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Best practice for passing from a PVA topic to a custom skill

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I've developed a custom skill using the Bot Framework that I'm handing off to from a PVA topic. The custom skill seems to take a few seconds to initialize with no visual cue to the user that something is happening. I could of course add a message block before the skill is called in PVA saying "Please wait..." but this seems clumsy and doesn't stop the user from typing anyway. Ideally the typing animation would be displayed by the bot and the input ignored but there's no way of doing this in PVA. My custom skill uses authentication and it's the time between passing the conversation from PVA to the authentication prompt that's causing confusion with users.

 

I'd welcome any suggested approaches people may have.

 

Thanks,

Simon

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  • Verified answer
    renatoromao Profile Picture
    renatoromao 6,819 on at
    Re: Best practice for passing from a PVA topic to a custom skill

    Hi @SimonSays ,

     

    Great idea!

    I created the idea here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Virtual-Agents-Ideas/Bot-show-typing-message-to-user-wait-for-the-response/idi-p/568357

    Please vote and share this idea.

     

    Regarding the palliative solution, if you are using the Custom website, you can create a script (JavaScript) to read if the bot already sends the response to the user (if not, you can show "Typing..."). 

    The similar documentation that can help you: https://powervirtualagents.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/make-your-power-virtual-agents-bot-start-the-conversation-using-a-custom-canvas/

  • Arafat Profile Picture
    Arafat 189 on at
    Re: Best practice for passing from a PVA topic to a custom skill

    Hi @SimonSays 

     

    Thank you for bringing this to the attention. Typing Indicator is a great idea. I'd suggest you to submit it here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Virtual-Agents-Ideas/idb-p/pva_ideas

     

    Cheers

    Arafat

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