Edmin Autobiography – The Complete Guide

A Technical Advisor, an S/4HC Search Engine, a Meeting Coordinator, and an Entertainer!

Edmin Autobiography – the Complete Guide

According to the Myers Briggs theory, there are sixteen different personality types – and these are prevalent among chatbots too! For those who do not already know me, I am Edmin, the S/4HANA Cloud Community Mascot. I have many strengths and – not so many – weaknesses. This is because, not only can I address S/4HANA Cloud and community related questions, but I can also retrieve SAP articles, raise Customer Meeting Support Requests, and I might also make you laugh. I am not your average digital assistant… I am a Technical Advisor, an S/4HC Search Engine, a Meeting Coordinator, and an Entertainer!

🥇 Did you know that I am the winner of the global SAP Machine Learning Challenge 2019? I managed to win against 60 other teams with over 200 colleagues engaged globally! I also got a Public Business Transformation Study published on my behalf! Have a look https://www.sap.com/documents/2019/10/6ed1cca3-6d7d-0010-87a3-c30de2ffd8ff.html

So let’s explore some of the options that will help you make most of your experience with me.

1 1) The Main Chat Operations

One way of initiating the conversation is through greetings. You will then be provided with the main operations you can execute:

• Ask a Question: Ask me a question and I will see if I have a relevant answer for you. If you are happy with the answer, great! If not, then I will execute a search. I am currently trained to answer S/4HC specific questions that I have learnt from the community and from what the LoB experts have taught me so far. I can also answer any questions around SSCUI availability. Simply say e.g. ‘I want to configure sales’ or ‘I want to configure payment methods’.
• Ask for tcodes: You can also ask questions like ‘what is the app for tcode FB70?’. Due to my integration to the Fiori Apps Library I can provide a list of relevant on premise transaction codes to an application in S/4HANA Cloud, covering over 1000 tcodes.
• Ask for Business Roles: You may also ask me questions like ‘what business roles do I need to be able to access the sales order app?’. I will then retrieve a list of all the roles you need to access the provided application, covering over 3000 applications.

• Ask for API’s: Integration to the API Hub also allows you to search for API’s based on a business object e.g. I want an api for profit center, or based on a communication scenario e.g. I want an api for SAP_COM_0001.

• Search: Are you looking for information around a specific topic? I can do a quick search for you and provide you with a list of SAP resources to review. You can say something like ‘I want to search for organizational structure’. If I fail to identify the topic you are referring to I will then ask you to type you search text only and I will retrieve a list of results for you.

• Help request: Do you need live support? You may now raise a customer support request. You will be asked to provide a subject, name, and e-mail and an expert will reach out to you to arrange a meeting upon your request. As this initiative is in pilot mode, please note that we currently accept requests in Procurement, and Sales and Distribution, and can also support you with topics around Integration and Data Migration.

For further information on the main chat operations, click here.

2 2) Quick Menu with Shortcuts

A menu icon with shortcuts is also available as an alternative to writing replies. ‘Ask a Question’ and ‘Search’ will post a message to the bot that will trigger the equivalent process if pressed. ‘Help Request’ branches off to ‘Create Meeting Request’ and ‘Cancel Meeting Request’, which will also trigger the relevant processes if pressed, while the bottom two options are hyperlinks to Community blogs if you require assistance.

3 3) Small Talk

You may skip the greetings and the small talk and start off with your question or search request, but for those who like to chat, I am up for it too. Always happy to catch-up with you. However, if you try to fool me, you will sooner than later realise that I am not having any of it…!

4 4) Feedback

Near the end of your conversation, depending on whether you were happy with the provided solution or not, you will be either encouraged to post a question to one of the community forums or you will be asked to provide some feedback. Feedback is important for me as it influences my development as a chatbot.

5 5) Behind the Scenes…

Finally, I would like to give you an insight on what is happening behind the scenes. The solution has been developed on the Conversational AI Platform that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP). The NLP technology is a branch of artificial intelligence that examines the way computers interpret human language.

But where does the artificial intelligence take place? While humans use intuition and context to make sense of language, computers have difficulty in coping with the ambiguity of it. This is because meaning does not only depend on words alone, but on the combination and sequence these follow. For example, ‘I want to get an apple’ and ‘I want to go to the Apple store’ demonstrate the importance of context in interpreting language. For this same reason, NLP technology analyses syntax and semantics.

In simple terms, chatbots need to be told what sentences to expect and what keywords they need to look out for in order to trigger a certain response. They also need to know different ways of expressing the same meaning. For every phrase you type, the chatbot assigns your phrase to a category of similar expressions, and the more synonym expressions you provide to the bot, the better it copes with language ambiguity. To cut the long story short (although I would happily go on and on…), the better the training of the chatbot, the better the performance of NLP.

If you are curious to know what the conversational flow looks like, here is a simplified version of it:

6 6) Product Roadmap

We have now integrated to the API Hub, which allows you to perform API searches based on a business object or a communication scenario. You may try it out simply by saying to Edmin ‘I want an API’. We have also integrated to the Fiori Apps Library which allows you to ask questions around tcodes and business roles.

Our roadmap includes integration to the Roadmap Viewer and SAP KBA Articles.

Would you like to influence the product Roadmap? We are always happy to hear your feedback! Please send an e-mail to aashka.shah@sap.com who will be taking over from eva.stergiou@sap.com.