Use Microsoft Bot Framework skills in Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents enables you to extend your bot using Microsoft Bot Framework skills. If you have already built and deployed bots in your organization (using Bot Framework pro-code tools) for specific scenarios, you can convert bots to a skill and embed the skill within a Power Virtual Agents bot.

Prerequisites

• Learn more about what you can do with Power Virtual Agents.
• Review restrictions and validation for skills used in Power Virtual Agents
• A standalone Power Virtual Agents subscription. If you have a Teams plan, you can't use Bot Framework skills.

Add a skill to bot conversations

First, create a Power Virtual Agents bot and create and deploy the skill using pro-code tools into your organization.

Next, register a skill in Power Virtual Agents.

Add a skill into a conversation:

1. Go to the Topics page for the bot you want to edit.

2. Open the authoring canvas for the topic you want to call a skill action from.

3. Select Add node (+) underneath an existing node to add a new node.

   

4. In the node selection window, select Call an action, and then select the skill you want to add.

5. If your skill has inputs, assign variables to those inputs. Also, if your skill emits outputs to variables, you can use those variables in any nodes that follow.

   Note

   Skills can accept simple data types (integer, boolean, string) and complex data types (as JSON strings).

   If you need to extract variables from complex data types, you must use Power Automate to further parse and break down complex JSON strings into key value pairs for use in your bot.

6. Select Save to persist your changes to the topic.

7. You should test your bot to make sure it's using the skill properly.