we'll start the session in 1 minute sharp at 8:30 a.m. pafic time all right it's time to start our session hello everyone welcome to today's session before I jump into the topic I would like to quickly uh talk about our additional resources we have our community articles available for VA nlu and agent chat aw and sidebar we also have our YouTube channel all these Academy sessions that we do after the session I will record and post it into these YouTube channels so which means whenever you want you can always go back and revisit and watch these Academy sessions so please do subscribe our Academy session it's a conversational interfaces Academy and service now Community if anybody has any questions during this session please do post it in Q&A at the very end I'll be leaving five minutes for Q&A and we can also go through the list and try to answer to your questions so today's topic is connect your users to your agents through SMS channels so I have here Mark Leal who is our advisory solution consultant for customer workflows so he's been doing in a demo for few customers on this very particular topic so we thought it'll be very much useful for other customers to understand what steps that's involved for setting up the SMS channels and allow your users to interact with agents so here is a quick agenda as usual there'll be an overview about the use case and then we do a demo and then we also walk through the configuration steps that you need to get this SMS Channel set up and at the very end I'll be leaving five minutes for Q&A with that said here is an use case so let's say you have a requestor who is using SMS and wants to connect with an agent so you can activate this SMS Channel and have your configuration setup you can use with virtual agent or without virtual agent so the request uh use a phone number for the SMS Channel and uh send a message to an agent whenever a new message uh enters for the agent it does goes to agent inbox and agent has to accept and reject if agent accepts then it gets added into their agent chat panel where they can chat back with the requesters all the messages that they're seeing in the agent chat is still the same experience for the agent being in their agent workspace so we also have an ongoing conversation menu so any new request uh that's coming as an SMS or even the chat or any type of SM uh service channels that's coming all the requests will first go into the agent inbox and once agent accepts if it is an SMS Channel an SMS conversation because these SMS conversations can be an ongoing conversation so that's why all those SMS channels will come into the menu ongoing conversation so that customers can just go and look at the list and start interacting with them uh as an ongoing process Mark will be doing a live demo and he will also show you how this particular menu helps agents to keep an eye on all those ongoing SMS conversations and then let's say agent on the other side there's an um chat came from a requester and after a day or so there's no communication from the requester is happening so an agent just looked at it and she wants to follow with the requester so they can also initiate a conversation through SMS by composing a message selecting the channel and selecting the SMS that's been uh configured and then find the phone number to phone number after the requestor and send a message so the agents can send files and they can also send the KB articles and any of the incidents or any cases that they have created they can send those links as well with that said I'm handing over to Mark to show a demo for all these capabilities over to you mark thank you very much um so what we're going to do is we're first going to start out and just give you a quick demo of um doing the actual um SMS text with into the system so what I need to do the first thing that we need to do is we need to go in and make ourselves available in the inbox now when we make ourselves available we are setting up these um channels so SMS we've got WhatsApp phone calls chat cases Etc and this utilizes the advanced work assignment area here as well so at this point we're going to um also take a look at the main uh area here so this is a a configurable dashboard that the agent and um go and look at Active cases look at important items Etc um and any team cases that come in as well so um going to actually get them to send the chat the SMS and we're just waiting for this to come in I have a colleague who is actually sending that um across what I'm going to do is I'm actually while I'm waiting for that one um he actually says it is is coming through um what we can can do is we can oh there we go so you sent this um SMS in and it's gone through the advanced work assignment routing and from here it already knows who the customer is within our database if it is not in the database it will add a new record within the database through our workflows are built on our back end so what we're going to do is we're actually going to accept that particular chat and then we're going to go in and start asking um some questions now you can obviously type in um and we've got a list here saying that he needs some information regarding his bank account well in this case here in order to verify who he is we are going to need some additional information in order to get that bank account uh information so I've sent out a message uh through the SMS to say can you please provide me with some of this information and what we're going to do is we are going to um have uh him send in proof of his account so we're just waiting for that to come in now while we wait for that we do have a lot of different what we call Quick actions within this dropdown menu So within this dropdown menu we have things where we can transfer to a que transfer to an agent do some searches do response templat and auto it and we'll we'll touch on a few of these things so we're still waiting and there's that proof of um of the account information which then I can take a look at verify everything is good and in this case here I can actually go in and um select one of these and I'm just going to say may I put you on hold for a minute while I check this and then we also have the ability to uh then say okay we've come back we verified what the account information is and we've provided that to him now if there's that's kind of the first scenario where we've given them that information we've also verified so we can mark it as verified and save this particular record and and I'm just going to call this one incoming and save that and now at this point there's going to be another question that comes in and um let's wait for that oh and there we go and in this case he wants to add a new authorized contact so this is where we would actually use our autopilot so the autopilot feature what this allows us to do is to switch it back from a live agent to a virtual agent so in this case here I want to add a contact and I'm going to send this out what this is actually going to do is it's now gone into Auto and this is now sent the information to SMS asking a variety of question and I'm not touching the mouse or keyboard at all and he is going to start entering in um a variety of different information okay I'm not sure if he's having any technical issues on his side I think he may have a a technical issue on his side because it's not pulling up um any of his information oh there it is it just took a while for the system to go in so it's gone through and it's actually asked all of these questions so what's the first name is Kyle what's the last name and all of this was done via the virtual assistant and he's entered the mobile number and we now have a new contact that has been uh created and now it's back over to a live agent um and from this point here we've actually uh finished off of the um the uh information and I'm actually just going to go back over to my quick responses and say thank you for contacting support and now they would log off now one of the other things too is we have the ability to do um the public chat which you've been seeing we also have the ability to do private chats internally we can transfer that to another agent um we can go in here and transfer it to another queue so if it got rerouted for uh and for some uh problem or and it wasn't the right queue we could transfer that to the correct Cube obviously we can have ADD attachments both uh by directly both ways and we also have the ability to do Dynamic translation so if you turn this on and um the person sending the text message is uh speaking Spanish or French or any other language and the um agent is English what it'll do is it'll automatically translate that back into um the the language and when the English agent types something in and sends it back it will transfer across over to the um uh requester with uh their appropriate language um there so that's the the kind of first use case that we wanted to cover so I'm going to end this conversation here and the next conversation that we're that I wanted to do was doing an incoming uh simul ated phone call um oh one other thing that I will point out is that you can see that we have the internal transcript of everything that went on that was adjusted and added to that particular record so moving forward everybody will be able to see exactly what was there we have a full list of all the C uh customer information um and this not only is just their uh contact but also any cases recent transactions phone calls Etc so we can see a variety of different um uh things that they've done so 36 degree view and then we can also see all of their activity and their activity is not just with um SMS and cases and things like that but it's also um you know if they've been visiting the web portal and been looking at articles Etc so while this comes up uh I'm going to actually initiate a phone call and here we go here so you can see there's the interactions if we've got any portal activity have they done any recent searches Etc so and again this is all configurable it's not customized code at all it's all done through configurations at the business level now let's simulate an incoming phone call so in this case here we have there we go this incoming phone call is from Julie and um off this window right here and so it's already know who she is from her phone number and it's pulled that information in now in this case here the phone call comes in and says yeah I need to verify some um information again on my on my account if the call came in through a call instead we can actually go under compose a message and from here we've got um a variety of different things that we can do so in this case here I'm going to do POA right account and I can select which number so there is a variety of different phone numbers that they have access to and my computer is running a little slow today and there is the phone number that that is going to go to and I can send that SMS across now that SMS is going to um come across and then we have the interaction record now when we open up the interaction record this one here um once it pulls up is the same view that you had with the uh SMS record before it's just taking little bit of time to come up a little bit of issue here why this is still not pulling up oh there we go so there's that interaction that's coming up and then from here we can see that we have the the the exact same window here and from this case here please provide proof of account um so from this one here okay G to send a message back across and we will send this across and see how long that takes for it to come through so that text message has been sent um and she'll which should show up here again we still have the same ability to do what we did last time where we have our quick actions the same thing again fully configurable for you and the image should um pull up here in a minute we've got about 10 minutes left so I want to go through some of the configuration stuff I'll leave the screen and we come back to it sorry I'm just getting over so let's go over to the um screen here and from here we have a variety of different Windows now some of the things that we need to do first of all these are the required plugins that you want to install within the system so very easy to add in your plugins um you can actually just go under the uh plugin section just type in SMS it'll give you a list and then you can install them or you can download those from the store so very easy to add those into the system then when you're setting up the SMS you need to do a variety of different things so you need to first of all set up a twio twio account it will work with other providers other than twillo but uh for this uh demo we're actually using twilio so what it's going to do is once you set up the account it's going to give you an account Sid an authentication token um and the phone number that you're going to be using from this phone number we can see the active phone number and we can also see which Services we've got it on voice and messaging and then from here we have our web hook and that is the web hook that you will assign within the configuration space of um service now uh within the in particular instance and then from here um you can get um and create any additional API keys and tokens credentials and apps um through these areas here and this is all done through twilio now when you're setting up the SMS Channel um in uh the instance in the service now instance there's three main steps that we need to do we need to go set up the channel um we need to make sure that the uh contacts and personas have everything enabled within the list and then we would set up um any of the other information so let me go through I've got screenshots of this but I'm actually going to show you live uh what these are so from within here we've got the first thing is our provider Channel SMS so this is where we've actually set up the adapter uh for the particular phone number that we're using what phone number what method authentication are we using very simple to set these up there's only really two required fields that are needed the system will set up everything else for you now from the um um AWA um area what we can do is we can actually go in and set up um in this case here we need to set up our credentials first of all so if we go into our credentials we can see that we've got our our messaging and when we go in here this is where we actually look at that Sid ID number and the password is going to be um the token number so once you have those uh information you go in there'll be a button that says connect and that connection will then verify that it is correct and once it is it becomes an active connection once that piece is done then you NE just very easily go in and set up your um aliases and again we have uh two different ones set up here so if I take a look at um my twilio base versus twilio messaging again very simple to set these things up and we set up the connection if there is not a connection here it gives you the ability to add a new one and that connection I'll just open the existing one so we can see what's there and that connection again it's just the SID number the URL that we saw from the um twilio piece of it so you just gather the information from twilio and populate it here and that creates that link to those other areas now once you've done all of those things here whenever you go in and you set up um a a phone number in here if you say that they have access to the SMS or Whatsapp Channel as an example then it will be listed within this user channels profile uh you don't have to do anything it'll automatically add it in here if there is one that doesn't show up and you do want to add them you don't have to go to the contact you can actually just go to new and do that from within the system and it's very easy easy just to select or create a new one and when you create a new one which channel are they looking for what type is it um and that is pretty much an enable notifications and that's pretty much the only thing that you need to set up for it um for these particular uh ones and it'll look at the phone number um associated with that contact in order to go through and here's the notification for Julie Lewis saying that it was enabled if this is not enabled you will not be able to go through um and do that so once we get all of that stuff then it's a matter of setting up the advanced work assignment and again it's a very easy wizard driven uh way of doing it where you would actually just go under and set up your service Channel and I've already got these open just to make it easy to uh uh quicker so we've got the SMS Channel with short description we can put in conditions saying only fire if this condition is met and then we also have some additional cues now the cues down here if the queue does not exist then that's where you would actually go under your cu's area and create a new queue for you to use and if we open this particular one up here which is an existing Quee we've got our agent uh SMS Q um and we actually added in some scripting but you don't need to um it's all if you want to use Simple conditioning you can just actually choose a dropdown pick a keyword do an operator so very very simple to set these things up and then once you're doing that then you would actually set up the assignment rules and if we go back over to this there's the setup cues which will bring you to that cues and if I actually select on this one you'll see we have a variety of different cues in here I parsed it down just because there were a lot in there and then the assignment rules is the one that is right here and this is where you actually go through how do we want to handle these assignments is it most capacity is it last assigned do we want it how do we want want to handle rejections um after a certain amount of time uh what is the status that we want to put them in is there skills enabled um you can set up skills and then your shift handling if you have shifts um for this as well so again very simple to set all of this stuff up in a very wizard driven manner then we can actually go in here and do additional things if we have a rejection region maybe we have present state so we said make ourselves available and you can make available for variety of different things so in this case here we've got for CSM agents this one is for complaints and onboarding agents so you can set up multiple ones so that when you are actually in and there you can see this finally did come through um once you go into this availability um in here this is where you would set up um you know are you on break on call away Etc in your different um uh items uh from that particular one here um as I go through my list here I um at the end here um that is pretty much all of the setup that is required in order to get all of this um uh up and running um again you just have to create that twilio account first or whatever third party uh integrator you're using for your SMS get that SID number get your token and then from there just go through these steps that is that will walk you through and set those things up and then it will um work within the system so I will uh stop sharing there and um hand it back over to Sammy thank you Mark thanks for all those details we got uh uh quite a number of questions so I will read one by one then you can answer for the those questions so the first one goes um outbound SMS truncates maximum character is 160 is there a way around this also is there a way to send the record number as a link via SMS um yes you could send the record number um we can do merge Fields so we can pull up um and within a workflow in the background when an interaction record is created we can then um automate that so that can be done there um the 160 character limit I'm not 100% sure if we can get around that just yet so um I will find out um on that particular one and the next question is dynamic translation supported with the trio integration um yeah the dynamic translation is actually done um in the uh service now instance so um it's not actually done from the twilio side of things um so it should it should be working within that yes thank you the next question where do you set up SMS to show under available uh where do I show SMS to show to show which under uh under available I think this might be uh this might be for the agent inbox how you have uh defined showing different options for yeah so these are these are the um supported channels that you would specify um within so I'm logged in as an agent so I would say that this agent has the ability to do SMS WhatsApp chat Etc um they also have the presence so that you saw when we went over to the I think it was right it these the present States so basically what you would do is you would say okay so this is the available State and then these can you share your screen oh I'm sorry okay so let me just go back over to this so the present States um when you set that up so let's just go back over to let's see I don't know if I have a shortcut for it I don't so let me just go under here so advanced work assignment present States when I go into the present States you can see I've got a variety of different available so under the available is where I would set up um the different service channels that are available who's um with the groups what group they are or if I have an individual agent I can set that up here as well thank you Mark that's where you set that up so next question incoming and outgoing calls are supported yes do we need license for SMS plug-in um the SMS plug-in I believe comes with the uh Pro licensing um so we just need to verify um which license you have um but it is included with the I believe it is the pro license that it's included is will you an additional subscription I'm sorry is tell you an additional subscription yeah so the third party um integrator for that we don't do everything with internally we do a connection to these um SMS uh third parties tly as an examples yes you would need to set up um and they will and set up the phone number get all of the Sid numbers and everything and that is something that you would have to do on your end and here is the next question from Mike with SMS willo connection which we use willo for on all do we need to make it very clear that if the agent is not in the country the twio number is set up in example USA to India that the SMS will more than likely not work um I have done testing with it being in Europe um and it works fine I've been able to do it um across the pond so I I would it should work regardless i' I've done testing with it so I know it works using a UK number so I would think that India would be the same okay we have another question from Julian any restrictions or additional configuration required for international mbers and all carriers um not that I'm aware of uh maybe on the twio side um but I've never had to do any of that and like I said I've done with the UK and I've never had to go through any poops in order to get that to work it's all been the standard stuff that I showed you today so unless there's something on the twilio side that they require you to do you know maybe check a box or you know pay an additional fee or something I don't know uh from that side because that's on the too side but from the service now side no you should be fine another question from MCH will this create on um oor token the same way teams charts do um I'm not I believe it does I'm not 100% sure if it's going to create that off token or if you have to manually create it um but I believe it automatically does it for you I'm not 100% sure um thank you Mark we have one last question here from asney agent chat or AWA is great and have loads of cool features however with introduction of these features and connect support being deprecated service now removed the ability for agents to pull chats but have chats Auto assigned to them several businesses have used the connect support heavily and now are struggling to move to Polaris just because the PO feature has been removed question is there any way or alternate to have the same feature of pull in Incorporated in agent chat and AWA so Mark I'll take this question so we do have an option assigned to me that's a capability for the agents who can manually go and look at the chats list if it is not assigned to any agent they can just click on it and click on assign to me and start work on it I understand many customers are were using connect support and moving on to agent chat is a new experience but there are capabilities available uh for agent shats which does support the way you're um uh looking for based on this question if you have not found the details you can reach out to your solution consultant or account Executives and ask them for the more details you can also raise a support ticket on this particular one so that our support team will help you that said I'm going to the session thank you everyone for staying till uh till now and uh posting all the great questions see you all soon in our next um upcoming Academy session thank you thank you