Which is the functional difference between Gobal Variables and Custom Entities?

[JoelD]

Hi,

In Power Virtual Agents there are two key components which come to mind: Custom Entities and Global Variables.

When should I use custom entities rather than global variables (and vice versa)?

For example, let's suppose that I'm developing several power virtual agents to deal with many products, and I need to store the model information so that it can be reused across all chatbots: is it correct to use global variable here, or should I opt for custom entities? Why?

Can you explain to me the crucial difference between the two, and possibly provide some examples with relevant scenarios?

[Pstork1]

The key difference would be that custom entities are stored in Dataverse tables. They are therefore permanent and can be retrieved from the tables by other bots, apps, or flows.  Global variables are only available inside the confines of a particular bot instance.  Once that session stops the Global variables go away.

So you would use a Custom Entity to store things like customer information or a support request. A variable would be used to hold a response to a question so you can decide how to escalate the support request.