vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
: You can now [search dialog nodes](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-dialog-tasksdialog-tasks-search) for a given word or phrase.





 15 March 2018 

Introducing IBM Watson® Assistant
: IBM Watson® Conversation has been renamed. It is now called IBM Watson® Assistant. The name change reflects the fact that Watson Assistant is expanding to provide prebuilt content and tools that help you more easily share the virtual assistants you build. Read [this blog post](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2018/03/the-future-of-watson-conversation-watson-assistant/) for more details.

New REST APIs and SDKs are available for Watson Assistant
: The new APIs are functionally identical to the existing Conversation APIs, which continue to be supported. For more information about the Watson Assistant APIs, see the [API Reference](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/assistant/assistant-v1).

Dialog enhancements
: The following features were added to the dialog tool:



* Simple variable name and value fields are now available that you can use to add context variables or update context variable values. You do not need to open the JSON editor unless you want to. See [Defining a context variable](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-dialog-runtime-contextdialog-runtime-context-var-define) for more details.
* Organize your dialog by using folders to group together related dialog nodes. See [Organizing the dialog with folders](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-dialog-tasksdialog-tasks-folders) for more details.
* Support was added for customizing how each dialog node participates in user-initiated digressions away from the designated dialog flow. See [Digressions](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-dialog-runtimedialog-runtime-digressions) for more details.



Search intents and entities
This documentation is for the classic Watson Assistant experience. To see the documentation for the new Watson Assistant, please go [here](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant).



 System entities 

Learn about system entities that are provided by IBM for you to use out of the box. These built-in utility entities help your assistant recognize terms and references that are commonly used by customers in conversation, such as numbers and dates.

For information about how to add system entities to your dialog skill, see [Creating entities](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-entitiesentities-enable-system-entities).

In January 2020, a new version of the system entities was introduced. As of April 2021, only the new version of the system entities is supported for all languages. The option to switch to using the legacy version is no longer available.

For information about how to use contextual entities to identify people and location names, see the [Detecting Names And Locations With Watson Assistant](https://medium.com/ibm-watson/detecting-names-and-locations-with-watson-assistant-e3e1fa2a8427) blog post on Medium.



 @sys-currency entity 

The @sys-currency system entity detects mentions of monetary currency values in user input. The currency can be expressed with a currency symbol or currency-specific terms. In either case, a number is returned.



 Recognized formats 



* 20 cents
* Five dollars
* $10







 Attributes 



* .literal: Exact phrase in input that is interpreted to be a currency mention.
* .numeric_value: Canonical numeric value as an integer or a double, in base units.
* .location: Lists the index element values of the first and last letters in the text string for the phrase that is interpreted to be a currency mention.
* .unit: Base unit of currency specified as a 3-letter ISO currency code. For example, USD or EUR.



The following table illustrates the information that each attribute captures from the user input.



@sys-currency examples

 Attribute Type Example (input = twenty dollars) Example (input = $1,234.56)
The free text response type has these default setttings:



* Customer response collection behavior is Always ask for this information and can't be modified. For more information, see [Skipping steps, always asking steps, or never asking steps](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-collect-infocollect-info-skip-step).
* Change conversation topic is disabled. If you want a customer to be able to digress and change topics while entering a free text answer, enable the toggle Allow customer to change topics during a free text response. For more information, see [Allowing your customers to change the topic of the conversation](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-change-topic).









 Saving and reusing customer responses 

There might be some questions that your assistant needs to ask in multiple different steps and actions. For example, a banking assistant might support many different actions, each of which requires that the customer specifies an account number. A customer response might have a complex configuration (for example, it might have options with many synonyms). Instead of having to rebuild such a response over and over, you can save a customer response and reuse it wherever your assistant needs it.



 Creating a saved customer response 

To create a saved customer response:



1. In Actions, click Saved responses.
2. Click New saved response.
3. In the Name field, specify a descriptive name for the saved customer response configuration.
4. Configure the details of the response as required. A saved response can be created only as an options response type. For more information about this response type, see [Customer response types](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-collect-infocustomer-response-types).
5. Click Save. The saved customer response now appears on the Saved responses page.
6. In the Type of response field, choose Options or Regex.



You can also edit or delete any existing saved customer response.
This documentation is for the classic Watson Assistant experience. To see the documentation for the new Watson Assistant, please go [here](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant).



 Plan your assistant 

Build an assistant that meets the needs of your customers with speed and ease.

To start, consider these factors and make key decisions up front that will keep you on track as you build.



 Pick your assistant's areas of expertise 

Decide what you want your assistant to specialize in. What questions or tasks will it help customers with? To make an informed decision, review any support call logs that you have access to.

Start small. Pick one or a handful of customer issues that will deliver the highest value to start.

It might be valuable for your assistant to answer a simple question that is asked all the time. Or maybe there's a task, such as scheduling appointments, that can be offloaded to the assistant to tackle 30% of all incoming customer requests.

Choose a narrow set of user goals first. After your assistant is live, you can use built-in tools to gain insights from the incoming traffic that will tell you what areas to focus on next.





 Give the right type of answer to meet the need 

A conversational exchange is what your assistant does best, but your assistant can do other things too. The best response to a question might be a single answer with a link somewhere else. Think about the right way to answer customer questions; don't try to fit everything into one type of conversational exchange.

The following table lists some examples.



Example of optimal response types

 Customer need Best type of response 

 Get information about your store location Your assistant answers with text (the store address) and an image (an area map). 
 Activate a credit card Your assistant can use a conversational flow to collect information for identity verification, and then call a webhook to submit the request to activate the card on the user's behalf. 
 Complete a simple task that involves a complicated application Your assistant can link them to a 2-minute video that illustrates how to complete the task. 
 Learn about insurance plan details after the death of a loved one Your assistant can connect the customer directly to a person who can show empathy and patience as the matter is addressed.
Each phrase can be up to 1,024 characters in length.

By adding these phrases, your assistant learns what is the right action for what a customer wants. The additional examples build the training data that the machine learning engine of Watson Assistant uses to create a natural language processing model. The model is customized to understand your uniquely defined actions.



 Uploading phrases 

If you have many example phrases, you can upload them from a comma-separated value (CSV) file than to define them one by one. If you are migrating intent information from the classic Watson Assistant experience to example phrases in the new Watson Assistant experience, see [Migrating intents and entities](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-migrate-intents-entities).



1. Collect the phrases into a CSV file. Save the CSV file with UTF-8 encoding and no byte order mark (BOM).



* If you are creating a new CSV file to upload phrases, the format for each line in the file is as follows:

<phrase>

Where <phrase> is the text of a user example phrase. If you’re using a spreadsheet to create a CSV file, put all your phrases into column 1, as shown in the following example:

Zoom

![Example spreadsheet to upload phrases](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/ca9232b3702768f24bb897f48f10778fcda28718/watson-assistant/images/uploading-phrases-spreadsheet.png)

Example spreadsheet
* If you [downloaded intents from the classic experience](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-migrate-intents-entitiesmigrate-intents-download), the format for each line in the file is as follows:

<phrase>,<intent>

Where <phrase> is the text of a user example phrase, and <intent> is the name of the intent. For example:

Tell me the current weather conditions.,weather_conditions
About Watson Assistant 

Use IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data to build your own branded assistant into any device, application, or channel. Connect your assistant to the customer engagement resources you already use to deliver an engaging, unified problem-solving experience to your customers.





 Create AI-driven conversational flows Your assistant leverages industry-leading AI capabilities to understand questions that your customers ask in natural language. It uses machine learning models that are custom built from your data to deliver accurate answers in real time. 
 Embed existing help content You already know the answers to customer questions? Put your subject matter expertise to work. Add a search skill to give your assistant access to corporate data collections that it can mine for answers. 
 Bring the assistant to your customers, where they are Add your assistant as a chat widget to your company website, or build your own custom app. 
 Track customer engagement and satisfaction Use built-in metrics to analyze logs from conversations between customers and your assistant to gauge how well it's doing and identify areas for improvement. 



This documentation describes installed instances of Watson Assistant. For more information about using a managed instance in IBM Cloud or in Cloud Pak for Data as a Service, see [this documentation](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-welcome-new-assistant).



 Feature availability 

Watson Assistant can be deployed as a managed cloud service or can be installed on premises. This documentation describes how to use the product installed on premises with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data. Some features that are available with Watson Assistant for cloud are not available with Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data.

The following features are not available with Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data:



* Third party channel support, for example, Slack, Facebook, SMS, and WhatsApp
* Service desk support, for example, Salesforce and Zendesk
* Voice Integration







 How it works 

This diagram illustrates how the product delivers an omnichannel customer experience:

!
To see your new greeting in action, click Preview. In the Preview pane, you should see your customized greeting appear.



![Preview of customized greeting](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/ca9232b3702768f24bb897f48f10778fcda28718/watson-assistant/images/greeting-preview.png)





 Adding a mandatory welcome flow 

Apart from how it is initiated, the Greet customer action is just like any other action. If you need to start each conversation with more than just a standard greeting, you can configure your Greet customer action with more steps and customer responses, just as you would with any other action. For example, instead of just saying hello, your Greet customer action might start by asking for the user's account number. For more information about editing actions, see [Overview: Editing actions](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-build-actions-overview).

You can also use the Greet customer action to initialize variables for use throughout the conversation. For example, you might want to initialize tracking variables at the beginning of the conversation, or store the user's name so you can personalize the assistant's interactions. In general, you can set variables in the Greet customer action just as you can with any other action. (For more information about setting variables, see [Managing information during the conversation](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-manage-info).)

Keep in mind that you should not rely on the Greet customer action to initialize required variables unless you are certain it will always be triggered at the beginning of each conversation. For more information, see [When the greeting action is triggered](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-start-conversationgreeting-triggered).





 When the greeting action is triggered 

Depending on how you publish your assistant, the Greet customer action might not be triggered.
If this option is selected, the SIP digest user name and password must be configured, and the SIP trunk being used to connect to Assistant must be configured to use only TLS.

If you use Twilio as your SIP trunk provider, you cannot enable SIP authentication for outbound SIP trunks to Watson Assistant.







 Apply advanced SIP trunk configuration settings 



* SIP INVITE headers to extract: List headers that you want to use in your dialog.

The SIP request often sends INVITE headers with information about the request that is used by the SIP network. For example, many companies use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems that pass information about an incoming call by using headers. If you want to make use of any of these headers, list the header names here.

The specified headers, if present in the request, are stored in the context variable sip_custom_invite_headers. This variable is an array in which each key/value pair represents a header from the request, as in this example:

"sip_custom_invite_headers": {
"X-customer-name": "my_name",
"X-account-number": "12345"
}

You can then reference these headers in your dialog. For example, you might check the header value in a dialog node condition to determine whether to process a branch. You can also use these headers when searching the Assistant logs; for example, you might search for a custom header to find all the messages associated with particular account.
* Disable the ring that callers will hear while the assistant is contacted: Choose whether you want the caller to hear a signal that indicates that the assistant is being contacted.

A 180 Ringing response is sent from the assistant back to the SIP trunk provider while your assistant processes the incoming call invitation. The ringing response is sent by default.
* Don't place callers on hold while transferring to a live agent: Choose whether the phone integration puts the caller on hold.

If your SIP trunk provider manages holds, disable this feature. For example, some SIP trunk providers prefer to have the assistant send a SIP REFER request, so they can put the call on hold themselves.
For example, if the assistant thinks that a single action named Pay Bill is the right one, it can clarify the choice by asking the customer Did you mean: Pay Bill.

Clarify when more than one action matches: When your assistant finds that more than one action might fulfill a customer's request, it can automatically ask for clarification. Instead of guessing which action to use, your assistant shows a list of the possible actions to the customer and asks the customer to pick the right one.

Offer support option when asking a clarifying question: The assistant can include a choice to connect to other support. If the customer picks this choice, the assistant uses your Fallback action.

Step validation attempts before offering support: If a customer provides invalid answers for a step in an action, the assistant can offer to connect to other support in the Fallback action. The step validation count measures how many invalid answers can occur before the assistant provides this choice.

This table shows the default settings for each mode.



Default settings

 Clarifying Confident 

 Clarify when one action matches More often Sometimes 
 Clarify when more than one action matches More often Sometimes 
 Offer support option when asking a clarifying question More often Sometimes 
 Step validation attempts before offering support 1 time 3 times 







 Choosing a mode for individual actions 

When you edit an action, you can see the mode that it uses and change it if you need to.



1. Click the Action response mode icon ![Action response mode icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/ca9232b3702768f24bb897f48f10778fcda28718/watson-assistant/images/response-mode-icon.svg). The mode in use is checked.

Zoom

![Action response mode](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/ca9232b3702768f24bb897f48f10778fcda28718/watson-assistant/images/response-mode-modal.png)

Action response mode
2. Click the other mode if you want to change it, and then click Save response mode.
When configuring the JWT, you no longer need to specify the Authentication Context Class Reference (acr) claim.





 1 July 2020 

Salesforce support is generally available
: Integrate your web chat with Salesforce so your assistant can transfer customers who asks to speak to a person to a Salesforce agent who can answer their questions. For more information, see [Integrating with Salesforce](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-deploy-salesforce).





 24 June 2020 

Get better answers from search skill
: The search skill now has a beta feature that limits the search results that are returned to include only those for which Discovery has calculated a 20% or higher confidence score. You can toggle the feature on or off from the Refine results to return more selective answers switch on the configuration page. You cannot change the confidence score threshold from 0.2. This beta feature is enabled by default. For more information, see [Creating a search skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skill-search-add).





 3 June 2020 

Zendesk support is generally available
: Integrate your web chat with Zendesk so your assistant can transfer customers who asks to speak to a person to a Zendesk agent who can answer their questions. And now you can secure the connection to Zendesk. For more information, see [Adding support for transfers](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-deploy-zendesk).

Pricing plan changes
: We continue to revamp the overall service plan structure for Watson Assistant. In April, we announced [a new low cost entry point](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-watson-assistant-release-noteswatson-assistant-apr012020) for the Plus plan. Today, the Standard plan is being retired. Existing Standard plan users are not impacted; they can continue to work in their Standard instances. New users do not see the Standard plan as an option when they create a service instance.
* New [documentation](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant) focuses on the workflow of building, deploying, and improving your assistant.



You can easily switch to the new Watson Assistant and try it out. Visit the Manage menu for your Watson Assistant instance, then choose Switch to new experience.





 21 September 2021 

Analytics Overview change
: To improve reliability, the Values column has been removed from Top entities on the Analytics Overview page. Top Entities continues to provide counts of entity types. For more information, see [Top intents and top entities](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-logs-overviewlogs-overview-tops)





 16 September 2021 

Enhanced intent detection for French, Italian, and Spanish dialog skills
: The new intent detection model improves your assistant's ability to understand what customers want. This model is now available in dialog skills using French, Italian, and Spanish.

Change to the irrelevance detection option
: As of this release, new English dialog skills no longer include the option to choose between the Enhanced or Existing irrelevance detection. By default, intent detection and irrelevance detection are paired like this:



* If you use the dialog skill options to choose enhanced intent detection, it is automatically paired with enhanced irrelevance detection.
* If you use the dialog skill options to choose existing intent detection, it is automatically paired with existing irrelevance detection.



If necessary, you can use the [Update workspace API](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/assistant/assistant-v1?curl=updateworkspace) to set your English-language assistant to one of the four combinations of intent and irrelevance detection:



* Enhanced intent recognition and enhanced irrelevance detection
* Enhanced intent recognition and existing irrelevance detection
* Existing intent recognition and enhanced irrelevance detection
* Existing intent recognition and existing irrelevance detection



For French, Italian, and Spanish, you can use the API to set your assistant to these combinations:



* Enhanced intent recognition and enhanced irrelevance detection
* Existing intent recognition and existing irrelevance detection