INC Beta Feature
This feature is in PUBLIC PREVIEW and may not yet be available to all customers. Functionality, scope and design may change considerably.
Virtual Users are helpful self-service bots that can meet Customer requests without the need of a Nimbus queue. You can configure them at your convenience, to be used variably within your Nimbus Workflows. The benefits are as follows:
- Responsive: A bot can answer your customers immediately, without having to wait in queues.
- Flexible: Via individual “Initial Message” and interchangeable bot configuration, the Customer can be engaged as you need to.
PRECONDITIONS
- Contact Center Licensing: Note that Virtual Users are exclusive to Contact Center services.
- Virtual Users require Bots and Bot Response Templates to be configured.
- A Speech Recognizer (Transcriber) is configured to convert the Customer voice into text for the bot to process.
🔎RECOMMENDED READING:
- Getting started: Best Practices - Virtual Users in Nimbus - Helpful thoughts and considerations before you implement AI in your Services.
- Detailed Admin step-by-step: Use Case - Setting up a Nimbus Virtual User using Copilot for a first setup of your Virtual User.
- Advanced Scenarios in Copilot and Flow: Use Case - Building a Classification Agent.
Configuring Virtual Users
By using the Organization Units approach, the bot configuration in Nimbus is built to be as flexible as possible, allowing Bot Configurations to be used across multiple services if necessary. The following options can be configured:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | The name of the Virtual User, as it will appear in other selection dialogues of Nimbus (e.g. within Workflows). |
| Organization Unit | Determines where the Bot will be available for selection. |
| Description |
A Nimbus-internal description, e.g. “Support Bot for first response IVR”. 💡This field is just for identification within Nimbus and will have no impact on the Bot behavior. |
| Bot |
✅ Precondition: Requires a Bot to be configured before becoming available for selection. 💡The selection of your Bot determines which underlying Bot API1 is used to interact with Customers and formulate a response. |
| Bot Response template |
✅ Precondition: Requires a Bot Response Template to be configured before available for selection. 💡The template determines the JSON Format that is received from the bot, allowing to map answers to Parameters in Nimbus for further processing. |
| Initial Message to Bot |
The “Initial Message” acts as a "Topic” or “Query” for your bot. This field can also be used to force a bot response in case it is not configured to send an initial message by itself. 💡Note that this field is optional in Nimbus: Depending on your Bot configuration underlying AI may already engage with the Customer automatically. Optionally you can also this message to go directly into a Conversation Topics3, e.g. by using Parameters and starting right with the first inquiry. A possible example of an Initial Message could be: |
| Modalities2 | Enables the bot to handle and react to Audio/Video (Calls). ⮑ Checking this option will require a Transcriber (Speech Recognizer) to be configured. |
| Transcriber |
✅ Requires a Speech Recognizer (Transcriber) to be already configured to be available in this menu. 💡 Transcribers are used to parse the language of the calling Customer into text for the bot to process. They can be configured multilingual, but are more effective when set to a specific language. |
1☝Please note: Bots leverage external features and APIs with cost outside of your Nimbus subscription. Also refer to the Note below.
2💡Bots are currently supported for Audio/Video modality tasks. Wider support is planned in the near future. → Also refer to the Limitations chapter below.
3 🔎Also see:MSFT Learn Documentation | Use system topics to learn more.
INC Azure Billing Cognitive Services
Disclaimer: Support for Azure Billing & Cognitive Services
☝ The usage of Microsoft Azure AI Services for Speech1 and AI2 will cause additional costs outside your Nimbus subscription, which are exclusively determined by Microsoft.
Please note:
- Nimbus Support does not cover pricing discussions or make recommendations on Microsoft Azure Services. → Please inform yourself via the references below on pricing models.
- Nimbus Support can not provide any technical help, insights or solutions on Azure Cognitive Service related technical problems.
1 Azure Speech Services: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/speech-services/
2 Generative AI Services (Copilot Studio):
Follow Up Steps
✅ Virtual Users must be applied within Audio/Video Modality Workflows as an “Add Virtual User” activity. For a detailed step-by-step instruction: Visit Use Case - Setting up a Nimbus Virtual User using Copilot.
Limitations
INC AI and Virtual User Limitations
AI-driven interactions
AI driven replies are not deterministic and depend highly on what the Customer is saying. For example, if the Customer is saying “I have trouble with my Skateboard” it is not necessarily given that the Bot will use the same word “Skateboard” as your exit unless specifically handled via Copilot.
🔎Refer to our Best Practices - Virtual Users in Nimbus for some considerations and risks when using Virtual Users instead of Human interaction.
Microsoft Copilot Bot Limitations
- Expect delays: Processing AI answers takes a few seconds for transcription of voice input, AI processing and then transcription back into a spoken reply. Luware is trying to minimize the delay on Nimbus call infrastructure, but the dependency on external APIs will always incur a delay. The Customer will hear silence during this processing and no audio feedback / silence detection.
-
Ensure you have no ambiguity in your topics. For instance, the word “
Service” may be too generic if you want to transfer to different services. Rather usehealthcare|medical|emergencyas identifiers or use more complex Regular Expressions to identify replies.
Nimbus Technical Limitations
The current Nimbus implementation with AI-driven bots underlies the following limitations:
- Supported Modalities: Virtual Users (Bots) are currently available for Audio/Video modality tasks.
- 3rd-Party API Support: Nimbus will be built flexibly to support “BYO” (bring your own) customer bot configurations and APIs. The currently supported bot integration is M365 CoPilot Direct Line 3.0 APIs.
- Authentication: The Copilot Secret needs to be copy-pasted into Nimbus. Further authentication types are planned to be supported in the near future.
- Generative AI: Copilot events (Reviewing, Thinking) during Orchestration are currently being ignored.