Virtual Agent and NLU Workbench integration

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Virtual Agent and NLU Workbench integration

    This integration enables Virtual Agent administrators to create, update, and manage Natural Language Understanding (NLU) models directly within the Virtual Agent Designer interface. It streamlines the process of building conversational topics by linking them with NLU intents and models created in the NLU Workbench, facilitating more intelligent and adaptive chatbot interactions.

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    Integration Setup and Roles

    • Administrators must first create NLU models and intents in the NLU Workbench, requiring the admin or nluadmin role.
    • In Virtual Agent General Settings, administrators must enable NLU, select the NLU service provider, and enable language-specific models if needed.
    • Within Virtual Agent Designer, administrators apply the NLU model to conversation topics by selecting the model, intent, and topic switching behavior in Topic Properties.
    • Entity extraction is configured on input controls within the topic flow to capture relevant information from user input.
    • Optionally, Dialog Acts can be activated (English only) to enable dynamic conversational responses such as Modify, Affirm, and Negate, enhancing interaction flexibility.

    Managing NLU Models and Topics

    • Once linked, administrators with the virtualagentadmin or admin roles can update intent utterances, train, test, and publish NLU models directly from Virtual Agent Designer.
    • Publishing a topic with a mapped intent synchronizes the NLU model and intent with that topic seamlessly, making it ready for use by the Virtual Agent.
    • Publishing will fail if the model is untrained or training is ongoing, if the model is already published with a VA topic, or if the intent is disabled in the model.

    Additional Notes

    • Customers using Now Assist in Virtual Agent can migrate existing NLU topics to new large language model (LLM) topics using the built-in migration feature.
    • The integration simplifies ongoing management of chatbot intelligence by consolidating NLU model operations within the Virtual Agent environment.

    Virtual Agent administrators can access and update their NLU models from within the Virtual Agent Designer user interface.

    Diagram of NLU and Virtual Agent authoring.

    Note:
    If you have Now Assist in Virtual Agent, you can continue to use your existing NLU topics and migrate them into new LLM topics using the topic migration feature within Virtual Agent Designer. For more information on topic migration, see Migrate NLU topics to LLM topics.

    Integration setup tasks, roles, and details

    As Virtual Agent administrators create and configure their conversation topics, they must first create their NLU model and its associated intents in the NLU Workbench. This action requires they use the NLU Workbench and the admin or nlu_admin role.

    In addition, they must also complete the following tasks in Virtual Agent General Settings.
    • Enable NLU.
    • Select the NLU service provider.
    • If using language-specific NLU models, enable the languages for those models.
    Virtual Agent administrators must also apply their NLU model to a conversation topic by completing the following tasks in Virtual Agent Designer:
    • In Topic Properties, select the NLU model, the NLU intent, and the topic switching behavior.
    • For input controls used in the topic flow, set the NLU properties for entity extraction.

    Optionally, admins can activate Dialog Acts to enable Virtual Agent to respond flexibly when users make a modification in mid-conversation. Currently available response types are Modify, Affirm, and Negate, based on the last 5 exchanges in the conversation. Dialog Acts can be configured for English only, in Topic Properties. For more information see Dialog Acts for Virtual Agent.

    After the NLU model is complete and associated with a Virtual Agent conversation topic, administrators with the virtual_agent_admin or admin role can do the following from within the Virtual Agent Designer user interface.
    • Update NLU intent utterances.
    • Train, test, and publish the NLU model.

    For more information, see Natural Language Understanding (NLU) topic discovery in Virtual Agent.

    Publishing topics from Virtual Agent

    When your model is published in the NLU Workbench, it's ready to use in Virtual Agent Designer. When editing a topic, click the Properties tab to select a model and intent to map to that topic.

    Natural Language Understanding section of the Properties tab of Virtual Agent Designer.

    When you click Publish, the model and intent are mapped to that topic and published seamlessly.

    Publishing a topic with a mapped intent fails for the following reasons:
    • Model isn't trained, or training is in progress.
    • The last trained model is already published with a VA topic.
    • The intent is not enabled in the model.