Creating a conversational channel

Provide users with a channel for communicating with Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) and, indirectly, with the application through a simple question and answer form. For example, users can open a case to report a problem or display a menu of options through a conversation. From the channel interface dashboard, you can build conversational interfaces for IVAs to carry out actions.

The system provides several integration components to communicate with a Pega Platform application by using an embedded web chat window, and social messaging platforms, for example, Apple Business Chat, Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp, and Amazon Alexa. You create a separate channel for each IVA that you plan to add to your application. In addition, you can create a custom conversational channel and create a system chat server.

  1. Create a new channel interface in Pega Platform:
    1. In the header of Dev Studio, click the name of the application, and then click Channels and interfaces.
    2. In the Create new channel interface section, click Unified Messaging, Web Chatbot, or Alexa.
    3. In the Details section, in the Channel interface name field, enter a name for your channel.
    4. Optional: To describe the purpose of the channel, in the Description field, enter a short description of your IVA.
    5. In the channel, click the Connection tab.
    6. In the Template operator ID list, click the name of an existing Pega Platform operator to use as a template.
      The system uses this operator as a template to create all further accounts. Each account has a unique channel identifier set as its ID. For more information, see Template operator for IVA channel.
    7. Click Save.
  2. Configure channel-specific settings for the IVA type that you selected in step 1.b:
    • If you want users to communicate with an application through different social messaging channels such as Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, MMS/SMS (Twilio), Twitter, and WhatsApp Messenger, set up configuration for an IVA for the Unified Messaging platform.

      For more information, see Creating a Unified Messaging channel.

    • If you want users to communicate with an application through an embedded web chat window, set up configuration for an IVA for Web Chatbot.

      For more information, see Creating a Web Chatbot channel.

    • If you want users to communicate with an application through Amazon Alexa, set up configuration for an IVA for Alexa.

      For more information, see Creating an Alexa channel.

What to do next: For each IVA that you create, define the conversational channel behavior. For more information, see Defining conversational channel behavior.