Previewing and sharing your assistant
Internal review is a necessary step in any virtual assistant workflow. You need an environment without customer interactions so your team can test your assistant. The draft environment closely resembles the final experience that your users encounter so you can ensure that you are publishing the optimal end product.
Saving and editing your work in the draft environment
The draft environment contains all your in-progress work in the Actions, Preview, and Publish pages. Use the Draft environment tab to manage the draft environment, including adding draft environment integrations (channels and extensions) that you can use for internal testing before deployment. These integrations are unique to the draft environment, and changes to draft integrations don't affect the live environment.
The Preview page
Use the Preview page to test your assistant. You can experience your assistant from your customers' perspective. The Preview page includes an interactive web chat widget where you can test out your assistant as if you were a customer. The content that is contained in the assistant is the content that you built into your actions or set up with the search integration.
On the Preview page, you also find the following elements:
- Copy link to share: Share an unauthenticated version of your assistant with your colleagues by sending them a link. For more information, see Copying a link to share.
- Change background: Change the background of the page so you can see what your assistant looks like on different web pages. For more information, see Changing background website.
- Customize web chat: Customize your draft web chat channel to match your brand or website. For more information, see Web chat setup overview.
Copying a link to share
You can share an unauthenticated version of your assistant with your team by sending them a link. The link opens a sample web page with an interactive web chat widget where you can test out your assistant as if you were a customer. Your subject-matter experts can test your in-progress assistant without needing access to watsonx Assistant itself. The experience is identical to using Preview this environment on the draft environment tab.
To share a link:
- On the Preview page, click Copy link to share.
- Send the link to your team.
The preview link is not accessible if web chat security is enabled. For more information about web chat security, see Securing the web chat.
Changing background website
You can visualize how your assistant would look as a web chat widget on your organization's website. You can enter a URL or upload an image.
Entering a URL
You can enter a URL of your organization's website. Your assistant captures an image of your website to use as the Preview page background.
Your website must be publicly available to all users. Private or intranet sites can’t be accessed. Any login, splash, cookie, or warning screens might be captured in the image.
To enter a URL:
- On the Preview page, click Change background.
- Click Enter URL, then click Continue.
- Enter the path of your website URL, for example,
https://www.example.com
orexample.com
. - Click Continue.
Uploading an image
You can upload an image of your organization's website. Images are stored for 24 hours. The maximum file size is 1 MB. Supported file types are JPEG and PNG.
To upload an image:
- On the Preview page, click Change background.
- Click Upload an image, then click Continue.
- Drag a file or click to upload, then click Change background.
Images are stored for 24 hours. A warning message might appear on the Preview page about the time limit expiration. To clear this message:
- On the Preview page, click Change background.
- Click Clear background setting, then click Continue.
- Click Remove background to finish.
Removing the background
After you enter a URL or upload an image to use as a background, you might decide to remove the background and restore the default background.
To remove the background image:
- On the Preview page, click Change background.
- Click Remove background, then click Continue.
- Click Remove background to finish.