Creating a Text Response Skill

This topic will help you learn how to create your first Skill so you can learn the basics. After you complete this skill you can move onto a more complex multi-step conversation and quickly become a Skill guru. 

A Skill is a conversation with the user with fulfillment at the end of that conversation. A simple Skill could respond with text to a user's question such as "What is the guest WiFi network password?" While a complex skill will triage a user's request and trigger fulfillment in an external system via web services. You can create skills that vary from the simple to the complex including creating skills to create actionable tickets in Serviceaide Intelligent Service Management. 

1. The DETAILS tab is where you define how the user triggers the skill as well as the conversation itself. This tab displays a list of sections that you need to configure:  

   1. Skill Name: Specify the name for your skill name in this field. Keep this name customer friendly as it may be shown in the Welcome Skill or in the validation message to a user when chatting with Luma. In this example, let us name it "What is the guest WiFi network password".

   2. Description: Specify the description of this skill. Use user friendly terminology, as it will be shown if this skill is part of the Welcome Skill. For this example enter "Shares the guest network name and password for visitors and guests". Note that Luma supports a maximum of 1000 characters only.

   3. Validation Message: If the user enters a phrase to trigger this Skill but it doesn't meet the Natural Language Processing (NLP) engines matching threshold, this message will be shown to the user along with a Yes/No prompt to ensure that this is the skill they want. Keep the message in the user's terminology, for example, "Are you looking for information on the guest network?"

   4. No Data Response: If your skill triggers a web service call during fulfillment that retrieves data from another system, this is the message the user will receive if no data is returned from that call. In this example, we are returning text to the user and not performing a web service call, therefore this field can be left blank. If you were calling a web service that returns data, you should provide a detailed message to the user about what occurred.

   5. Permission: From the Permission drop-down list, you define what type of Service Management user can access this skill - Analyst or Self-Service User. In Intelligent Service Management, an analyst is any user with a Concurrent or Named license which includes Managers and Administrators and a Self-Service user is an employee or customer that is not part of the support team.
      Since this example Skill is aimed at helping employees find information, let us select Self-Service User here.

2. Next, go to the Phrases section of the form 
   1. Phrases are a set of phrases used to train the bot’s Natural Language Processing engine. Phrases help the bot link the skill to the different ways a user asks for that skill. It is important to create phrases for how technical and non-technical users will ask for a skill. For example, a user may say "guest network password" or "visitor wifi access". Each of these is different and valid ways to trigger the same skill. It is recommended that you talk to different users and ask them how they would ask for a skill so that you can build a better phrase.
   2. To add Phrases to your skill start typing in the Enter text here text box in the Phrases section. To add your phrase to the Skill click Enter/Return or use the  icon. Enter all the different ways you think users will ask for this Skill. 
   3. For "What is the guest WiFi network password" Skill, fill the Phrases field with every expression a user in your organization would say when asking for guidance. Let us specify the following Phrases:
      1. guest network password
      2. guest wifi network name
      3. visitor wifi access
      4. Guest WiFi Password
      5. Guest Network Password
      6. password for guests
      7. Password for WiFi
      8. WiFi Password
3. Conversation Parameters
   1. This is the section of the Skill that defines the conversation with the user and also allows setting any values that you want in the Action or fulfillment of the Skill.
      
      
   2. For this text response example we are going to leave this section blank as we don't need to ask the user questions, we just want to provide an answer.
4.  Text Responses
   1. This field provides a text response to the user once the Skill completes. In the "What is the guest WiFi network password" example you can provide the answer to the user's question. 
      
   2. You can define multiple responses and Luma will choose a response at random. This provides for a more natural response to users when they don't always see the exact same response. Ensure that each response provides the answer to the user's question.
5. Save your Skill
   1. Click the Save button to save your skill.
   2. Note Skills may take several minutes to update in the Natural Language Processing engine. Therefore a new or updated Skill will not be immediately available to users after save. 
6. Test your Skill