Zia Chatbot

Zia, Zoho's AI assistant for business, is available as a virtual conversational support agent for ServiceDesk Plus Cloud. Using Zia, you can optimize your help desk management and also bridge the gap between end-users and their help desk. Zia assists users in their help desk tasks by performing preconfigured actions. For example, Zia can log a request, add a task, update a note, approve requests, or get instant reports. Zia can also answer direct questions and fetch information from the application's database. Users can interact with Zia through chat. Zia's ability to communicate by voice chat helps users to multitask with ease.

Zia can handle routine help desk management, saving the technicians' time and effort, which may be otherwise spent on repetitive tasks. Also, end users can enjoy a much more sophisticated help desk service.

This guide explains configuring Zia chatbot in the following topics:

• Enable Zia Chatbot
• Interact with Zia
• Actions
  • Direct Questions
  • Data-Fetching Questions
  • Operations
• Default Zia Actions

Enable Zia Chatbot

Zia is available for all types of service desk instances - IT Helpdesk, HR, and Facilities. After creating an instance, go to Setup > Zia > Zia Chatbot. Toggle the Chatbot ON to enable Zia for that instance.

On enabling the Zia Chatbot integration, the following options will be enabled by default:

1. Web Chat: A web-based chat interface for users to interact with the Zia bot from their browsers. Click the interface named Ask Zia displayed in the application footer.

2. Mobile Chat: A mobile chat interface for users to chat with Zia from their Android and iOS applications. Mobile Chat is displayed in the upper-right corner of the ServiceDesk Plus Cloud app.

3. Voice Chat (Mobile only): Voice chat enables voice conversation with Zia over smartphones. Users can talk to Zia from their Android or iOS mobile applications and get work done on the go.

4. Blended Conversations (Web only): Blended Conversations helps enhance user interaction by providing consistent and predefined responses from Zia to common user queries. Learn more.

Interact with Zia

Web Chat

After the Zia integration is enabled, the Ask Zia chatbot will appear on the application footer for all users.

To perform any task through the chatbot, open Ask Zia and type in the information you're looking for. Zia will process the information and display recommendations from the available actions. The actions are either built-in or custom-developed by the admin.

Sample Conversation: Type in the information you're looking for in the Search button. You can also use the Hamburger menu to display the available actions.

At any time you want to end a conversation, type Stop and click Enter.

Users can expand the Zia web chatbot in a separate browser tab by clicking the icon on the chat header. Alternatively, you can select Maximize chat window from the list of actions or type in Maximize chat window in the chatbox.

Users with access to multiple service desk instances can instantly switch from one instance to another in the fullscreen mode. Zia chatbot will be loaded specific to the instance selected.

Administrators can enable Zia from the fullscreen mode. If multiple administrators are present and one administrator disables Zia, the following page will be displayed for other administrators when they attempt to access the fullscreen URL:

For non-administrators, an error page will be displayed.

Mobile Chat

Open ServiceDesk Plus Cloud on your mobile phone and go to the help desk instance where you need assistance.

Click Zia's chat icon on the upper-right corner of the screen.

Type in a question or choose from the displayed actions.

Voice Chat

Open ServiceDesk Plus Cloud on your mobile and go to the help desk instance where you need assistance.

Click the Mic at the upper half of the screen to call Zia.

Zia will display the available actions as the phone rings.

Zia will say Hi, [Name] and wait for your instruction.

Ask a question or tell Zia to perform a task, such as adding a note.

Provide the required information to enable Zia to complete the given task as shown below:

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Zia Auto Popup

After an user logs into ServiceDesk Plus Cloud, Zia will automatically open the chatbot once everyday and display the logged-in user's request summary. If quick actions are enabled, users can perform actions instantly from the chatbot. Else the web chat functionalities will be displayed.

Actions

Actions are tasks that Zia performs. For example, you can ask Zia for the pending tasks of the month or to add a reminder. Besides the default actions that are available in the chat window, technicians can define their own actions in the developer console of Zia. You also have gallery actions that are preconfigured and can be easily imported on-demand, from the developer console of Zia into ServiceDesk Plus Cloud.

Types of Actions

Based on the intended purpose, actions can be classified into three types:

• Answer a direct question — Give me the sysadmin contact
• Answer by fetching data from ServiceDesk Plus Cloud — What are the tasks for the day?
• Perform an operation in ServiceDesk Plus Cloud — Log a request

Let's see in detail, the three types of actions that Zia can perform for you.

Direct Questions

You can chat with Zia to get instant answers for simple and straightforward questions. For example, you may want to check the year's holidays, follow up on your asset request with the help desk, or contact the building maintenance to ensure uniform air conditioning. You can use Zia to store all such direct information and provide answers whenever necessary.

Examples:

• AC maintenance contact (Save the extension number as the response)
• Holidays of the year (Save and display the holidays in a table)
• Book a conference room (Save the website link as the response)
• Apply leave (Save the website link as the response)

Data-fetching Questions

These are dynamic questions on your ServiceDesk Plus Cloud account that require Zia to scour the application database, locate the information, and construct the answer. The entire process is interactive and follows a path preconfigured by the admin.

Say, you need to provide a report of the printer-related requests logged in your help desk on short notice. You can open Ask Zia and select Similar requests or type in the same command. Enter the request ID or a subject related to printer-related requests as the search term. Then, select the period within which you want to fetch the results; Zia will list all the requests similar to the ID or subject term you entered.

Examples:

• Search requests based on priority or any field
• List the pending tasks of a technician
• Display SLA-violated requests
• Fetch reports from Zoho Analytics integrated with ServiceDesk Plus Cloud

Operations

Tasks that require Zia to make changes in the application database are called operations. This is a tree structure interaction, where you will be presented with choices and taken through a specific path. Zia will interact with you and get the input for your task sequentially, as defined by the admin.

Say, you need to log a high-priority request while at a meeting or some other activity. You can simply delegate the task to Zia. Open Ask Zia and provide the required information to create a request, which in this case will be the request's Subject, Priority, Group, and the like.

Examples:

• Log a request
• Add a reminder
• Add a note to a request
• Add a standalone task

Default Zia Actions

Zia assists users in their help desk tasks by performing pre-configured actions. Besides listing actions to choose from, Zia provides contextual search for actions.