Triggering topics

Important

Power Virtual Agents capabilities and features are now part of Microsoft Copilot Studio following significant investments in generative AI and enhanced integrations across Microsoft Copilot.

Some articles and screenshots may refer to Power Virtual Agents while we update documentation and training content.

There are two main ways to trigger a topic:

• Based on the user query (also known as utterance).
  Topic triggering based on what an end-user writes or says is also referred to as intent recognition.
  The AI uses its natural language understanding (NLU) model to parse the end-user utterance and finds the most relevant topic based on the configured trigger phrases that match the intent.
  If multiple topics are found, the Multiple Topics Matched topic is triggered, so the that the user can select the appropriate topic from a list.
• By redirecting to it from another topic, with a redirect node.

Triggering topics based on a user query

• Example: The "Store Locations" topic gets triggered based on the user utterance and the matching trigger phrases.

Tip

Review trigger phrases best practices.

Redirecting to a topic

• Example: the "Request New Location" topic gets triggered when it is explicitly called from an existing topic, with a redirect node.

Define chatbot topics