How the North Pole uses Power Virtual Agent to Get Christmas Questions and Wishes Answered

On the second day of D365mas, the North Pole IT Elves gave to me…

In order to prepare for Santa’s yearly trip around the globe delivering toys to all the children of the world, many departments at the North Pole are involved in the planning, however, there aren’t many departments whose responsibilities are greater than that of the Naughty or Nice team.

This is the team of database administrators who maintain the master repository of all the children around the world and their status for the upcoming Christmas Eve trip by the Jolly Old Elf. As mentioned in yesterday’s article, the Naughty or Nice database doesn’t have an API that Power Automate can access with one of the standard connectors.

Power Automate UI Flows enable the update of the Naughty or Nice database, but there has to be a better way for Santa to access the list while on his sleigh! Power Virtual Agents fits the bill to make it easy for Santa to verify which children, no matter where they are in the world, are on the Nice list…or will be getting a lump of coal from the Naughty list!

Here is how Power Virtual Agents and Dynamics 365 enable Santa quick and easy access to the most important list!

Quick Setup:before Power Virtual Agents, Santa had to carry a multi-volume hardcopy of the Naughty or Nice list on the sleigh and have one of his support Elves on the sleigh exclusively to thumb through the pages whenever a child verification was needed! This took a valuable toy maker off the manufacturing line and away from the Toy Shop. The North Pole bot (named PoVA) was built in a matter of minutes and ready for testing by the North Pole IT elves.

Figure 1: North Pole IT Elves build a Topic so Santa can easily query the Naughty or Nice List

Empower Citizen Elf Developers:Power Virtual Agents intuitive, code-free graphical interface allows a business user, like a North Pole Elf, the ability to leverage their expertise of the subject matter to create bots without the requirement of a Data Scientist Elf or Developer Elf.

Natural, conversational interactions:At the North Pole, it is vital that the interaction with the bot is natural and easy to access. Combined with the powerful AI capabilities within Power Virtual Agent, Elves can have organic conversations with natural responses to provide the guidance and direction to the key information needed when flying at 30,000 ft. in a sleigh over Denmark!

Actionable Bots:The North Pole IT Elves updated their Dynamics 365 Customer Service records with an indicator for whether the child was on the Naughty or Nice list. Power Virtual Agents can easily integrate with Dynamics 365 to query information and return results in an easily consumable format. Additionally, if the sleigh needs to transfer the conversation to a Support Elf, that is easily done using a Microsoft Teams Channel to communicate with Omnichannel for Customer Service!

Publish and Integrate:Power Virtual Agents can be easily published to a custom website, mobile app, Microsoft Teams channel or even Facebook Messenger. This gives Santa and his elven sleigh crew plenty of options on how best to interact with PoVA!

This year as you tuck yourself in to dream of sugarplums and candy canes, rest assured that Santa and his Elves have easy access to the Naughty or Nice List with Power Virtual Agents!

Figure 2: Santa uses Power Virtual Agent to access the Naughty or Nice List

Want to learn more about how you can achieve magical results like Santa with Power Virtual Agents in your organization? Reach out to the Elves at Hitachi Solutions today!