Tutorial: Add your knowledge base to Power Virtual Agents

Create and extend a Power Virtual Agents bot to provide answers from your knowledge base.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

Integrate an agent with a knowledge base

Power Virtual Agents allows teams to create powerful bots by using a guided, no-code graphical interface. You don't need data scientists or developers.

In Power Virtual Agents, you create an agent with a series of topics (subject areas), in order to answer user questions by performing actions. If an answer can't be found, a system fallback can return an answer.

Configure the agent to send the question to your knowledge base as part of a topic's action, or as part of the System Fallback topic path. They both use an action to connect to your knowledge base and return an answer.

Power Automate connects to GenerateAnswer action

To connect your agent to your knowledge base, use Power Automate to create the action. Power Automate provides a process flow, which connects to QnA Maker's GenerateAnswer API.

After you design and save the flow, it's available from a Power Automate solution. Use that solution as an action in your agent.

Connect an agent to your knowledge base

Here's an overview of the steps to connect an agent in Power Virtual Agents to a knowledge base in QnA Maker.

• In the QnA Maker portal:
  • Build and publish your knowledge base.
  • Copy your knowledge base details, including the ID, runtime endpoint key, and runtime endpoint host.
• In the Power Virtual Agents portal:
  • Build an agent topic.
  • Call an action (to Power Automate flow).
• In the Power Automate portal:
  • Search for Generate answer using QnA Maker template
  • Use template to configure flow to use QnA Maker's GenerateAnswer.
    • QnA Maker published knowledge base information:
      • Knowledge base ID
      • QnA Maker resource endpoint host
      • QnA Maker resource endpoint key
    • Input - user query
    • Output - knowledge base answer
  • Create a solution and add the flow, or add flow to existing solution.
• Return to Power Virtual Agents:
  • Select the solution's output as a message for a topic.

Create and publish a knowledge base

1. Follow the quickstart to create a knowledge base. Don't complete the last section, about creating a bot. Instead, use this tutorial to create a bot with Power Virtual Agents.

   

   Enter your published knowledge base settings found on the Settings page in the QnA Maker portal. You will need this information for the Power Automate step to configure your QnA Maker GenerateAnswer connection.

2. In the QnA Maker portal, on the Settings page, find the endpoint key, endpoint host, and knowledge base ID.

Create an agent in Power Virtual Agents

1. Sign in to Power Virtual Agents. Use your school or work email account.

2. If this is your first bot, you'll be on the Home page of the agent. If this isn't your first bot, select the bot from the top-right area of the page, and select + New Bot.

   

Topics provided in the bot

The agent uses the topic collection to answer questions in your subject area. In this tutorial, the agent has many topics provided for you, divided into user topics and system topics.

Select Topics from the left navigation to see the topics provided by the bot.

Create the system fallback topic

Although the agent can connect to your knowledge base from any topic, this tutorial uses the system fallback topic. The fallback topic is used when the agent can't find an answer. The agent passes the user's text to QnA Maker's GenerateAnswer API, receives the answer from your knowledge base, and displays it to the user as a message.

1. In the Power Virtual Agents portal, on the top-right corner, select Settings (the gear icon). Then select System Fallback.

   

2. Select + Add to add a system fallback topic.

   

3. After the topic is added, select Go to Fallback topic to author the fallback topic on the authoring canvas.

   Tip

   If you need to return to the fallback topic, it's available in the Topics section, as part of the System topics.

Use the authoring canvas to add an action

Use the Power Virtual Agents authoring canvas to connect the fallback topic to your knowledge base. The topic starts with the unrecognized user text. Add an action that passes that text to QnA Maker, and then shows the answer as a message. The last step of displaying an answer is handled as a separate step, later in this tutorial.

This section creates the fallback topic conversation flow.

1. The new fallback action might already have conversation flow elements. Delete the Escalate item by selecting the Options menu.

   

2. Select the + connector flowing to the Message box, and then select Call an action.

   

3. Select Create a flow. The process takes you to the Power Automate portal.

   

   Power Automate opens to a new template. You won't use this new template.

   

Create a Power Automate flow to connect to your knowledge base

The following procedure creates a Power Automate flow that:

• Takes the incoming user text, and sends it to QnA Maker.
• Returns the top response back to your agent.

1. In Power Automate, select Templates from the left navigation. If you are asked if you want to leave the browser page, accept Leave.

2. On the templates page, search for the template Generate answer using QnA Maker then select the template. This template has all the steps to call QnA Maker with your knowledge base settings and return the top answer.

3. On the new screen for the QnA Maker flow, select Continue.

   

4. Select the Generate Answer action box, and fill in your QnA Maker settings from a previous section titled Create and publish a knowledge base. Your Service Host in the following image refers to your knowledge base host Host and is in the format of https://YOUR-RESOURCE-NAME.azurewebsites.net/qnamaker.

   

5. Select Save to save the flow.

Create a solution and add the flow

For the agent to find and connect to the flow, the flow must be included in a Power Automate solution.

1. While still in the Power Automate portal, select Solutions from the left-side navigation.

2. Select + New solution.

3. Enter a display name. The list of solutions includes every solution in your organization or school. Choose a naming convention that helps you filter to just your solutions. For example, you might prefix your email to your solution name: jondoe-power-virtual-agent-qnamaker-fallback.

4. Select your publisher from the list of choices.

5. Accept the default values for the name and version.

6. Select Create to finish the process.

Add your flow to the solution

1. In the list of solutions, select the solution you just created. It should be at the top of the list. If it isn't, search by your email name, which is part of the solution name.

2. In the solution, select + Add existing, and then select Flow from the list.

3. Find your flow from the Outside solutions list, and then select Add to finish the process. If there are many flows, look at the Modified column to find the most recent flow.

Add your solution's flow to Power Virtual Agents

1. Return to the browser tab with your agent in Power Virtual Agents. The authoring canvas should still be open.

2. To insert a new step in the flow, above the Message action box, select the + connector. Then select Call an action.

3. From the Flow pop-up window, select the new flow named Generate answers using QnA Maker knowledge base.... The new action appears in the flow.

   

4. To correctly set the input variable to the QnA Maker action, select Select a variable, then select bot.UnrecognizedTriggerPhrase.

   

5. To correctly set the output variable to the QnA Maker action, in the Message action, select UnrecognizedTriggerPhrase, then select the icon to insert a variable, {x}, then select FinalAnswer.

6. From the context toolbar, select Save, to save the authoring canvas details for the topic.

Here's what the final agent canvas looks like.

Test the agent

1. In the test pane, toggle Track between topics. This allows you to watch the progression between topics, as well as within a single topic.

2. Test the agent by entering the user text in the following order. The authoring canvas reports the successful steps with a green check mark.

   Question order	Test questions	Purpose
   1	Hello	Begin conversation
   2	Store hours	Sample topic. This is configured for you without any additional work on your part.
   3	Yes	In reply to Did that answer your question?
   4	Excellent	In reply to Please rate your experience.
   5	Yes	In reply to Can I help with anything else?
   6	How can I improve the throughput performance for query predictions?	This question triggers the fallback action, which sends the text to your knowledge base to answer. Then the answer is shown. the green check marks for the individual actions indicate success for each action.

   

Publish your bot

To make the agent available to all members of your school or organization, you need to publish it.

1. From the navigation on the left, select Publish. Then select Publish on the page.

2. Try your bot on the demo website (look for the link under Publish).

   A new web page opens with your bot. Ask the bot the same test question: How can I improve the throughput performance for query predictions?

   

Share your bot

To share the demo website, configure it as a channel.

1. From the navigation on the left, select Manage > Channels.

2. Select Demo website from the channels list.

3. Copy the link and select Save. Paste the link to your demo website into an email to your school or organization members.

Clean up resources

When you are done with the knowledge base, remove the QnA Maker resources in the Azure portal.

Next step

Get analytics on your knowledge base

Learn more about:

• Power Virtual Agents
• Power Automate
• QnA Maker connector and the settings for the connector