all right it is one minute past we are going to get started as always welcome to the virtual agent academy before we get started into the main content just wanted to give you all a reminder to visit our virtual agent nlu community there you'll find the latest in terms of information and guides for virtual agent and nlu you also go there to ask questions give answers all of you are experts in virtual agent i just know it and i know that all of you uh or a lot of our audience members on the community would appreciate uh your uh ability to give it give give answers those questions that people post if you're watching on youtube and if you like what you're seeing go ahead and click that like or subscribe button down below and then be notified every time we update our upload our virtual agent academy videos to youtube as always all our virtual agent academies are recorded and posted on youtube usually within a week after so feel free to check out all our past academies as well as well catching up with this one on youtube on the now community channel the one last reminder of before we get started two reminders number one uh on your reminder emails i've now included a link at the bottom of that email to the virtual agent academy community page so if you're curious on what's coming the next community those topics are posted on the community on in that community page uh usually within a week uh before the academy so take a look at that check out uh you know your reminder emails for that link and the last thing is knowledge knowledge is coming up k22 uh we have two uh dates four sites either may 11th and 12th or may 25th to 26th uh check out uh you know i'm sure uh uh if you know check out our knowledge site and uh sign up cool so today we're gonna talk about how to send a virtual agent notification via flow designer for an expiring asset and so this is going to cover a lot of grant but the use case is super cool we're going to show you how to you know what it looks like and how to build it with me today is special guest speaker tricia cornish tricia you want to introduce yourself quickly certainly hi everyone i am a senior advisory solutions consultant here at servicenow i work with victor on demonstrating the solutions within the virtual agent predictive intelligence and performance analytics awesome thanks trisha let's go ahead and get started here's our agenda brief one single slide and now we're going to go into the nitty-gritty build phase and then wrap up with q a if you have any other questions feel free to use the q a button on zoom not the chat button although we do read that but the q a button for sure we we take a look at uh we monitor so uh with that uh yeah trisha take it away thanks victor all right today we are going to move quickly through the configuration of proactive notifications i'm going to start with enabling notifications this seems to be the setup that usually catches me in my different demonstration instances so i'm going to show you first how we enable notifications uh within chat setup and i'm going to show you the new san diego interface for that configuration then we're going to identify our use case our expiring assets and where i'm storing that data in my demonstration instances are going to be in the hardware table so i'm going to identify that table and the column that's going to act as my my event for my trigger most of this configuration is actually done in flow designer so i'll review the action that's required for the custom notification trigger and then we'll go through the flow designer flow and then finally we'll wrap up with the virtual agent provider notifications which are the standard configuration for notifications within the virtual agent today we're just starting this process from the flow so uh victor next slide and we will get started okay great i am going to share my screen go for it you just take there you go all righty and first let's talk about what we want to see so uh when we're talking about proactive notifications with the virtual agent we really do want to reach out to those users who are not necessarily in the virtual agents so here on my left side within teams i'm looking at bets teams instance where she's communicating back and forth with me on a software instance and then over here i'm um monitoring mary and eric talking together and boom i have notifications in both of these that my teams have received notification that it's time to get a new laptop so they were working elsewhere in their third-party messaging apps and i got a notification that it's time to get a new laptop so beth can start this process and really just initiate my replacement laptop conversation here and uh bud is going to do the same thing okay and so this is a standard virtual agent topic and so now how did we get that well let's go into our setup okay so our first step in this process that i just want to make sure everyone's aware of is our notifications we just want to make sure it's turned on in san diego we have a whole new conversational interface and so just to recap really quickly on the conversational interfaces settings on the home we can now turn on notifications here on use notifications and additionally if we're using third-party messaging apps we want to make sure that we're enabling the notifications for our users so we'll want to turn that on as well and so ensuring that first let's turn on at the system level and then turning it on for our messaging apps and then of course our users um who have enabled notifications is the first part this is the step that usually gets me but i just want to make you all aware of that first step process okay the next step is of course our um our flow designer actually we are going to look at the table first for our hardware so here if i go to my lm hardware dot list and i have it shortcuted but i'm just looking at all the assets associated to my users we do have it over here so um these are the users that have um assets that are retiring now this is just a standard column that i'm using that i've populated for my demonstration purposes so you can see that mary beth and bud all have assets that are retiring if i take out my filter of course i can see other dates so it's definitely time-sensitive time-based it doesn't hit everybody at the same time and i'm and i'm going to pick specific values within this table to trigger my notifications so not just a scheduled retirement but that it's a computer that it's in use and that it's assigned to one of my end users alrighty so that's our second step which is this is what i want to act on and now let's go to my flow designer oh i have it in my favorite so let's open my flow alrighty so right here at the top i have a flow for check for asset retirement this is really where the magic happens but we have a couple of steps that i want to touch on before we dig into the flow when i'm looking at my check for asset retirement my trigger is going to happen daily at 7 30 in the morning pacific time i have my lookup actions and before we continue in each of these i've actually created an a custom actionable notification this event trigger for asset check is actually a custom action so for today's demonstration i'd like to show that first and then we will come back and complete this flow so in my actions i am going to open the action notification my trigger and event for an asset check and since my itsm virtual agent notifications don't include custom actions this is why i have to create this so here in my script step i have two inputs and these two variables are key to getting all of this working so i have my variables for my hardware records and for my event stream and in my script step that i'll need to add as one of my inputs i am going to incorporate these variables and here within this script i am going to call out in this event queue these specific inputs um for action over in my flow so i had one of my colleagues who are really knowledgeable and floating designer assist me in building this and so i'm just going to pause for a moment to let you catch this but this is pretty much the flow to to start the process now over here in my flow i've started with my trigger and then of course i've created my actions my actions are going to be my lookup records which are a global action i'm going to identify my table and then of course i have my specific conditions and my specific conditions are what we talked about when i just showed you my table my scheduled retirement is not empty it's time based it's between yesterday and the end of next month so before may 31st and the state is in use and then for each item in my hardware records action i am going to call that custom action that we just created so in this trigger for an event and this should be displaying in a moment we have this actionable notification that now is available because i created my action first i'm going to retrieve uh for each of my variable records uh for each item i'm going to call this event now this i actually can identify in advance of setting up this registered event so i named this event and i'm going to copy this and this is going to be an event that i'm going to register in a moment so not yet done here but i just want to make sure that we have our daily trigger our lookup and then our event now at this point when i have my flow completed of course i can run the test and see what is going to be found from my flow so even if i haven't yet completed my virtual agent notifications i can see if my flow design is going to be successful i can see um the records that are going to be retrieved and if i have success or errors so that's the first step i'm going to stop there and make sure that we're good so far on our flow it was successful we found our three records from our hardware table i think we're ready to go all right let's go now to my event registry and my event registry is i've shortcut it but it is in my system um in my i'm getting to my menu options so i can call this out for you specifically it's under my system policy events and then registry so if i go i'm on even though i have it favorited policy and then my events and then my registry and so here what i can look for is the regis this is where i'm going to actually create the registered event and i'm going to make this specific to my hardware table so this matches the same name that i defined for my triggered event in my flow designer i'm going to identify that it's fired by my flow designer and this is just my proactive event so my registered event here becomes the bridge between my virtual agent provider notification and my flow okay critical step here now let's go into our actionable notifications so here i'm going to go to my system notification and i'm going to go down to my provider submenu and choose notifications and here is where i can configure my virtual agent notifications but now i'm having it triggered by my flow so let's go ahead and search for i'm going to filter out those that are not specific to an event so i can pull up the very specific one that's for my asset surrender date notification and we're going to review this configuration so here's my asset surrender date notification it's tied to my hardware table it's triggered by an event and this is the event i can search to through my system registry and find my event name that's specific to this table uh that i had associated in my flow design i have no conditions here my conditions are actually defined in the flow so i can leave this as is the recipient in the field is going to be my assigned to and now we just go through our virtual agent configuration first thing we're going to do is we're going to set up content for this notification and what we want to do when we're adding our content is identifying that this is our provider content and we are going to choose our virtual agent content chat so we are choosing the chat option for our virtual agent content and when i define my chat content i'm going to identify the card i'm going to identify simple i chose a record card it's specific to the table and here are the fields i'm going to display my name the scheduled retirement date the configuration name from i'm going to dot walk to the name field on um from the configuration item i'm going to give it a heading that's a little bit more user friendly than you have a new notification and i'm going to indicate uh what the process is and so that's the first step of this three-step process identifying our provider content now we're going to identify our action this is where we tie our content to our virtual agent topic if i click into my new provider action really all i'm doing is associating my published virtual agent topic to my content so i can search from my published topics and see that here and the third and final step is to link this action to my content and so here in this third action when i click new i'll have the ability to connect my replacement laptop action remember that has my virtual agent topic to my content this has my card all righty so those are the two pieces we have our flow designer which is initiating our process and then we have the execution of the actual notification occurring here the great thing is that i can not only test my flow but i can also see how this test is working within my provider notification so i actually have two points where i can verify if the process is working successfully if i click into my notification execution i can see perhaps what is working and if there is something that is not set up for instance i did have a couple of issues when i was testing this out that it wasn't picking up the right provider notification i was able to assess that here and so that would be the process and then of course to tie it together if i go back to my flow designer and i don't want to wait until 7 30 tomorrow morning i can go ahead and run this test and let's go ahead and go back to our users and we should get another notification i need to move my i think mary should get one in here or we troubleshoot it why does it work on the next trigger let's see we have three records and then let's go back to our executions and refresh it was 67 when i started the demo now we have our three notifications here so perhaps what what is missing and they might be in conversation or they might be in process so uh i can troubleshoot uh what's going on here so and that's the process uh what questions do we have i do see a question in the q a yeah hi trisha so yeah we have one question um back to your uh your action and the flow so record and event seem to be inputs on the actual notification action on the flow where does the action field come from though uh on my um on here i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna drag this over from my input variables into the value so i'm going to define this action first and then in my flow it becomes available here in my actions as an option to choose got it yeah and i think someone also said on the in the chat on the actual flow when you're triggering the action yes awesome and yeah like you i i bet you the notification will fire the moment you sign off this webinar it happens to me all the time i'm glad it worked when we started um but yes i think it might be because we're mid topic so um yes your actual notification becomes available uh here uh once you have it defined so yeah another question in this particular example do the notifications expire if someone doesn't respond or does a user continue to receive a notification until they respond oh great question they continue to re um if they type show notifications it will be available for them to act on later so if i go back to my my user um and we will start this process for eric um i actually eric might um i can do show notification and if he had an actionable notification it would be available to be viewed yeah so just to hone in on that point it we won't i wasn't going i wasn't showing mary's right window there is mary's notification she was chatting with eric nice yeah i was going to say um to tony on that point where we don't we don't ping the user constantly until they answer it's just it pings once and then they can always go back to it if they haven't acted on it yet right so in my i'm and i'm choosing um slack because i can have three different users i have um eric in green i have mary and pink and i have bud as a third user so that we can see who does and who doesn't get the notifications and yeah we can type show notifications if mary perhaps missed this or it expired yeah uh and then susan follows up with a quick follow-up so the daily 7 30 a.m trigger someone also checks whether a user has already been notified or that tr or can you speak to that 7 30 am trigger or where that comes in uh i just i'm sorry could you repeat that question i didn't hear the beginning of that that's just i just picked a time uh in in the day yeah she just says so the daily 7 30 am trigger someone also checks whether a user has already been notified i don't think that's what the 730 is for um no um it's just um this this trigger would fire there is no validation in my demo flow that the user's already been notified it's pretty much just one way out just it's not until my hardware records are either updated to re so that they're beyond uh the may 31st value this flow is going to fire when these conditions are met and so if i did not if say mary acted and got a replacement laptop of course she would not get those notifications any longer i might want to add an additional condition or an additional step so that once the process is started for a user they no longer receive notifications cool that's not part of this flow did that make sense it did to me i hope that it did too susan uh she she meant the daily 7 30 a.m somehow also checks not someone so yeah i think you've addressed that awesome so uh going down through the list uh plenty of questions just started popping up random which is great so roxanne asked so the proactive notification is a one-time thing and subsequently the user needs to look for the notification uh if actually um if mary smith wasn't on slack she would get the notification tomorrow it's not just a one-time thing if this would be a daily occurrence until these conditions are no longer met or until i added additional conditions right right because the asset would still be expired until she renews the asset yeah um let's see i a question popped up uh on the on in the chat window uh one of the users in the virtual agent needs to type hi to start another conversation in order to receive a notification or should that come in anyway no the proactive notification would come in any way so when i first started my demo um it was just the service i just received the card while um beth beth is my ms teams user uh was conversing with other users on software problems so there there was nothing for beth to do to start the virtual agent topic she did not have to start she did not have to type high in this instance yeah exactly i think um you know if if beth wanted to go back to her notifications yes she can type hi to she doesn't even have to type hi to start va she can just type show notification to review notifications if she like remembers she got one but ignored it at that at that previous time so yeah that's that's what trisha was showing earlier um okay we have one involved question and one short i'm going to do the short question first and then we'll go circle back to the involved question the short question uh by chris if i recall in quebec if notifications piled up it seemed like you needed to open each one individually to get rid of it is that still the case or is there a way to clear all notifications victor do you want to take that one because in my uh right now i'm showing this in rome and i did have on mary's i did have a couple of extra notifications so they are coming in um let's see show notifications yeah i i don't know i've never coming in um i think you still have to clear your notification yeah like one one by one i don't think there's a clear all notifications button although that'd be kind of that'd be kind of useful yeah and this this so right now um bud has a couple and i would have to i would have to clear the notifications individually yeah yeah so yeah sorry chris i don't i think it's still the case you still need to react to each one individually um to clear them uh we don't have a clear old button like like you'd have on mobile um if you have any if i saw a hand raised if you have a question just feel free to type it straight into the q a we'll read it uh samuel asks um can we can we go back to the use case uh we had the overview slide and i can share it too if you prefer trisha of the of what this what the steps were otherwise i can share yeah if you could share it that would be great go back to that so um so for those who joined in the middle here what trisha basically did was build a notification to fire in virtual agent if someone's asset expired so if your macbook is or your pc is like three to four years old and it's and the expiration date hits on your asset table that that flow looks that up and fires a trigger and that that flows a cap plate in an event and if you all remember uh you know we've done we've built notifications in v8 before an academy you could either do it off a record change or an event this one's an event and uh that that event based on the flow uh triggers when the when the asset is expired and it sends a notification via virtual agent to users saying hey your macbook's getting old or hey your macbook's expired or maybe your software's um you know warranties expired they want to do something about it and then we linked it to an action which was which would basically run a virtual agent topic so that's the oh that was the overall steps uh the overall use case and hear the overview of the steps so i hope that um i hope that tied everything up nicely trisha i think so does anyone else have any questions samuel did that answer your question yep i believe it did okay i don't think we have any other questions in the chat or um in the q a and look at our time right time yeah we are right on time so thank you so much trisha again for for presenting this was really cool really useful hey people got two academies in one they got a flow designer academy and they got a virtual agent academy uh in in the span of 30 minutes um so this the recording for this will go on to youtube uh in the now community playlist or if you just search servicenow community it will uh our servers now virtual agent the playlist will come up there they'll be posted there within the week within seven days uh now that i have access to upload to to community channel i i do that much faster and uh yeah we will see you again in two weeks the topic for for in two weeks will show up in the community page uh for virtual age academy within the week and i will see you all later don't forget to view this on youtube afterwards tell your friends and family or at least anyone's interested in a virtual agent and we'll see you soon thank you