PVA Skill Bots

[csnarain]

I came across ways to develop bot skills with Azure Bot Framework. What I'd like to know is how to develop skills directly in PVA? The idea is to have a master PVA bot and then enhance it's skills on the fly with several PVA skill bots that could be installed independently through our app store or manually). Any thoughts?

[renatoromao]

Hi @csnarain ,

You can see this webinar explaining better (Jan 17 Webinar: Integrating Bot Framework Skills with Power Virtual Agents): https://powervirtualagents.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/jan-17-webinar-integrating-bot-framework-skills-...

And you can see this documentation (how to implement): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/advanced-use-skills

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/configuration-add-skills

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/advanced-use-dispatcher

If this answer resolves your question, please, make as a solution to help more users.

Thanks! 🙂

[csnarain]

I think my question was the reverse ask of what's described in those links. I want to know if it's possible to develop skills directly in PVA and not in Bot framework.

[renatoromao]

Hi @csnarain ,

Sure, so I think that PVA has a lot of limitations that Bot Framework allows you to do. (my experience)

But, you can develop the most features that you need on the Power Automate and "replace" (or try hehe) the Bot Framework per Power Automate. And if you need to do more development that Power Automate doesn't allow, you can use an external system and communicate with Power Automate.

So your system will be:

PVA (chatbot, messages, calls, and talk to the final user) 

Power Automate (development process, business rules)

External system (development code that allows doing that what Power Automate has a limitation)

[ArafatTehsin · Accepted solution]

Hi @csnarain 

It's not possible to develop skills in PVA but you can always create Skills using Bot Framework SDK 4.7 now. However, there's an issue with the updated manifest right now which I am sure Product Team is working on resolving the issue. 

Once it's done, I am hoping to write a detailed blog post on how to get started because the current documentation of skills are relying on old manifest which eventually will be replaced. 

I hope it answers your question.