DRYiCE Lucy v6.0

The Release Notes capture the details of features and functionalities introduced in DRYiCE Lucy as part of its Major release version 6.0. This Major release follows assisted upgrade, details on the same can be found in the Upgrading to new version section. For any queries/clarifications, please reach out to Support.

What’s new?

Following are the newly launched features and functionalities as part of DRYiCE Lucy v6.0:

Mobile App (Android): For enhancing optimized omnichannel experience across multiple platforms a Native mobile application for android is added.

Homegrown Gateway: Homegrown gateway provides a service which connects Lucy with private network to perform encrypted data exchange via a bidirectional secure tunnel. It also provides quick, easy and secure solution to connect Lucy with any on-premises application under a private network without compromising network compliances.

Enterprise Connectors: New out of box connectors are available for enterprise applications are as follows:

• Control-M (WLA tool)
• SCCM
• ServiceXchange (Phase-1)
• Optibot Healing Station
• Optibot Live Station
• NanoHeal

Key-Vault Service: New Integration with Key-vault services is added in the current release for more secure key lifecycle management. It helps to combine secrets into single place which will simplify key lifecycle management and provide cryptographic protection for all application secrets.

Automated Signed Certificate Generation: The product can now offer a signed client certificate that can be used on the integrating machine or any third-party security middleware like IBM DataPower, to securely connect and transact information between Lucy and any application.

SOP Maker (WYSIWYG editor): A vastly improved experience on creating and managing use cases on the newly added SOP maker using easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor that provides insight on how the message would appear to the end user. This tends to manage the SOPs much easily and try to accommodate all possible viewable components in a much easier to train UI.

Webhooks support: A brand new feature to on-board simple API calls which are on GET or POST with absolutely no requirement to code. Webhook allows to hook an endpoint to a dialog flow without code in addition to a simple form requiring information on how to make the API call. It also vividly supports multiple webhooks to be setup, if required which is unique feature.

Auto-translate pre-trained responses: UCD would now support a new feature where messages can be made into other languages if already in english with just a click. This functionality reduces the delivery time of Multi-lingual bots under fast training mode. In a single click it would translate the same response to 47 different languages, which again can be edited on the same interface.

Adaptive cards supported: Provide more rich experience using adaptive cards over channels like MS Teams. This opens a whole new mechanism to provide an interactive experience to show cards.

Documentation and User training: A new service that provides documentation for all DRYiCE products under which is easy to maintain and navigate. This service also includes user training and course management which allows users to take up various courses on DRYiCE products and provide certificates as per accomplishment. These certificates can be shared on public sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

What’s enhanced?

Following are some of the existing features and functionalities that have been improved upon as part of DRYiCE Lucy v6.0:

Refinement of Reporting Sections: Following enhancements / refinements are made in existing Reporting section or consoles (Cognitive Analytics & Reporting Dashboard):

• Cognitive Dashboard Regional count fixed for unrecognized or uncaptured regions
• Source icon and reference for widget is fixed
• No Resolution count now reflects based on questions and not based on interactions
• Fallback users count updated to show only unique user count and not the addition of all users who triggered fallbacks
• Messaging on Fallback users is now referenced to unique users and to not served users.
• Unique users and returning users count for an intent is now displayed based on user id count.
• Triggered by and Lead to identification for Fallbacks and use cases is now refined and fixed
• Middle East/ Africa icon for the region in intent and fallback model is now fixed
• Reporting dashboard FAQ performance refinement
• Adding timestamps on conversations under Reporting Dashboard Conversations table.

BOT Framework SDK Update: For better, stable, and enhanced SDK level security for communication between Lucy and Azure BOT Channel registration service. BOT Framework update will be used for non-web channels to counter the possible end of support for current version of SDK (v3) and provide v4 features across all bots.

Crawlers for WDS (KMS): Easy to connect knowledge sources for WDS queries which is responsible for crawl and index data from sources automatically in regular basis for enriching data within WDS

• Online Sharepoint.
• Custom Webpage.

Enhancements in UCD: These are evolution features to accommodate and amplify experience in supervising and creating use cases. Following are the features added:

• FAQ Parser to support variations.
• FAQ Parser to support 4096 characters as part of the response.
• Dialog Node titling for automatically created nodes on FAQ.
• UI enhancements to increase SME focus and content visibility.
• Lesser prompting and more AJAXIFIED form submission.
• Integration Module interface on UCD for easier calling of rules (no more _API_RULE_)

Personality updates: New Personality updated and revamped to accommodate adaptive cards and many responses changed to provide adaptive cards as rich UI experience for users on Teams.

Remove previous options on Teams: New functionality which would greatly improve UI experience by removing previously selected or provided buttons on the Teams as BOT interface. Therefore, unifying the experience on WEB with Teams on older messages containing options.

Sensor capability in Systrack: For enhancing Systrack integration in Lucy, added sensor capability of Systrack to provide as OTB functionality.

 SAML tester: Any APPID integrated can now be tested on the SAML validity and claim information. This enables smoother on-boarding of the customers and easier debugging of SAML based issues.

Support for Group chats: Lucy now can interact and maintain conversation to speak on group chats under Slack and Teams channels.

Following are the bugs fixed as part of the DRYiCE Lucy v6.0 release.

• UCD UI fixes
• Reporting Dashboard UI Fixes
• Cognitive Dashboard UI and Analytics fixes
• Bot Connect API long session data capture mismatch fixed
• MS Teams bot stabilized
• Redirection fixed for other consoles

The following changes were done which in turn improve the performance & with respect to Security of DRYiCE Lucy v6.0 in comparison to the older versions:

• DB calling optimized for quicker and reliable saving.
• Updated architectural design pattern on Bot channels for faster delivery of messages.
• Adaption of script control using linters.
• Adaption of code review system to avoid malicious programming.
• Optimized memory management on some major functionality.
• Faster GC invocation by enforced functional declaration.
• Updated versions of packages.
• Additional handshake mechanism implemented for homegrown Gateway to be more secure.
• Modules updated for Performance and Security
• Bot Connect API insertion operations enhanced
• Cognitive Analytics jobs now sequential with refined data compression

Depreciation of feature means the feature is in end of support and its alternative must be used. However, feature will continue to work, it is not recommended to use below feature:

• Download dump functionality would be marked as deprecated and supported for legacy only.

Following are the limitations/Restrictions of the features and functionalities released as part of DRYiCE Lucy v6.0:

• Reports on Download dump and unresolved dumps are now restricted to only 7 days max.
• Datapoint Endpoints for Message data is now limited to 10000 records per call.

• MS Team updated messages becomes invisible. On switching tabs, they reappear as expected.
  PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT ISSUE OF LUCY, BUT BUG AT MS TEAMS CLIENT WHICH HAS BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED BY MICROSOFT & PROMISED TO FIX WITH IN QUARTER AS OF THE RELEASE DATE.

DRYiCE Lucy is hosted on IBM Cloud and utilises IBM PaaS services. System Requirements is Not Applicable (NA).

DRYiCE Lucy v6.0 release is a Major version release which includes Assisted Upgradation. DRYiCE Lucy follows Zero downtime deployment strategy with automatic rollback in case of failure of deployment for any feature/ functionality during the upgrade.

To upgrade to DRYiCE Lucy v6.0, the Product Professional Services Team follows the below steps:

Note: The steps mentioned below are undertaken separately for each tenant within a customer environment. This means if there are multiple environments like Production, Development and Staging/User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Each of these environments follow the below instructions.  

• The PS Team verifies the current version of DRYiCE Lucy implemented in the customer environment. (DRYiCE Lucy v5.1 has a “One-click” automated upgrade functionality to upgrade a selected tenant. For DRYiCE Lucy versions older than v4.2, the upgradation process is Manual. For this, a mutually agreed time slot is confirmed between the customer and the PS Team as the upgradation is manual)
   
• The Providers will access and review the existing functionalities/ feature within the customer environment and share the impact w.r.t upgrading to v6.0.
   
• Non-Production environments should be logical replica of Production before upgradation.
   
• This upgrade is Provider owned model, where providers can find upgrade card for the tenants which are eligible or not upgraded through which the tenant can be upgraded. This can be found in Configure page of the tenant by clicking gear icon next to the tenant on the tenants listing page.
   
• For Provider owned Model, the Provider Admin or the Provider SPOC can follow the steps mentioned in the Upgrade page for upgrading the tenant automatically.
   
• In case of any issue, please raise a support ticket on Support link of DRYiCE Lucy. Lucy Professional Services team also need to create a task on JIRA portal.

DRYiCE Lucy is a Cognitive Virtual Assistant. It mimics human interaction, learns and adapts to user needs through smart conversations by leveraging enterprise-grade Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML). Users can use Lucy to find the relevant information available across different enterprise systems.

Lucy helps organizations move up the maturity curve and enhance the user experience for employees and customers. By leveraging advanced natural language processing Lucy reduces human errors and increases productivity. It comes with out-of- the-box use cases for various scenarios and can be easily extended to cover the “Cognitive chatbot” needs of modern enterprises.

For any queries/clarifications, please reach out to us on Support.