vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
See [New system entities](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-system-entities).





 12 June 2019 

Numeric system entities upgrade
: New system entities are available as a beta feature that you can enable in dialog skills that are written in English or German. The revised system entities offer better date and time understanding. They can recognize date and number spans, national holiday references, and classify mentions with more precision. For example, a date such as May 15 is recognized as a date mention(@sys-date:2019-05-15), and is not also identified as a number mention (@sys-number:15). See [New system entities](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-system-entities).

A Plus Trial plan is available
: You can use the free Plus Trial plan to try out the features of the Plus plan as you make a purchasing decision. The trial lasts for 30 days. After the trial period ends, if you do not upgrade to a Plus plan, your Plus Trial instance is converted to a Lite plan instance.





 23 May 2019 

Updated navigation
: The home page was removed, and the order of the Assistants and Skills tabs was reversed. The new tab order encourages you to start your development work by creating an assistant, and then a skill.

Disambiguation settings have moved
: The toggle to enable disamibugation, which is a feature that is available to Plus and Premium plan users only, has moved. The Settings button was removed from the Dialog page. You can now enable disambiguation and configure it from the skill's Options tab.

An introductory tour is now available
: A short product tour is now displayed when a new service instance is created. Brand new users are also given help as they start development. A new assistant is created for them automatically. Informational popups are displayed to introduce the product user interface features, and guide the new user toward taking the key first step of creating a dialog skill.





 10 April 2019 

Autocorrection is now available
These languages are great for programmer efficiency, but they also hide the API from view.

This abstraction is what you want, the whole reason for using a client library is to save yourself repeated, tedious boiler-plating. However, you must understand the underlying API is vital when you troubleshoot and report problems. When you report a suspected problem to IBM Cloudant, it helps us help you if you can provide a way for us to reproduce the problem.

This request does not mean cutting and pasting a hefty chunk of your application’s Java™ source verbatim into a support ticket, as we’re probably not able to build it. Also, your client-side code introduces uncertainties as to where the problem might be, your side or our side?

Instead, IBM Cloudant’s support teams usually requests the set of API calls, ideally as a set of [curl](https://curl.se/) commands that they can run, that demonstrates the issue. Adopting this approach to troubleshooting as a rule also makes it easier for you to pinpoint where issues are failing. If your code is behaving unexpectedly, try to reproduce the problem by using only direct access to the API.

If you can’t, the problem isn’t with the IBM Cloudant service itself.

If you’re investigating a performance issue, do consult the logs that are provided by IBM Cloud®. If the logs show that your requests are handled quickly by IBM Cloudant, but your application is slow, the root of that problem lies with your client-side application code. See the rule about [logging and monitoring](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant?topic=Cloudant-cloudant-in-practicesee-whats-going-on-with-logs).

If you suspect that a problem lies with an officially supported client library, then try to construct a small, self-contained code example that demonstrates the issue. In this self-contained code example, use as few other dependencies as possible. If you’re using Java™, it is helpful to us if you can use a minimal [test harness](https://github.com/mikerhodes/java-cloudant-minimal) to highlight library issues.
You can have one instance of the service on the trial plan that is provisioned in your account at any time.



* Standard: When you're ready to upgrade, you get unlimited access to all the features that the service offers. The number of instances that your teams can provision is unlimited. With the Standard plan, you are charged per secret and per instance that is provisioned. To view the most current pricing information, see the Secrets Manager UI.



Important dates:

Be sure to keep the following dates in mind:



* 23 March 2022: Instances of Secrets Manager on the Lite plan will be deprecated. As an existing user, you can continue to use the service without interruption, but you should upgrade your instances to the Standard plan as soon as you can after this date.
* 22 May 2022: Instances of Secrets Manager on the Lite plan will be disabled and functionality is removed. However, the instance remains in your account for an additional 30 days, during which you can choose to upgrade your plan.
* 21 June 2022: If you have chosen not to upgrade your plan, the instances of the service and their data will be removed from your account.



Users will have the option to upgrade their service starting 23 March 2022. To ensure that your service functionality is not disrupted, be sure to upgrade to a Standard plan before 22 May 2022.





 3 February 2022 

Enable lifecycle notifications for your certificates
: You can now integrate with the [ß[en-short]}](https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog/services/event-notifications) service so that you can manage and route all of your Secrets Manager alerts to your preferred destinations.

Currently, Secrets Manager supports notifications for certificates only. For more information, see [Enabling event notifications](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/secrets-manager?topic=secrets-manager-event-notifications).





 31 January 2022 

Store key-value secrets
: You can now create key-value secrets with the Secrets Manager UI and API.
Account types 

When you register with IBM Cloud®, you are set up with a Pay-As-You-Go account. Even though you provide your credit card information for account security and identity verification purposes, you can still use IBM Cloud for free by selecting products in the catalog that offer Free and Lite pricing plans. Another account type, called a Subscription account, is also available. With a Subscription account, you get many of the same features of a Pay-As-You-Go account, plus discounts for platform services and support with a more consistent billing structure that uses subscriptions.



 Comparing accounts 

The following table provides a comparison of Trial, Pay-As-You-Go, and Subscription accounts. For more details about each account, see the sections that follow.



Table 1. Comparison of IBM Cloud accounts
This table has row and column headers. The row headers identify the feature. The column headers identify the account type. To understand which features apply to the account types, navigate to the row, and find the feature that you're interested in.

 Trial Pay-As-You-Go Subscription 

 [Free community buildpacks](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cloud-foundry-public?topic=cloud-foundry-public-available_buildpacks) 186 GBH 186 GBH 186 GBH 
 Access to [Lite service plans](https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog/?search=label:lite) ![Feature available](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/4d8c6eec891cff72b666dc24bd3211810c77fb42/icons/icon_enabled.svg) ![Feature available](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/4d8c6eec891cff72b666dc24bd3211810c77fb42/icons/icon_enabled.svg) !
* IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
* IBM Cloudant
* IBM® Secure Gateway for IBM Cloud®
* App ID



For sensitive workloads, the clusters can be hosted in IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service for Bare Metal. By using industry-standard containers technology, apps can initially be re-hosted on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service quickly without major architectural changes. This change provides the immediate benefit of scalability.

They can replicate and scale the apps by using defined rules and the automated Kubernetes orchestrator. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provides scalable compute resources and the associated DevOps dashboards to create, scale, and tear down apps and services. By using Kubernetes's deployment and runtime objects, the provider can monitor and manage upgrades to apps reliably.

IBM® Secure Gateway for IBM Cloud® is used to create a secure pipeline to on-premises databases and documents for apps that are re-hosted to run in IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.

IBM Cloudant is a modern NoSQL database suitable a range of data-driven use cases from key-value to complex document-oriented data storage and query. To minimize queries to the back-office RDBMS, IBM Cloudant is used to cache the user's session data across apps. These choices improve the front-end app usability and performance across the apps on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.

Moving compute workloads into the IBM Cloud isn't enough though. The provider needs to go through a methods transformation as well. By adopting the practices of the IBM Garage Method, the provider can implement an agile and iterative delivery process that supports modern DevOps practices like CI/CD.

Much of the CI/CD process itself is automated with IBM's Continuous Delivery service in the Cloud. The provider can define workflow toolchains to prepare container images, check for vulnerabilities, and deploy them to the Kubernetes cluster.







 Results 



* Lifting the existing monolithic VMs into cloud-hosted containers was a first step that allowed the provider to save on capital costs and begin learning modern DevOps practices.
For details, see [Launching the Knowledge Studio application](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-knowledge-studio?topic=watson-knowledge-studio-wks_tutintrolaunching-the-knowledge-studio-application).
* Can I change from a Standard to Lite plan?

Downgrading your plan for Knowledge Studio is not supported. You can, however, manage users, storage, billing, and usage with options such as setting limits or notifications. For information on these management options, refer to [Upgrading your pricing plan](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-knowledge-studio?topic=watson-knowledge-studio-upgrade).
* Why can't I create a new instance on the Lite plan?

You can have only one instance of a Lite plan per service. To create a new instance, delete your existing Lite plan instance. Or upgrade your plan to create more instances of the Knowledge Studio service.
* When are annotation tasks moved to archive?

When you revert to an older version of the machine learning model, all annotation tasks are archived because they are no longer valid. In other words, the tasks you were working on are archived because the previous model snapshot was promoted. Knowledge Studio does not have a capability to re-activate an archived task. You can create new annotation tasks following the snapshot restoration. To learn more, see [Making machine learning model improvements](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-knowledge-studio?topic=watson-knowledge-studio-improve-ml).
* How do I export and import a workspace?

You can backup and restore a workspace by following the steps in [Backing up and restoring data](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-knowledge-studio?topic=watson-knowledge-studio-backup-restore). These backup and restore tasks allow you to perform a manual data migration from one Knowledge Studio instance to another, backing up your data from one instance and restoring it on another instance.
* Experimental services and features: What does experimental mean?

IBM releases experimental services and features for you to try out.
See this whitepaer on [Splitting the load](https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/KDPB1REE) to learn more about this topic. The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) should be used at most only for intermediate storage during processing. All final data (or even intermediate data) should be written to IBM Cloud Object Storage before the cluster is deleted. If your intermediate storage requirements exceed the HDFS space available on a node, you can add more nodes to the cluster.
* How many IBM Analytics Engine clusters can I spin up?

There is no limit to the number of clusters you can spin up.
* Is there a free usage tier to try IBM Analytics Engine?

Yes, we provide the Lite plan which can be used free of charge. However, this plan is available only to institutions that have signed up with IBM to try out the Lite plan. See [How does the Lite plan work](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/faqslite-plan)?

When you move to a paid plan, you are entitled to $200 in credit that can be used against IBM Analytics Engine or any service on IBM Cloud. This credit is only allocated once.
* How does the Lite plan work?

The Lite plan provides 50 node-hours of free IBM Analytics Engine usage. One cluster can be provisioned every 30 days. After the 50 node-hours are exhausted, you can upgrade to a paid plan within 24 hours to continue using the same cluster. If you do not upgrade within 24 hours, the cluster will be deleted and you have to provision a new one after the 30 day limit has passed.

A cluster created using a Lite plan has 1 master and 1 data node (2 nodes in total) and will run for 25 hours on the clock (50 hours/2 nodes). The node-hours cannot be paused, for example, you cannot use 10 node-hours, pause, and then come back and use the remaining 40 node-hours.

Remember that you must sign up with IBM to try out the Lite plan.
* What types of service maintenance exist in IBM Analytics Engine?

Occasionally, we need to update the IBM Analytics Engine service.
Typically, this is easily done from the IBM Cloud Object Storage console found here [https://cloud.ibm.com/objectstorage/](https://cloud.ibm.com/objectstorage/), select the correct name of Cloud Object Storage Instance you wish to upgrade,click on Plan in the navigation menu, located after Instance Usage. Select the "standard" plan and hit save.

In cases where the instance has been locked due to exceeding the maximum allowed size of a Lite instance it may be necessary to use the CLI. The plan ID for a standard Object Storage instance is 744bfc56-d12c-4866-88d5-dac9139e0e5d (if curious, this can be found by issuing the CLI command ic catalog service cloud-object-storage). You'll need to know the name of the instance you are trying to upgrade. For example, to upgrade the instance "My Object Storage", you can issue the command:

ic resource service-instance-update "My Object Storage" --service-plan-id 744bfc56-d12c-4866-88d5- dac9139e0e5d





 Are bucket names case-sensitive? 

Bucket names are required to be DNS addressable and are not case-sensitive.





 What is the maximum number of characters that can be used in a key, or Object name? 

Keys have a 1024-character limit.





 What are some tools unable to render object names? 

Object names that contain unicode characters that are not allowed by the XML standard will result in "Malformed XML" messages. For more information, see [the XML reference documentation](https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/charsets).





 Can I create more than one Object Storage service with a Lite account? 

If you already have a Lite plan instance created, you may create other Standard plan instances, but only one Lite plan instance is allowed.





 What happens if I exceed the maximum usage allowed for a Lite plan? 

Once you exceed the allowed usage, the service instance associated with the Lite plan becomes inaccessible. You will receive a warning notification email with corrective steps.
What's the difference between a Pay-As-You-Go and Subscription account? 

With Pay-As-You-Go accounts, you're billed monthly for your resource usage. Your resource usage consists of recurring and fluctuating costs. This account type is a good fit for developers or companies that want to explore the entire IBM Cloud catalog but have smaller or variable workloads. You pay only for what you use or commit to on a monthly basis, with no long-term contracts. Usage consists of products, services, and resources.

With Subscription accounts, you buy a subscription for an amount of credit to spend on resource usage within a certain time period. In exchange for this spending commitment, you get a discount on your usage costs. For more information about the differences between account types, see [Account types](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/account?topic=account-accounts).





 What happens if my Lite plan instance reaches the monthly quota? 

When you reach any quota for Lite plan instances, the service for that month is suspended. Quotas are based per org and not per instance. New instances that are created in the same org show any usage from previous instances. The quota resets on the first of every month.





 Can I use PayPal as a payment method? 

As of March 31, 2023, PayPal is no longer accepted.





 Can I update my credit card? 

Updating your credit card is just like adding a new one. Go to the [Payments](https://cloud.ibm.com/billing/payments) page in the IBM Cloud console. In the Add Payment Method section, enter the billing information for your new card, and click Add credit card.

To switch to a different payment method, select Pay with Other, and click Submit change request. A support case to change your payment method is then created for you.

If your payments are managed outside of the console, go to IBM.com and log in to the Manage Payment Method application to update your credit card. For more information, see [How do I add a credit card when the option isn't available through the console?]
[Hardware options for worker nodes in a standard cluster](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/4d497aff9e27b92fbbc2ee4e343a9ec4549cb1d7/containers/images/cs_clusters_hardware.png)

Figure 1. Hardware options for worker nodes in a standard cluster



 What flavors are available to me? 

Classic standard clusters can be created on [virtual](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/containers?topic=containers-planning_worker_nodesvm) and [bare metal](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/containers?topic=containers-planning_worker_nodesbm) worker nodes. If you require additional local disks, you can also choose one of the bare metal flavors that are designed for [software-defined storage](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/containers?topic=containers-planning_worker_nodessds) solutions, such as Portworx. Depending on the level of hardware isolation that you need, virtual worker nodes can be set up as shared or dedicated nodes, whereas bare metal machines are always set up as dedicated nodes. If you create a free classic cluster, your cluster is provisioned with the smallest virtual worker node flavor on shared infrastructure.

VPC clusters can be provisioned as standard clusters on shared [virtual](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/containers?topic=containers-planning_worker_nodesvm) worker nodes only, and must be created in one of the supported [multizone locations](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/containers?topic=containers-regions-and-zoneszones-vpc). Free VPC clusters are not supported.

VPC clusters can be provisioned using virtual worker nodes on standard infrastructure or dedicated hosts. Free VPC clusters are not supported.





 Can I combine different flavors in a cluster? 

Yes. To add different flavors to your cluster, you must [create another worker pool](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/containers?topic=containers-kubernetes-service-clics_worker_pool_create).
Available versions 

IBM® Cloud Foundry is deprecated and no longer supported as of 1 June 2023. For more information, see the [deprecation details](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cloud-foundry-public?topic=cloud-foundry-public-deprecationdep_details).

IBM Cloud® provides all [the currently available Node.js runtimes](http://nodejs.org/dist/). Of the available runtimes, IBM provides specific versions that contain enhancements and bug fixes. See [Latest updates to the Node.js buildpack](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cloud-foundry-public?topic=cloud-foundry-public-nodejs-latest_updates) for more information about the supported versions.

The IBM Node.js buildpack caches the IBM runtime versions. If you use IBM SDK for Node.js runtime in your app, your app performs faster when you push it to IBM Cloud.



  Specifying a version 



*  Use the node option in the engines section in the package.json file to specify the version of Node.js runtime that you want to run.
*  If you need to specify a version of npm other than the version bundled with Node.js, use the npm option in the engines section in the package.json file.



See the following example:

{
"name": "myapp",
"description": "this is my app",
"version": "0.1",
"engines": {
"node": "4.2.4",
"npm": "3.10.10"
}
}

Note: Always specify a node version in the package.json file. If a version is not specified, the latest node version is used.
Accessing Applications Lab Lite Plan environment 



1.  You can launch the Applications Lab URL through Resource List after you create the lite plan instance.



![lite](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/b6c5dbb443b797203b2824b05472cac5ae8635da/cloud-for-education/images/lite.png)



1.  Launch the Applications Lab instance from the detail page. Or you can launch the Applications Lab URL directly at [https://app.education.cloud.ibm.com/](https://app.education.cloud.ibm.com/)



![launch](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/b6c5dbb443b797203b2824b05472cac5ae8635da/cloud-for-education/images/launch.png)



1.  Choose IBMid Login and follow the instruction to login.



![login](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/b6c5dbb443b797203b2824b05472cac5ae8635da/cloud-for-education/images/ibmlogin.png)
IBM Cloud Monitoring agents and plans 

Before you provision an IBM Cloud Monitoring instance, you need to understand your monitoring options.



  Monitoring plans 

IBM Cloud monitoring offers different plans. The following plans offer different solutions at different prices.



 Plan                         Description                                                                                                                                        

 Basic monitoring             Used to initiate service and slow pings to make sure that a device is online and responsive.                                                       
 Full agent graduated tier    Full IBM Cloud Monitoring experience without limiting what metrics are available and runs your agents in a non resource-restrictive environment.   
 Full agent no driver mode    A limited set of metrics and runs your agents in a non resource-restrictive environment.                                                           
 Light agent graduated tier   Full IBM Cloud Monitoring experience and runs your agents in a resource-restrictive environment.                                                   
 Light agent 'no driver mode  A limited set of metrics and runs your agents in a resource-restrictive environment.                                                               



IBM Cloud Monitoring no driver mode is offered at a lower cost per month. This price adjustment comes into effect after you enable the 'no driver mode'. For more information about enabling 'no driver mode', see [Enabling IBM Cloud Monitoring 'no driver mode'](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cloud-infrastructure?topic=cloud-infrastructure-enabling-monitoring-light-no-driver).

Graduated tiers offer a tiered pricing structure that is based on your time-series usage and billed either hourly or monthly. For information about the graduated tier plan prices, see [IBM Cloud Monitoring pricing](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/monitoring?topic=monitoring-pricing_planspricing_plans)