Oracle® Cloud

What's New in Oracle Digital Assistant

Release 20.1

F25160-05

February 2020

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What’s New for Oracle Digital Assistant

Here’s an overview of recently-added features and enhancements in Oracle Digital Assistant.

Topics:

February, 2020 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)

Feature Find out more ...

The Oracle Native Client SDKs for iOS and Android are now available to help you create channels for iOS and Android devices.

These SDKs include support for:

  • Voice Recognition: Allows users to converse with skills using their voice.

  • Text to Speech: Supports audio narration of the messages received from skills.

  • Attachment: Supports uploading attachments to the server and sending them to the skill. It also supports rendering of the attachment messages received from the skill.

  • Location: Enables users to share their location to the skill when prompted.

  • Headless SDK: The SDK can be used without a UI. The SDK maintains the connection to server and provides APIs to send messages, receive messages, get updates to network status and other functionalities.

  • Client Authentication: Supports connections with client authentication enabled or disabled.

The Web SDK has been updated. New features include:
  • Cordova Sample: Can be used to build iOS and Android apps.
  • typingIndicatorTimeout: Allows you to configure the duration in seconds after which the typing indicator should be removed.
  • i18n.<locale>.chatSubtitle: Allows you to set a subtitle in the chat widget header right below the title.
  • showPrevConvStatus: Determines whether the status message that is located at the end of older messages from previous conversations is displayed or not.
  • getConversationHistory(): Returns an object containing conversation information for the current user.
  • isConnected(): Returns true if the SDK is connected to server, and false if it is not.
  • setUserInputMessage(message): Enables setting or updating the user input TextArea with a message without sending it to the skill or digital assistant. It can be utilized to pre-populate the input with a recommended message.
  • setUserInputPlaceholder(text): Enables updating of the input TextArea placeholder dynamically with passed text. It can be utilized to update placeholder text according to the type of input expected from the user.
  • setAllMessagesAsRead(): Can be called to mark all messages as having been read by the user.
In addition, the following improvements have been made:
  • Voice Buffer: The buffer size for voice data has been fine-tuned to provide full voice recognition support on Safari.
  • Single Reconnection: The SDK now maintains only a single WebSocket connection to the server during reconnection attempts.
  • String Translations: The translation service has been updated to give higher preference to the locale configured during initialization over the user’s browser locales. The configured locale is applied to the SDK if the translations are available for it. The updated preference order is:
  1. Configured locale in initialization, e.g. locale: 'fr-fr'
  2. Browser locales: navigator.languages
  3. Default: 'en'
 Web SDK

January, 2020 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)

Feature Find out more ...
When you register a skill that's configured to autocomplete user input to a digital assistant, the autocomplete capability for that skill is then surfaced in the digital assistant-level response message. Autocomplete in the Web Channel
If your skill uses translation services, the Retrainer displays user messages in the target language, but adds English languages versions of them to the training data. Multilingual Support in the Insights Retrainer
Agent Transfer has a new object structure for passing custom field values to Oracle Service Cloud. Skills that are associated with existing channels can use the prior (legacy) structure. Skills that are associated with newly created channels must use the new structure. Passing Customer Information to a Live Chat
When you transfer a skill's chat to an Oracle Service Cloud agent, the user can now attach images during the conversation with the agent. Enable Attachments

December, 2019 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)

Starting with this release, all new orders of Oracle Digital Assistant are provisionable on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Gen 2).

All features that were previously available only in Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Platform (Gen 1) are now available in this release.

Feature Find out more ...
Within Oracle Digital Assistant instances on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you can now create a digital assistant and embed it as an agent with Oracle Service Cloud. DA as an Oracle Service Cloud Agent
There are new Insights reports tailored to digital assistants that are exposed through Oracle Service Cloud. Insights for DA as an Oracle Service Cloud Agent
You can now let users interact with digital assistants through speech. Voice Channels
There is a new and enhanced SDK for the Web channel. Web SDK.
You can now define a specific answer for a skill to give when it detects a given intent. Answer Intents
You can now record conversations in the Skill Tester and use the saved conversations as test cases. Then, for skills from the Skill Store that you have extended, you can run these test cases to ensure that your modifications have not broken any of the skill's basic functions. Skill Test Cases
Custom component packages that you upload to an embedded custom component service must now contain all node module dependencies. If there are missing node dependencies, you will see this error:
Error Message: failed to start service built: Invalid component
      path

If you export a skill from a previous version, and the skill uses embedded custom components, you will most likely get an error when you use the skill because the component service's package doesn't contain the dependencies. You will have to download the service's TGZ file, add the node module dependencies, and re-upload.

 Prepare the Package for an Embedded Container Service

Oracle Digital Assistant now limits the number of custom component services per instance. You won't be able to do any of the following once you have the maximum of custom component services:

  • Add a custom component service.
  • Version or clone a skill that has a custom component service.
  • Import a skill that has a custom component service.

If any of these actions fails due to exceeding the limit, you won't see the reason for the failure. To see the component service limit, go to the service limits page in the Infrastructure Console. If you need to raise the limit, you can request an increase.

 Configure a Service for the Embedded Container
You can track the performance of one or more states in the Path Insights report to find out how many conversations successfully flowed through them, or how many conversations were ended with them. For the states where the conversation ended prematurely, you can expand the path to find the cause. Review Paths Insights

October, 2019 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Platform)

This release features increased integration with Oracle Service Cloud.

Feature Find out more ...
You can now create a digital assistant and embed it as an agent with Oracle Service Cloud. DA as an Oracle Service Cloud Agent
There are new Insights reports tailored to digital assistants that are exposed through Oracle Service Cloud. Insights for Oracle Service Cloud Agent
The Conversation Designer now highlights entities and keywords, so you can easily identify the values that get replaced by user input at runtime. The Conversation Designer
You can now define a specific answer for a skill to give when it detects a given intent. Answer Intents
You can track the performance of one or more states in the Path Insights report to find out how many conversations successfully flowed through them, or how many conversations were ended with them. For the states where the conversation ended prematurely, you can expand the path to find the cause. Review Path Insights
Custom component packages that you upload to an embedded custom component service must now contain all node module dependencies. If there are missing node dependencies, you will see this error:
Error Message: failed to start service built: Invalid component
      path

If you export a skill from a previous version, and the skill uses embedded custom components, you will most likely get an error when you use the skill because the component service's package doesn't contain the dependencies. You will have to download the service's TGZ file, add the node module dependencies, and re-upload.

 Prepare the Package for an Embedded Container Service

October, 2019 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)

This is the first release of Oracle Digital Assistant as an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service. This release contains features particularly geared toward customers of Oracle Cloud Application services who want to customize skills that are provided by those services.

Feature Find out more ...
You can now extend skills that you pull from the Skill Store and then later rebase those skills to take advantage of updates to the base skill. Extending Skills
You can now create entity lists that can be updated dynamically with REST API calls. Create Dynamic Entities
An improved SDK is available for the web channel. Oracle Web SDK
The Conversation Designer now highlights entities and keywords, so you can easily identify the values that get replaced by user input at runtime. The Conversation Designer
The skill and digital assistant tester simulates the rendering on your preferred channel and alerts you to any limitations on that channel. Test Rendering for a Channel
You can now specify specific states in a digital assistant to handle user input that is resolved as the help intent and for input where the intent is unresolved. Specify States for the help and unresolvedIntent System Intents
The System.OAuth2Client authentication component has been introduced to support the OAuth Client Credentials grant type. System.OAuth2Client
The built-in PERSON entity has been enhanced to handle international names and incorrect capitalization. In addition, it can be extracted based on the context. Complex Entities
There is now a built-in LOCATION entity that is based on machine learning. Complex Entities
You can incorporate Microsoft Teams components such as adaptive cards in skills that you deploy through a Microsoft Teams channel. Adaptive Cards

June, 2019 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Platform)

Feature Find out more ...
It was already possible to create skills in non-English languages. Now you can create digital assistants that provide welcome, help, and disambiguation messages in non-English languages as well. Non-English Digital Assistants
You can now host your webview apps on an external web app server, or within Oracle Digital Assistant itself. If you let Oracle Digital Assistant host your app, you don't even need a web server. You just need to bundle your app as TGZ file and upload it. Hosted Webview
Try out the Conversation Designer (in beta for this release) to quickly build a skill without having to define any intents, entities, or write a even a single line of OBotML. Instead, you focus on the user experience--the typical user requests and bot responses that complete your use case. The Conversation Designer
Within a skill, it is now possible to add calls to different skills. For example, you can use this to explicitly enable a user of a shopping skill to jump to a banking skill to check their bank balance before returning to the shopping skill to complete an order. Call a Skill from Another Skill
You can now configure a skill to include an incident ID when transferring a chat to a live agent through Oracle Service Cloud. The incidentID Property
After an agent ends a chat session in an agent-integrated skill, you might want to ask the customer to complete a survey. Oracle Digital Assistant now makes the Oracle Service Cloud survey ID available from the skill. Get Survey Information
You can now enable the agent to specify which state to transition to after the live-chat session ends. Enable Agents to Specify the Transition Action
In your dialog flows, you can take advantage of features that are specific to individual messaging platforms, such as Facebook and Slack. Channel-Specific Extensions

February, 2019 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Platform)

Feature Find out more ...
We already provide reports that give you different perspectives on our insights data, but now you can use the new export feature to create your own reports, based on your own requirements. Export Insights Data
We've added support to show top-level ODA routing analytics (like explicit vs implicit, for example) and popular skills by invocation. Use this data to determine how well the ODA is routing requests to its constituent skills so you can optimize ODA routing, identify popular skills, and so on. Evaluate Usage Patterns
Our new Analytics reports let you see overall trends in how your skills complete conversations and the volume of conversations for each channel. You can also see how much time customers spend with each skill, as well as how much time they spend with a live agent, or customer service rep (CSR). Skill Analytics
Want to keep track of how much storage your insights data is consuming, so you can purge it from the database to free up space? Our new Data Management tool lets you do just that. Data Management
We've added a new map variable type and a new property to our human agent support framework that enables you to route the user to a specific agent queue in Oracle Service Cloud. Oracle Service Cloud Routing
The new Interrupt Flow Confidence Threshold helps you determine when to send the user a prompt to confirm that they want to switch flows, and when to send a message notifying them that they have switched flows. Limit the Frequency of Prompts
Need to support your user's chats on more channels? We've added channels for Slack, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, and Cortana with this release. Channels
The new System.OAuth2ResetTokens component enables you to revoke all the logged-in users' refresh and access tokens from a dialog flow. To use this component, you must first provide the identity provider's revoke refresh token URL when you configure the authentication service. System.OAuth2ResetTokens and Authentication Services
You may sometimes find that the authorization URL generated by the OAuth2AccountLink component (used for the 3-legged OAuth flow) is too large. To address this, you can now use a predefined short URL for the fixed fields, and let the state be populated dynamically. OAuth2AccountLink

November, 2018 (Oracle Digital Assistant on Oracle Cloud Platform)

Feature Find out more ...
Now you can create your own digital assistant, a “master bot” that fields requests from multiple skills (chatbots), while interacting with your customers within the context of a single, unified UI. What are Digital Assistants?
Need developer-oriented analytics to pinpoint issues with your skills so you can address them before they cause problems? We’ve got them! Track conversation trends over time, identify execution paths, determine the accuracy of your intent resolutions, and much, much more. Insights
Sometimes it’s not enough to have the customer initiate all the conversations with your skills. You may want your ODA to initiate a conversation with your user whenever it receives a triggering event from another app—like when a user’s expense report is rejected, for example. Use our Application-Initiated-Conversations (AIC) to set up the behavior you want.> Application-Initiated Conversations
This release introduces lots of new features for instant apps, including localization, bring-your-own CSS support, new styling and an updated look and feel, and more. Instant Apps
Thanks to our new System.OAuth2AccountLink component, which completes all the steps for the three-legged OAuth2 flow and returns the OAuth2 access token, your custom component no longer has to exchange an authorization code for an access token. Faster and easier! System.OAuth2AccountLink
You could always define custom parameters to be referenced from dialog flows. But now you can define parameters that start with “da” and use them by all the skills that are registered in the same digital assistant. Custom Parameters
Properties of the System.Intent component, like confidenceLevel and winMargin, are now configured as settings through the UI, instead of from the dialog flow. Much more convenient! Tune Intent Resolution Before Publishing
Entities have a whole set of exciting new features, including pagination (to control the number of values that display in a message), fuzzy matching, multiple value selection (where users can pick more than one value), and more!

There’s a lot going on in the composite bag world as well. Composite bag entities can now include non-entity members, for starters. Check out the documentation to find out more!

 Entities
ODA now lets you define your intents and custom entities in both English and Simplified Chinese, without having to first configure an auto-translation service. N/A

Oracle Cloud What's New in Oracle Digital Assistant, Release 20.1

F25160-05

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This document describes new features and other notable changes for Oracle Digital Assistant.

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