Creating a Skill for VPN access

Owned by Bhavani.tvr (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 25, 2021 by sneha.tripathi
4 min read

Problem Statement: Off-Campus/On Campus students request secured VPN Access to the classes for University. There is an unexpected heavy reliance on online classes due to the pandemic. It made a large number of people to look for related information on procuring the secured VPN access and write an email to the concerned team.

Opportunity: All the required information for providing VPN access is collected from the bot. The bot automatically sends the request to the concerned team for processing the VPN access request.

Approach: Bot will have access to a class skill that collects all the required information like University ID, email id, contact numbers to reach and calls the send-grid API that sends an email to the concerned team to process the VPN access request from the collected details.

Let's understand how to build this Skill.

Define Attribute

  1. Create an attribute Requested user to get the name of the student or employee who is seeking a VPN access

    1. On Skill Builder--> Attribute tab, click on Create Attribute.

    2. Add attribute details such as Name and Data type.

    3. Set the prompt message to be displayed to the end-user, like “Raise this request on behalf of “

    4. Click Save.

  2. Follow the above steps and create the below attributes:

    1. ‘Mail_ID’ to store the email id of the requester

    2. ‘Description’ to store a brief description of the request

    3. ‘Summary’ to store summary details about the requester such as Class, Section, Department

    4. ‘Yes_no’ to collect whether the requester has a University ID or do not have

    5. ‘UVID’ to store the University ID of the requester.

    6. ‘Access’ to collect the type of required access such as Student Use, Employee Use, Campus access - For Student use, Special access- For Employee use, etc.

    7. Phone Number to store the contact number of the requester for communication.

    8. Preferred contact time to collect preferred time to contact like morning (8 am-11 am), evening(6 pm-8 pm)

    9. Contact Instructions to capture any additional instructions from the requester.

    10. Location to store whether the requester is On-campus or Off-Campus

Create an Integration

  1. Define Integration to Send-grid API with the “Send mail” operation. The integration will send an email to the concerned team to process the VPN access request with the required details.

    1. On the tenant menu, click on Integration.

    2. Create an Application with the integration type as REST.

    3. Add an instance to the Send-grid environment.

    4. Configure the ‘Send mail’ Operation.

Build a Skill

  1. On Skill Builder--> Create Skill tab, enter Skill details such as Skill Name, Category, Description, and KPI Metrics

  2. Under Invocation type, add User Phrases such as ‘I request access to the class,’ ‘VPN access to the class.’

  3. Under Conversation flow,

    1. Add the attribute Requested user.

    2. Add the attribute Mail_ID

    3. Add the attribute Description to store a brief description of the request.

    4. Add the attribute Summary.

    5. Add the attribute Yes_no

    6. Add a Ruleset to check whether the requester has a valid ID. Configure the following rules.

      1. If Yes_no equal to No, set the UVID to Not applicable and continue

    7. Add the attribute UVID to store the University ID of the requester.

    8. Add the attribute Access to collect the type of required access such as Student Use, Employee Use, Campus access - For Student use, Special access- For Employee use, etc.

    9. Add the attribute Phone Number to store the contact number of the requester for communication.

    10. Add the attribute Preferred contact time to collect preferred time to contact like morning (8 am-11 am), evening(6 pm-8 pm)

    11. Add the attribute Contact Instructions to capture any additional instructions from the requester.

    12. Add the attribute Location to store whether the requester is On-campus or Off-Campus.

    13. Add the Integration operation Send mail to send a confirmation message.

    14. Override the operation and pass the attributes Requested user, Mail_ID, Description, Summary, Yes_no, UVID, Access, Phone Number, Preferred contact time, Contact Instructions, Location to the Operation in the Outbound payload

    15. Add Information Message to be sent to the requester such as “Thanks - your request has been forwarded”.

  4. Click Save to finish building the skill.

  5. The next step is to add permission to the skill. Click on Permission and the Users or Groups who should be able to execute the Skill.

  6. Run Build and Publish to make the skill available in the Virtual Agent.

  7. Once the skill is Published, Go to the Test Widget to test the skill. Click on Debug Logs and execute the skill to view the runtime Skill execution logs.

Your skill is now ready to use. Go to Conversation History to view the list of conversations where the end-user requested the skill.

Below is the sample skill definition. Note that the integration details should be replaced with your organization-specific instance details.

Additional Resources

Visit the below Wiki Documentation for more information on:

  1. Creating an Attribute on Create Global Attributes

  2. Configure a 3rd party Web service integration on REST Integrations

  3. Creating and Managing Skills is at Create Skills

  4. Using local attribute in skills on Use Variables in Skills

  5. Publishing Skill on Build and Publish

  6. Understanding Conversation logs on Conversation History.

  7. Provide permissions to users or groups at Permission

  8. Defining Rulesets on Using Rule Sets

  9. Test your Skill on Test your Bot

  10. Debugging skill on Debug Skills