In this blog we are going to talk about emojis in Power Virtual Agents. We will also touch upon GIFs and images but mostly Emojis. First of all, if you were not aware that you can use emojis in PVA, I am telling you can and that too #thecodeway. Watch the video to see it working.
If your question is why am I talking about something which is available Out of the box and is a no brainer; my answer would be:
I have not seen emojis being used yet in PVAs (Silly side of me)
Main reason: User Experience (UX) is the reason I am writing this blog.
Add some emotional intelligence to your PVA
It saves your canvas in your PVA.
Emojis are used by more than 3 billion people (and growing) which makes it the most spoken language in the world. One picture is worth ten thousand words.
For good UX your bot needs to react to different types of messages not just text.Knowing that PVA is still new in the market and is being continuously updated, there might be some emojis which you can’t use (No, I haven’t tested all 20,000 of them 😀)
Using emojis can be a great way of defining your chatbots personality and it can make the conversation casual increasing the engagement rate.
In terms of using a GIF or Image as your PVAs response, use the following and it will be shown to the user. Yes, I am also waiting for the adaptive cards #thenocodeway.
Let’s watch the video, if this interests you. Following is covered in the video:
This is the last episode of Agent, Power Virtual Agent series. Playlist here
This episode of Power Virtual Agents (PVA) is about how to identify and verify your customers in PVA. In Episode 5 we looked at authenticating internal users but what if we want to verify customers before providing them in any information.
We are going to achieve this with the help of a Power Automate Flow and PVA variables.
Refresh body template -refresh_token={RefreshToken}&redirect_uri={RedirectUrl}&grant_type=refresh_token&client_id={ClientId}&client_secret={ClientSecret}
Scope list delimiter “,”
Token body template -code={Code}&grant_type=authorization_code&redirect_uri={RedirectUrl}&client_id={ClientId}&client_secret={ClientSecret}
This episode of Power Virtual Agents (PVA) is about how to get started?
This is going to be a short episode as Microsoft makes it easier to build chatbots for people who don’t know programming (like Python), basically for us #thenocodemonkeys. We are covering the following topics:
It’s been a while since I made my last video, 3 weeks and 3 days to be precise.
With what’s going on currently in the world, I thought it might be a good time to learn about the new member of Power Platform together. Yes, the Power Virtual Agents. New series coming soon with all new 8 episodes to get you started with PVAs.
Power Virtual Agent is super easy to make, configure and automate which makes it a super smart agent not just for us #nocodemonkeys but everyone. Remember the super smart agent Bond, James Bond yeah that’s how I thought of the name Agent, Power Virtual Agent. First episode coming up next week.
In this vlog we will see how to see multiple points/pushpins on a map in canvas app. As always, this is a no code solution and fairly basic.
I have came across this requirement so many times in Dynamics 365 for e.g. show all customers on a map or contacts on a map or even appointments on a map. Many solutions are available for Dynamics 365 CE including add ons like Maplytics. But for canvas app, following issues persists:
No map components
Static bing/google maps can be inserted by inserting an image and then providing URL
Bing or Google maps API is required
Hard code latitude and longitude
If you want to show more than one push pin, you need to hard code all coordinates
You can’t apply dynamic filters on your maps
To me all of the above are not easy to use solution and that’s why I decided to look for something which all our #nocodemonkeys can use. This can be the fastest way you can plot all your customers on a map within canvas apps.
Prerequisites:
Access to Power Apps
Access to Power BI (Desktop and Web)
Super Basic Knowledge of how to create a chart/report in Power BI
Basic understanding of Power Apps formulas
Entity (accounts/contacts/appointments) must have Latitude and Longitude filled (otherwise it won’t be shown on maps
Note: You can get latitude and longitude by create a flow in Power Automate
Step 1-7 for Power BI and Step 8-12 Power Apps
Step 1: Go to your Power BI Desktop>>Create a connection>>Get data (e.g. Accounts)
Step 2: Once your data is loaded>>click on report icon and then add the visualisation type as shown below:
Step 3: Add data fields
Step 4: Save your Power BI report by clicking on the disk button on top left
Step 6: Click on ‘Workspace’ in the left navigation and then click reports (this is where you can find the report you created in above steps)
Step 7: Click on the report to open and then click pin visual
Step 8: Login to Power Apps https://make.powerapps.com/ and pick your existing app or create a new canvas app
Step 9: Click Insert then ‘Power BI tile’
Step 10: Select Workspace, Dashboard and Tile
Dynamic Filtering- Step 11 & 12
Step 11: Apply dynamic filtering by adding new components like Text Input or Drop Downs. In my case, I have two drop downs and one text input; names below:
StateDropDown- With 5 values (you can have any values here)
CityDropDown-With 5 values (you can have any values here)
txtPostCode- Text input for ZIP/Postal Code
Step 12: Update the ‘TileURL’ of Power BI tile. Use the following sub-steps based on how many filters you need as it can go to Nth level (I am only showing three)
DIY D365 