Building Solutions with the Microsoft Power Platform

Chapter 7. Getting to Know Power Virtual Agents

Over the last several years, you have probably noticed the increasing amount of artificial intelligence technology flooding the tech scene. AI is incorporated into many of the tools that we use every day. Take cell phones as an example. Many of our phones have image recognition features that will automatically tag our images for us by using AI to determine what’s in a picture. I can open my photo app right now and type in “baby,” and the app will filter and show me all of the photos that I’ve taken of my three-year-old since she was born. Similarly, you can add an image to a PowerPoint presentation, and PowerPoint will use AI to automatically caption that image. The Power Platform has given us other ways to incorporate AI into our solutions, but Power Virtual Agents was the first standalone app in the suite built on AI.

So what is Power Virtual Agents? Well, it’s a way to create your own chatbots. When I say chatbots, you may think of Cortana, Siri, and Google Assistant, to name a few. However, those solutions are built on a much larger scale. If you think about the last time you visited a site and a chat window opened with a virtual assistant offering to help you with a support issue, or with getting more information about the company or its products, that would be a closer representation of the type of solution this is meant for. Power Virtual Agents will allow you to create an AI-based bot that is focused on a specific topic. ...