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Hi there,

The ServiceNow Tokyo release is available! Ok early access, so Safe Harbor applies. While you probably will find a lot of content about big new things in the latest release, I'm actually searching for the smaller parts, the nice enhancements. A small one I found… "Add alternate message" which is something new on the Text bot response control within Virtual Agent Designer.

Let's dig into this!

Text bot response control properties

When looking at the Virtual Agent designer and the properties of a Text bot response control, notice the difference between San Diego and Tokyo:

San Diego

Tokyo

Add alternate message

"Alternate message" sounds like you could add multiple messages, which then randomly would be displayed to a user? Diving into the ServiceNow Product Documentation, the updated page on Text bot response control describes the Add alternate message as "Add one or more alternate response messages for the user. Virtual Agent randomly chooses one of your responses for each conversation." Sounds interesting. It does make one of my custom Actions for basically the same functionality obsolete, though if it's out-of-the-box now… perfect!

Let's test

I've set up a new test topic, adding a Bot Response Text and applying the following Response messages:

While testing the Topic, the result is:

Try 1

Try 2

I did try a few more times, though the result is obvious. Randomly the Response messages are picked! Works like a charm.

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