Use Power Automate to Proactively Message Power Virtual Agents Chat
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    Use Power Automate to Proactively Message Power Virtual Agents Chat

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    Article Summary

    Chatbots are a useful technology for allowing users to self-serve when it comes to information requests or transacting on their behalf. One of the challenges with this approach is that the user needs to initiate the communication with the chatbot. Or do they?

    Microsoft recently release a feature in Power Automate that allows for a message to be sent to a Power Virtual Agent chatbot. From there, a deeper conversation can take place if a trigger phrase is provided by the end user.

    What is very compelling about this new capability is there are unlimited possibilities to use this feature due to the vast array of connectors available in the Power Platform. Any trigger can be used in conjunction with this feature. This includes scheduled events, data events and even manual triggers.

    To use this feature, add the Microsoft Teams – Post message in a chat or channel action to your cloud flow. Then, ensure that Post as is set to Power Virtual Agents, Post in is set to Chat with bot and that the appropriate Bot is selected.

    Note: To use this feature, the PVA bot needs to be published in Microsoft Teams and the user must have the chatbot installed for them. For additional pre-requisites, please refer to this link.

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    By default, the messaging is one way. But, whatever you include in your Message text box will be sent to the Chatbot. As part of this message, you can prompt your user to provide a trigger phrase that will subsequently instantiate another topic. Using this approach, you can then collect additional information that will help automate a downstream process.
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    Conclusion

    Proactive messaging is a very powerful feature. Instead of a chatbot passively waiting to be engaged with, we can initiate conversations using Power Automate. The opportunities to engage with users this way is limitless, due to the vast array of connectors found in Power Automate.

    To view this content in video format, please check out the following YouTube Video: Proactive Power Virtual Agents Messaging using Power Automate.


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