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Can I create a knowledge base bot using PVA for Teams or am I gonna have a bad time?

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Posted on by f2

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So I've been down the bot rabbit hole recently, I would like to setup some sort of knowledge base bot for my Team to keep all the instructions etc in one place.

It looks like an Azure bot would be ideal since we already pay for it but it looks like quite a bit of reading will be involved as at first glace its fairly complicated and I dont have much time to invest it in at the moment. So that lead me on to PVA. I have an A5 license but when trying "https://web.powerva.microsoft.com/" I'm unable to sign up for the trial, plus it seems to cost a monthly subscription and I cant see my boss going for it if like I said we already pay for Azure.

I then noticed PVA for Teams is free, awesome. I've setup the bot and was looking at topics, I read that you can only add sources/faq's from public websites...anything that requires a login (onenote/onedrive/sharepoint) wont work. So, I guess my question is, is PVA for Teams really suitable for what I'm wanting it to do? Would the Azure bot better? Or should I just stick with creating documents for each process and store them in Teams/sharepoint etc.

Thanks for any advice/suggestions

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Importing the FAQs is done during the construction of the Bot to create Topics. Its not a dynamic occurrence. You can also import the FAQs in other formats like PDF, DOCX, or CSV. For secured web pages I would suggest copying the FAQ list from the web and saving it as a DOCX or CSV. Then you can import the contents as suggested topics. Read more here: Get topic suggestions from support pages in Microsoft Teams - Power Virtual Agents | Microsoft Docs

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f2 105 on at

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Hi Pstork1, thanks for the reply!
I've had a look at the link, tried an FAQ on our company site and it goes indeed import. I suppose I could ask the web team to setup a location for me and I can copy pages from our Onenote to docx files then import. However it might be quicker to just manually create topics and copy the content in.

Perhaps its not really suitable for what I'm wanting to do or maybe I'm just going about it the wrong way. I will continue to mess around with it and see if there is a workflow that makes sense as it does seem like something that would be useful once all the info is in there.

I've setup a few things in Power Automate and remember seeing a tutorial which involved a chat bot (not sure if it was azure or pva) however that bot could learn different questions and answers and it would feed back into itself... I just need to try find it again. That might be easier as it would allow us to get it up and running faster and have my colleagues enter in the solutions as we go (rather than me trying to do it all manually first).

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shayy 2 on at

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Hi @f2

were you able to figure this out? I am in same spot as you, trying to achieve similar. I have SP setup with all documentation for my team and am looking if i can leverage that knowledge base and create a bot which can be first point of contact for user and maybe redirect user to appropriate procedures on SP.

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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You can't download it from SP since that requires authentication. It has to be on a web site that can be reached from the Internet anonymously. There is no way to do it from SharePoint.

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f2 105 on at

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Hi Shayy,

I never got round to the bot, which is a shame. With PVA for Teams requiring a public accessible site it just wasnt suitable for us. I could be wrong but I think you can do this via the Azure Bot Framework (maybe somebody else with more knowledge can correct me if I'm wrong).
I've setup a few other LogicApps since then and getting a little more comfortable with the process so plan to revisit it later on and hopefully get something completed this time around.

Its a real shame PVA doesnt allow you to connect to your own SPO site. If I can remember correctly, what did work for me (with PVA) was:
https://www.qnamaker.ai/

Again, not suitable for me as its publicly accessible but might be worth a look for your setup.

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f2 105 on at

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Hey Pstork1
Am I right in thinking this can be achieved via the Azure Bot setup rather than PVA for Teams? (The site/KB/SPO? being private)

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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If you mean importing the topics from an external source then No, you can't do it with Azure bot. No matter what you use it can't be imported from an authenticated source.

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Using the Azure Bot service you can make a bot for a Private site, but no matter what you use you can't import suggested topics from a SharePoint site.

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f2 105 on at

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That's good news, I'll look into doing that. I just remember when looking into it last time PVA looks super easy compared to the Azure Bot Service. I'm sure there will be tons of guides about, I'll report back when I get it done (hopefully lol).
Thanks for answering all my questions Pstork1

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Pstork1 68,697 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Remember the Bot Service will require a full PVA license. It won't be covered by the PVA for Teams license.

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