Product Information
SAP Conversational AI August 2021 Release Highlights: Initialize Skill, Web Client New Features & More
Hi SAP Community,
We are excited to share the newest features released in SAP Conversational AI as part of the August release!
Feature of the month #1 ⭐️ Initialize Skill
Your chatbot development has never been so easy! The Initialize skill enables you to define some actions that are required to initialize a conversation with your chatbot. This skill is automatically executed at the beginning of the conversation and can be used to initialize the memory or the language of the conversation. This facilitates retrieval or transformation of context information only once instead of multiple times in various skills and eases customization of your chatbot behavior.
Watch the demo below or read our documentation to learn how to build this type of skill!
Feature of the month #2 ⭐️ Initialize Conversations with User Language
In addition to the new Initialize skill, productivity has been enhanced by enabling chatbot developers to initialize the language of the bot conversation with the users’ language settings. Now you can:
- automatically determine users’ language setting based on predefined heuristics
- provide this information into the chatbot context for chatbots connected to the Web Client channel
Watch the demo below or read our documentation to learn more!
Custom Styling for Web Client
Adjust the SAP Conversational AI Web Client to your own look and feel! Define custom CSS styles with the Web Client channel configuration, choose colors of the desired theme and fine-tune elements such as font, borders, and margins.
Adaptative Responsive Design for Web Client
Ensure faster delivery and benefit from a better user experience by integrating the Web Client with a custom container on a Web page and accessing a channel on a standalone version (single page) of the Web Client. It improves the adoption and enables better control interactions and customizations of the Web Client on the developer’s page.
Web Application:
Single Page Application:
Better User Experience for Testing Tool
You can now intuitively access the testing tool from a single location by having the “Chat Preview” and “Expression Analysis” (old Test Console) windows in the same location! Remain in edit mode on the required tabs when building and creating intents or skills, without having to close or minimize the test-tool windows.
Test it now >
Manage Pending Requests for Organization
As an organization admin, you can better manage the pending requests for bot collaboration and transfer, the addition of members to the org, or the change of role for an org member! As an org admin with Read and write permission, you can:
- see all pending requests for the addition of team members and change of role under the Members tab of the org
- delete the pending request that has been sent to the bot developer or the org member
Data Policy of Existing Bots
As stated in our previous communications, if you have not defined the Type of Data under Data Policy for all your existing bots, the Type of Data has been set as Sensitive Personal.
Define Data Policy >
Deprecation – Retrieval of OAuth Credentials
Deprecation – API Calls to Bot Connnector
There is more!
New data center availability, new parameters, SAP API Business Hub…stay up-to-date with additional improvements by reading our changelog.
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Wow, start bot with initialize skill. Nice. And looking forward to the welcome skill that I know there is a big request for. Nice work.
🙂
as for the initialize skill: unfortunately the link to the documentation does not (yet) work, so I'm wondering how "beginning of conversation" is defined, especially for Microsoft Teams. Does anyone know?
(in the Conversation Log it looks as if a new conversation is shown after about 15 minutes idle-time, but memory variables are still preserved, so while the Conversation is shown in multiple logs, it still seems to be the same single conversation. This only changes when a WebClient- or WebChat-Window is reloaded, but in Microsoft-Teams this is never happening. That's why I'm asking about the definition for "beginning of conversation", so that we know when exactly such an initialize-skill will be executed, and how this differs from platform to platform)
Hi Matthias,
independent of the channel used (even when using Dialog API directly), the initialize skill is always executed for any new conversation ID being used, for which no conversation state (e.g. memory) was stored yet. So for Microsoft Teams it would mean for example that the initialize skill is executed when the user first says "hi" (or anything else) to the bot. The initialize skill is always executed before the NLU analysis and before any other skill is executed.
Regards
Jonas
Thank you Jonas - so for Microsoft Teams this skill will be executed only once and then never again, no matter how many years the user account exists, right? Or is there a limit on how long a conversation exists on Microsoft Teams, some kind of timeout (e.g. user is idle for 1 month or whatever)?
thx+best regards
matthias
Hi Matthias,
We do not have a timeout in CAI for a conversation started from Microsoft Teams as of today. We create and map a CAI conversation to a conversation created by Teams - so as long as the conversation is active on the Teams side, we on CAI side also uses the same conversation ID/state.
So, yes what this means is - the very first time a user talks to the Teams bot, we create a new conversation ID on CAI side and map it to the Teams conversation ID and the init skill is executed. Subsequently, when the user talks to the bot, Teams by default uses the same conversation ID, CAI also reuses the existing conversation and conversation state. For the Teams "personal" bot - like you mentioned , yes, this actually could mean as long as the account exists. Additionally Teams also does not provide a way to "delete" or "uninstall" this type of bot and by default uses the same conversation ID.
Another thing to note, CAI has data retention policies based on the type of data handled by the bot (see Bot settings -> Data Policy). This applies for MS Teams bot as well. Conversation related data is deleted from CAI side after the data retention period. At this point, the conversation (+state) is removed from CAI, and if a user talks to the bot, a new conversation is created on CAI side. (irrespective of the data storage and conversation state on Teams side)
Hope that helps,
Radhika
Yes, Radhika, this helps a lot, thank you!
best regards
matthias
The "Initialize Conversations with User Language" does not work with SAP Fiori Launchpad (SAP Cloud Platform, NEO, Free Style).
Please implement this feature also for integration with SAP Fiori Launchpad (NEO, Cloud Foundry, OnPrem Business Suite)).
The focus on user-relevant features is right.
The expansion of the UX features must be pushed further.
A professional integration of DeepGram for speech recognition should also be implemented.
The "Language Detection" must be on the level of Google Language Detection.
Hi Waldemar,
Thanks for your feedback.
{{client_info.language}} will provide the logged in users' logon language retrieved using SAP FLP APIs in case of our OOTB integration with S/4 ABAP FLP. For other FLPs we do not have an OOTB integration available. However in theory for other FLPs as well, in case the Web Client is bootstrapped in a standard, supported way and the same FLP APIs we are using to fetch the language are supported by the cloud FLP, then it should already provide the users' logon language. Else, we fallback to the users' browser language and populate {{client_info.language}} with this value. But ideally in no case for Web Client should the {{client_info.language}} be empty. I would be interested in getting more details on how you have integrated Web Client into cloud FLP so that we can take a look into what is going on?
Best,
Radhika