Work with conversation transcripts

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When you export Power Virtual Agents chatbot conversation transcripts from Microsoft Dataverse, you will be presented with many fields.

Each of these fields includes information relevant to the chatbot conversation.

This topic lists the most important fields found in Power Virtual Agents conversation transcripts, and also provides guidance on bringing analytics information into Power BI with dataflows.

Conversation transcripts fields

The following are the most relevant to chatbots created with Power Virtual Agents:

Field Description Example
Content The entire transcript in JSON format. See the Content field section.
ConversationStartTime The start time of the conversation (not the time the transcript record was written to the data store). 2021-04-19T20:39:09Z
Conversationtranscript Unique identifier for the data row in the Dataverse table. 28eccb77-xxxx-4a63-985f-ffaaadd6f391
Metadata JSON that includes the Bot Id, Tenant Id, and Bot Name. {"BotId": "198eca5f-xxxx-4ae6-8c08-835d884a8688", "AADTenantId": "72f988bf-xxxx-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47", "BotName": "Test Bot"}
Name The name of the custom row that is created from the conversationid, followed by botid. 8YYe8iif49ZKkycZLe7HUO-o_198eca5f-xxxx-4ae6-8c08-835d884a8688
bot_conversationtranscript The bot's ID. 198eca5f-xxxx-4ae6-8c08-835d884a8688
Created on Date and time when the transcript record was created. 2021-04-20T02:40:13Z

Content field

The Content field is a raw log of all the activities users have with the bot. Common activity types include message and event:

  • Message activities represent content shown within a conversation. Message activities may contain text, speech, interactive cards, and binary or unknown attachments.

  • Event activities communicate programmatic information from a client or channel to a bot.

For more information on activity types, see the Bot Framework Activity schema.

The following are some of the key fields you will find within the Content JSON:

Key Description
ID Unique GUID to identify the activity object.
valueType Indicator of the type of value stored in the activity. This indicator dictates what information is being provided by this activity.
See Common activity value types.
timestamp Timestamp of when the activity was generated in Epoch format (number of seconds since midnight UTC Jan 1, 1970).
type The type of activity (for example, message, event, trace).
replyToId The ID of the activity that the current activity is responding to.
from Contains fields id and role:
  • id - the ID of the invoker
  • role - holds 0 or 1
    • 0 - activity is coming from bot
    • 1 - activity is coming from the user interacting with the bot
Notes:
The id can be used to calculate the number of active users that are interacting with the bot if the canvas is passing in a unique ID of the user. If the canvas doesn't pass an ID, a unique ID per conversation is passed.
The ID is hashed before being written to the transcript for security and privacy considerations.
channelId ID of where the activity is coming from (for example, directline, msteams, facebook).
textFormat Format of the text (for example, plain, markdown).
attachments Holds dynamic rich data associated with the activity
(for example, AdaptiveCards, HeroCards, Carousel data)
text The text for message activities.
value Fields specific to the activity based on the value type, this field is where most of the useful information exists.
channeldata
  • Contains channel data:
    • for messages:
      • DialogTraceDetail
      • DialogErrorDetail
      • VariableDetail
        • Contains the value assigned to a variable.
      • CurrentMessageDetail
    • for events:
      • cci_trace_id
      • traceHistory
      • enableDiagnostics
      • clientTimestamp
      • clientActivityId
name Name of the event activity (for example, SetPVAContext)

Common activity value types

Activity value type Description
ConversationInfo Contains whether the conversation is from the Power Virtual Agents app's test pane (isDesignMode) and the locale of the conversation.
CSATSurveyRequest User is presented with a customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey.
CSATSurveyResponse User responds to a CSAT survey.
DialogRedirect User is redirected to another topic.
ImpliedSuccess User has reached a question node in the topic, where one of the conditions points to the "Confirmed Success" CSAT system topic or calls the "End of Conversation" system topic.
IntentRecognition A topic was triggered by the user.
PRRSurveyRequest The user was asked if the topic answered their question from the "End of Conversation" topic.
PRRSurveyResponse The user's response to whether the topic answered their question from the "End of Conversation" topic.
SessionInfo Contains the type (unengaged or engaged), outcome (Escalated, Resolved, Abandon), and the turn count of the session.
VariableAssignment A value has been assigned to a variable.

To convert the ID of the dialog being redirected to, a user can use the bot's content.

Building custom reports from conversation transcripts

There are a few approaches one can take to build custom reports form conversation transcripts based on the number of messages that need to be processed.

Lightweight approach

Connect Power BI to Dataverse with a Power BI dataflow. Other infrastructure isn't required and, with every refresh, all records will be retrieved from Dataverse.

Diagram showing flow of data from Dataverse to the Power BI model.

Pros Cons
Easiest implementation. Refresh time may increase as transcripts increase.
High cost for storage within Dataverse.

Standard Azure Data Lake Store approach

Export Dataverse data to Azure Data Lake Store.

This method requires an Azure Storage account, but no other Azure infrastructure.

Use a Power Platform dataflow for data preparation on the transcripts and extract the data into a structured form.

Power BI refreshes data from the Dataflow and all compute infrastructure is managed by Power Platform and Power BI. During every refresh, records for a certain day will be retrieved from Dataverse.

Diagram showing the data flowing from Dataverse into Azure Data Lake and then being processed by Power Platform and Power BI.

Pros Cons
Low storage cost in Azure Data Lake Store.
Moderately simple implementation.
No Azure Compute required.		 Refresh time may increase as transcripts each day increase.

Azure Data Lake Store (ADLS) + Synapse approach

If data size in the Standard Azure Data Lake Store approach causes slow refreshes or other operational problems, you can use Azure Synapse Analytics and integrate it into Power BI.

Diagram of data flowing from Dataverse into Azure Data Lake and being processed by Azure Synapse and Power Platform.

Pros Cons
Refresh time is constant.
Moderately simple implementation.
Low storage cost in Azure Data Lake Store.		 Compute cost for Azure Synapse.

Tips for getting the most out of your conversation transcripts

Variables can be used to store data relevant to your bot content or bot user. Parsing out the variable and its value from the conversation transcript lets you filter or slice the data by the variable

In many places. the conversation transcripts refer to content by its ID. For example, the ID of the topic that is being redirected to by the current topic is only referenced by its ID. To get the name of the topic, look up the name of the topic from the bot content.