier and more intuitive, and saves you time. You can now modify the advanced text analyzer configuration while working in App Studio. In addition, if you have access to Dev Studio, you can edit the text analyzer rule from App Studio for your chatbot or email bot by clicking a link to open the settings in Dev Studio.

For more information, see Adding a text analyzer for an email bot and Adding a text analyzer for an IVA.

Condition builder enhancements

To enhance the precision of condition builder in both App Studio and Dev Studio, the new instances include comparator helps you specify the number of field group and field group list instances to which a when rule applies. In addition, a search option that returns results on keypress helps you easily look for existing values.

For more information, see Create conditions in an enhanced condition builder (8.5), Defining conditions in the condition builder.

Triage cases archiving in the email bot (Pega Cloud Services)

For Pega Platform™ that is installed in Pega Cloud^® Services, you can configure Pega Email Bot™ to archive resolved triage cases that are older than a specified number of days. Archiving triage cases improves the overall performance of your system by reducing the primary storage consumption and cost because the system places such resolved triage cases in a secondary storage.

For more information, see Archiving resolved emails for an email bot (Pega Cloud Services).

Usability improvements in the Email Manager and Case Manager portals

Pega Email Bot™ customer service representatives (CSRs) working in the Email Manager, Case Manager, or Case Worker portals can now quickly reply to one recipient or to all recipients. CSRs can also view the sentiment analysis of an email (positive, negative, or neutral) for each received email, displaying the sentiment pattern for the entire email thread in a triage case. The email bot improvements add value for CSRs working in the portals and help them save time when responding to user requests.

For more information, see Understanding the email triage process and Replying to customers by email for an email bot.

Support for nested Declare Trigger rules

Pega Platform™ now supports nested Declare Trigger rules so that you can conveniently create correlations between actions in your case types. Declare Triggers rules invoke an action when a specified event takes place in a case type. You can now design more complex scenarios faster by nesting more Declare Trigger rules that work in the context of running another Declare Trigger rule. For example, when a case participant changes a postal code in their personal details, a Declare Trigger rule runs and a respective customer service representative (CSR) receives an email. After the CSR receives the email, a nested Declare Trigger rule runs and your application creates a document with the updated personal details and attaches it to the case.

For more information, see Develop applications faster with nested Declare Trigger rules (8.5), Declare Trigger rules.