Now in beta! Virtual agent on the help center

[#1]

Hello Atlassian Community 👋

Last year, we introduced the virtual agent in Slack, a significant step forward in automating and enhancing support experiences in Jira Service Management with the power of Atlassian Intelligence. Now, we're excited to announce the expansion of this capability to Jira Service Management’s help center in beta, delighting help-seekers with self-service, conversational support over the web.

What you’ll get access to:

In the global search bar of your help center, the virtual agent will tackle your help-seekers' requests fast using Atlassian Intelligence answers, which combines the power of artificial intelligence and your linked knowledge base to automatically resolve requests.

For more details on this capability, visit our support documentation.

Why join this beta program:

Joining this program grants you early access to the virtual agent in your help center, empowering your team to reduce ticket backlog and free up time to focus on more strategic work. Participation also gives you the ability to directly influence the future of AI-powered conversational support in Jira Service Management. Your feedback is invaluable as it will continue to guide us in improving these experiences for everyone.

As we continue to improve virtual agent support experiences in Jira Service Management, you'll be among the first to know about future early access opportunities, including availability on new surfaces such as portals and Microsoft Teams, as well as other virtual agent enhancements.

Who can participate

We're looking for a diverse group of organizations who are willing to provide regular feedback throughout the program and meet the following criteria:

• Currently on a Jira Service Management Cloud Premium or Enterprise
• Have toggled Atlassian Intelligence for Jira Service Management
• Have help-seekers with Atlassian accounts
• Have at least 20+ articles in Confluence or Jira Service Management-native knowledge base (in English)
• Non-HIPAA Compliant

How to apply:

If you're excited about providing AI-powered conversational support via the Jira Service Management help center, we'd love for you to apply. Here's how:

1. Review criteria: Ensure your team meets the participation criteria outlined above.
2. Sign-up for the waitlist: To participate, fill out the application form with details about your team and usage plans. Our team will then review and select participants based on a detailed set of criteria and impact of participation.
3. Get access: If selected, our product team will be get in touch in order to grant you access and provide further instruction.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks @Blake Underwood this is great - few Qs please:

- does this article and trial have a pre requisite of having Slack?

- when i see "linked knowledge base", is that referring to a specific Service Management project space or the entire site/org's Confluence spaces?

- I know VA with Microsoft Teams is still on the way BUT is there any group or article I should folow/watch to be one of the first few to be able to test it before GA?

- Does the knowledge base entail only Confluence or is there other sources of information too

Thank you for this article.

[Blake Underwood]

Hi @Yatish Madhav thank you for these thoughtful questions:

- There is no prerequisite for having Slack to set up the virtual agent over the help center.

- For this release, the virtual agent will pull from all of the spaces in Confluence assigned to a project in Jira Service Management

- Not at the moment, but stay tuned in the community over the next couple of months for an update on this release. In the meantime, I'd also recommend following this feature request where you can vote on and track the release.

- Might I ask what other sources of information you're referring to?

[Yatish Madhav]

OK great - thanks @Blake Underwood 

"spaces in Confluence assigned to a project" - can you provide a link or let me know how these are set up please?

By other sources, I mean the virutual agent gets its information from a Confluence space, right - would the Confluence space be the only "source of information" or can we pull information from, let's say, our website or other sites like Sharepoint, etc?

Thank you

[Blake Underwood]

Hey @Yatish Madhav

I'd recommend visiting our support documentation on this topic, which provides some more insight into linking spaces to projects. In regard to your second question, yes – Confluence is the primary source of knowledge supported for this virtual agent release. That said, Rovo will empower teams to connect third-party knowledge sources that the virtual agent can use to respond to requests.

No problem!

[Fiona Cunningham]

Hi @Blake Underwood - I just have a few questions:

1. Is it possible to turn beta testing of the virtual agent off for a site if it is needed?

2. In the section Who can Participate it says "help-seekers with Atlassian accounts"

Are portal-only customers (i.e. unlicensed users) unable to access the virtual agent through a JSM portal?

3. Can a Standard Plan user apply for beta testing, if they are considering moving to a Premium plan in the future?

Thanks,

Fiona

[Blake Underwood]

Hey @Fiona Cunningham apologies for the delay! Hope these answer your questions:

1. If you’re accepted into the beta and would like to deactivate the virtual agent on your help center, our team would need to do so for you manually.

2. Yes, only Atlassian account users can access the virtual agent at the moment. Atlassian accounts can be unlicensed users as well. Details about Atlassian Accounts can be found here.

3. Generally, no. However, Standard users who are currently on a Premium trial of Jira Service Management will be eligible to apply for the beta.

[Fiona Cunningham]

Hi @Blake Underwood - thanks for coming back to me.  
Re the answer to Q2:

2. In the section Who can Participate it says "help-seekers with Atlassian accounts"

Yes, only Atlassian account users can access the virtual agent at the moment. Atlassian accounts can be unlicensed users as well. Details about Atlassian Accounts can be found here.

In the URL provided it says that:

"A portal-only customer for JSM isn't an Atlassian account"

• Can I take from that, that if the user is an unlicensed portal-only customer, that they will be unable to access AI from the Search bar in the portal?
  
  
• And if so, are there any plans to offer it to unlicensed portal-only customers?

Thanks,
Fiona

[Blake Underwood]

That's correct @Fiona Cunningham unlicensed portal-only customers will not have access to the virtual agent on the search bar of the portal either. At this time, there are no confirmed plans to extend access to other account types.

However, we are continuously evaluating our beta programs and taking user feedback into consideration!

[Fiona Cunningham]

Hi @Blake Underwood we are very interested in this beta product, as we are enthusiastic to share any AI advancements with our customers.  In that vain, I am keen to double-check the status of our portal-only accounts.  In the URL that you provided explaining Atlassian accounts it reads:

You'll only have a customer account if you're logging into another company's Jira Service Management as a customer.

I don't really understand what that means... can you explain?  Also, is there a way of enabling our portal-only unlicensed users with the capability of using the AI option?  For example:

How would their account have to change to be able to use this? 

Would they have to move to a different kind of account type and if so, what is it called & what is it's pricing?

Thanks again for your responses so far, 

Fiona Cunningham