The document discusses virtual assistants and their components. It begins with an introduction to virtual assistants, noting they provide a cumulative bot experience tailored to a brand and are extensible with skills. It then discusses how virtual assistants can benefit organizations by allowing them to own the knowledge base and custom abilities. The rest of the document covers the components and template of a virtual assistant, demonstrating how it is programmable and accessible across channels. It also discusses skills, use cases, and considerations for virtual assistants and skills.

1. The Virtual Assistant
Tour
Hi, I am your Cortana
Asish Padhy

2. Hello, Hola, Namaste,
Ni hao…
Intro
2
o Tech Lover and Enthusiast
o 14+ years of building solutions
o Architect and Developer in M365, Azure, AI and lot
many ...
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3. Agenda
Highlights
Virtual
Assistant
Virtual Assistant Intro
What it means for organization
Virtual
Assistant
Tour
Components & Template
Design Flow
Demo
My Cortana Demo
Skills and
Templates
Skills
Use Cases and Things to know
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4. 4
Virtual Assistant
What is a Virtual Assistant ?
o Cumulative Bots Experience tailored to your brand
o Conversational Assistant across broad range of
applications
o Personalized to Users and brand
o Extensible with Skills
o Provides a great starting point with Templates
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5. Virtual
Assistant
What it means for an
organization
5
o Get information specific to
particular business
requirements
o Create a map of existing data
with the business need
Business ownership
Own Knowledge base
o Add skills / abilities as per your
business requirement
o Provide more skillful actions for
user actions such as automated
prompts, activity tracking etc.
o Create a custom flow that
works with your business
processes
Custom abilities
Owned Processes
o Start with an existing template
build on Microsoft experiences
o Focusses on combination of
services and strength of using
each
o Build and extend as you go
Experience and build value
Starting Point
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6. 6
Virtual
Assistant
Tour
Components
o New or existing bots
o Existensible
o Programmable
o Access Points
o E.g. Teams, Emails, Web, Speech
o Document Repositories
o Line of Business databases
o CRM and Employee Systems
o Offload complexity and
intelligence
o LUIS, QNA Maker, Azure Search
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7. 7
Virtual Assistant
Template Structure
o Focus on Routing requests
o Core scalability with Dispatch tool
o Support for Telemetry (analytics)
o Support for Content Moderation
o Core support from LUIS and QnA services
o Extensibility with Skills with existing bot functionalities
Content
Moderator
Telemetry
Virtual Assistant
Dispatch
LUIS QnA
Skills
Bot
Skill 1
Bot
Skill 2
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8. Virtual Assistant Flow
Design
8
•Knowledge
Sources
•Channels
•User Inputs
•Skills
Define
•Virtual
Assistant
•QNA Maker
•Custom
Skills
Build
•Azure
Hosting
•Channel
Hosting
•AI Hosting
Deploy@AsishPadhy

9. Demo
I am your Cortana

10. Skills
Custom Abilities
10
o Provide a way to expand on available or new
conversational or AI abilities
o Addons at Organizational scope
o Skills allows to reuse existing conversational features
o Some startup template skills provided by Microsoft
E.g.
o Email Skill
o Todo Skill
o Calendar Skill
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11. Custom Skills
Skills
o Provided Skill template as a starting point
o Extend an existing custom bot to skill
o Add the skill to virtual assistant using botskills command
o Update the dispatch skill in assistant
o Support Authentication
o Available Skills CLI tool
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12. 12
Use cases
 Single routing interface for multiple bot
scenarios
 Automated learning platform with
extension to multiple channels
E.g.
 Customer Service Request
 Planner and Organizer
 Go to Help / Support Request
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13. 13
Things to know
 Update Template.json to customize the virtual assistant azure
resources deployment
 Quickly train QnA and LUIS using LU files in Resources folder
under Deployment
 Activate LUIS and assign authoring key to prevent service
drops
 Identify load and plan cost for Azure Search RPUs
Virtual Assistant
 Update Skills dialog for custom prompts and flow
 Deploy the skill to Virtual Assistant after complete individual testing
using bot emulator
 Don’t make skill too specific or heavy. Keep it light and scalable
 Create more granular independent skills
 Use Direct line Speech for easy accessibility
Skills
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14. 14
Help
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/bot-builder-virtual-
assistant-introduction?view=azure-bot-service-4.0
Virtual assistant
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/bot-builder-skills-
overview?view=azure-bot-service-4.0
Skills
https://github.com/microsoft/botframework-solutions/tree/master/skills/csharpSample Skills
Repo (C#)
https://microsoft.github.io/botframework-solutions/virtual-assistant/tutorials/create-
assistant/csharp/1-intro/
Create Virtual
Assistant
https://microsoft.github.io/botframework-solutions/skills/tutorials/create-
skill/csharp/1-intro/
Create Skill
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15. THANK YOU!
Asish Padhy
Twitter
@asishpadhy
LinkedIn
https://linkedin.com/in/asishpadhy
Blog
https://asishpadhy.com