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Release notes for Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data

Release notes for Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data

Release notes for Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data have moved

As of 30 August 2023, these release notes are no longer being updated. For the most up-to-date version, see Release notes for Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data.

Feature availability

Some features that are available with Watson Assistant for cloud are not available with Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data. For a list of features that are not available with Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data, see About Watson Assistant.

Web chat versions

When you install Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data, the latest available version of the web chat integration is included. See the following table for details about the latest available web chat version for each Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data release. If your web chat version isn't locked, then the web chat integration is upgraded to the latest available version when you upgrade Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data.

The following table shows the latest version of the web chat integration that is included with each release of Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data. IBM Cloud Pak® for Data supports web chat versions 5.1.1 or later. To customize and change version numbers, see Controlling the web chat version.

Web chat versions in Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version Latest web chat version available
4.7.2 7.5.0
4.7.1 7.4.0
4.7.0 7.3.0
4.6.5 7.2.0
4.6.3 7.1.0
4.6.2 7.0.0
4.6.0 6.7.0
4.5.3 6.6.2
4.5.1 6.5.2
4.5.0 6.4.1
4.0.8 6.2.0

30 August 2023

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.7.2 is available

Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.7.2 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.7. See the support matrix for more details.

Multiple validation responses

When you edit a validation for a customer response, you can now include several validation responses. For more information, see Customizing validation for a response.

Multilingual downloads

You can download language data files, in CSV format, so that you can translate training examples and assistant responses into other languages for use in other assistants. For more information, see Using multilingual downloads for translation.

Algorithm for improved intent detection and action matching

You can now use the algorithm version Beta, which includes a new foundation model that is trained with a transformer architecture. The Beta algorithm provides the following improvements:

  • Improved intent detection and action matching for English, French, German, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Spanish
  • Improved robustness to variations in user inputs such as typographical errors and different inflection forms
  • Reduction in the amount of training data required to reach the same level of performance compared to previous algorithms

For more information, see Algorithm version and training.

Fallback choice for dynamic options

The dynamic options response type now includes a fallback static choice, such as "None of the above", if the options aren't what the customer wants. You can then add a step that is conditioned on this static option to provide further assistance. For more information, see Dynamic options.

Option to allow change of topic between actions and dialog

If you are using actions and dialog, there is a new setting that you can use to ensure that customers can change topics between an action and a dialog node. For more information, see Allow change of topic between actions and dialog.

Action and collection names must now be unique

With this release, each action name must be different from other action names, and each collection name must be different from other collection names. If your existing actions or collections have duplicate names, a warning icon will appear in the Status column. For more information, see Overview: Editing actions and Organizing actions in collections.

26 July 2023

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.7.1 is available

Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.7.1 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.7. See the support matrix for more details.

Edit step titles

You can now add and edit titles for each step, which can help you more easily identify what a step does in an action. For more information, see Editing actions.

Filtering the list of actions

You can locate specific actions by filtering the list by subactions, by custom extension, or by variable. For more information, see Filtering actions.

See which actions use a specific variable

The Variables page now includes a new Actions count column. You can click on the number in the column to see which actions use a variable. For more information, see Creating a session variable.

New expression choice for setting a session variable

Previously, to use an expression to set or modify a variable value, you needed to pick an existing variable or create a new one and select the expression option. Now you can use a new Expression choice to write an expression directly without first picking a variable. For more information, see Storing a value in a session variable.

Changes to validation of OpenAPI specifications

When you build a custom extension, you work with OpenAPI specification files. This release includes changes to the validation of OpenAPI files, which might affect the connection between your actions and extensions

You can import an action with references to a custom extension and Watson Assistant can automatically connect the action and extension. With the validation change, modifications to the OpenAPI specification for your custom extension might affect this automatic connection. For more information, see Building a custom extension.

Changes to the date and number formats in assistant responses

You might see changes to the date and number formats in assistant responses.

Examples of date changes include removed or added periods, such as:

  • In Spanish, 18 abr. 2021 changes to 18 abr 2021
  • In Portuguese, 18 de abr changes to 18 de abr.

The delimiter character changes for numbers in some languages. For example, in French, nonbreaking space (NBSP) changes to narrow no-break space (NNBSP).

These changes are the result of migrating the Watson Assistant platform to Java 17, where locale values are updated by using specifications in CLDR 39.

To avoid or minimize the impact of similar changes in the future, you can use Display formats.

Differences in contextual entity detection for dialog skills with few annotations

If you have 10 to 20 examples of contextual entities in your dialog skill, you might see differences in the entities detected due to updates made to address critical vulnerabilities. The impact of these differences is limited to only newly-trained models. Existing models are unaffected. You can mitigate these differences by annotating more examples. For more information, see Annotation-based method.

28 June 2023

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.7.0 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.7.0 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.7. See the support matrix for more details.
The new experience is now available for all new instances
When you create a new instance, the new experience will be the default interface to use for building your assistants. The new experience makes it easier to use actions to build customer conversations. If you don't want to use the new experience, you can use the Manage menu to switch to the classic experience. For details, see Welcome to the new watsonx Assistant.
All languages are now enabled by default
You don't need to add languages during installation. All supported languages are now enabled by default with no increase in footprint. For details, see Supported languages.
New algorithm version Latest (20 Dec 2022) provides improved irrelevance detection
A new algorithm version is available. The Latest (20 Dec 2022) version includes a new irrelevance detection implementation to improve off-topic detection. For details, see Algorithm version and training.
Actions templates updated with new design and new choices
The actions template catalog has a new design. Now you can select multiple templates at the same time. The catalog also has new and updated templates, including starter kits that you can use with external services such as Google and HubSpot. For details, see Building actions from a template.
Organize actions into collections
Now you can put actions into collections, which are folder-style groups based on whatever categorization you need at your organization, such as by use case, internal team, or status. For details, see Organizing actions in collections.
Display iframe inline in the conversation
In the web chat, an assistant can now include an iframe response within the conversation. This new option is useful for smaller pieces of iframe content. For details, see Adding an iframe response.
New validation choices for date, time, and numeric customer responses
For Number, Date, Time, Currency, and Percentage customer responses, you can now customize the validation to check for a specific answer, such as a range of dates or a limited currency amount. For details, see Customizing validation for a response.
Confirmation to return to previous action
If a customer changes to a different topic, assistants now ask a "yes or no" confirmation question to determine whether the customer wants to return to the previous action. Previously, the assistant returned to the previous action without asking. New assistants are set to use this confirmation by default. For details, see Confirmation to return to previous topic.
New "Never return" choice for when a customer changes topics
In some cases, you might not want a customer to return to a previous action after the customer changes the topic. To set up this option, use the new Never return choice in Action settings. For details, see Disabling returning to the original topic.
Allow changing topics in free text and regex responses
By default, customers can't change topics when the assistant is asking for a free text response or when an utterance matches the pattern in a regex response. Now free text and regex customer response types have a setting to allow a customer to digress and change topics. For details, see Enabling changing the topic for free text and regex customer responses.
Adding and using multiple environments
Each assistant has a draft and live environment. You can now add up to three environments to test your assistant before deployment. You can build content in the draft environment and test versions of your content in the extra environments. For details, see Adding and using multiple environments.
Display formats for variables
In the Global settings page for actions, you can use the Display formats tab to specify the display formats for variables that use date, time, numbers, currency, or percentages. You can also choose a default locale to ensure that the format of a variable that's displayed in the web chat is what you want for your assistant. For example, you can choose to have the output of a time variable appear in HH:MM format instead of HH:MM:SS. For details, see Display formats.
Debug custom extensions
You can use the new extension inspector in the action editor Preview pane to debug problems with custom extensions. The extension inspector shows detailed information about what data is being sent to and returned from an external API. For details, see Debugging failures.
New expression choice for setting a session variable
Previously, to use an expression to set or modify a variable value, you needed to pick an existing variable or create a new one and select the expression option. Now you can use a new Expression choice to write an expression directly without first picking a variable. For details, see Storing a value in a session variable.
Using the Cloud Object Storage importer to migrate chat logs
You can use the Cloud Object Storage importer service to migrate your chat logs from one installation of Watson Assistant to another.For more information, see Using the Cloud Object Storage importer to migrate chat logs.

2 May 2023

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6.5 is available

Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.6.5 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6. See the support matrix for more details. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.

Algorithm version 01-Jun-2022 uses enhanced intent detection by default

The algorithm version Latest (01-Jun-2022) now uses enhanced intent detection by default. Before this change, some skills that did not include a specific algorithm version selection inadvertently used Previous (01-Jan-2022). You can notice small changes in intent detection behavior when changes are made to an assistant that previously didn't have enhanced intent detection enabled. For more information, see Algorithm version and training.

Test the Beta algorithm version now to prepare for release 4.7.0

The Beta algorithm version in release 4.6.5 includes a new irrelevance detection implementation to improve off-topic detection accuracy.

Improvements include:

  • Relevant user inputs are expected to get higher confidence, so they are less likely to be considered irrelevant or require clarification
  • Irrelevance detection is improved in the presence of direct entity references
  • Irrelevance detection is more stable across small changes to input
  • Intent detection is more stable regarding occurrence of numerics, such as postal codes
  • For German-language assistants, intent detection is more robust in the presence of umlauts

In the forthcoming 4.7.0 release, it is planned that this Beta version will become the Latest version, replacing the current Latest (01 Jun 2022) version. You can test the Beta version in 4.6.5 now to prepare.

For more information, see Algorithm version and training.

23 February 2023

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6.3 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.6.3 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6. See the support matrix for more details. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.

30 January 2023

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6.2 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.6.2 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6. See the support matrix for more details. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.
New Watson Assistant v2 APIs
Watson Assistant now provides new methods related to assistants, skills, environments, and releases. For details, see the {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} v2 API documentation.

30 November 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6.0 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.6.0 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6. See the support matrix for more details. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.
New watsonx Assistant experience
With the new experience in watsonx Assistant, you can build, test, publish, and analyze your assistant from one simple and intuitive interface that focuses on using actions to build customer conversations. To learn more about building your assistant with actions, see Welcome to the new watsonx Assistant.
New algorithm version setting
You can now choose one of three Watson Assistant algorithm version settings to apply to your future trainings: Beta, Latest, or Previous. This new Algorithm Version setting replaced Intent Detection in the Options section of a dialog skill. Beta and Latest use more enhanced intent detection that is available in more languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional) Czech, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. See Algorithm version.
Credential rotation
You can now rotate your credentials for added data store security. See Managing security for your Watson Assistant datastores.
Autoscaling
Using Red Hat® OpenShift® Horizontal Pod Autoscaler, you can optionally enable autoscaling for Watson Assistant so that the service dynamically scales up and down to make efficient use of cluster resources. For details, see Automatically scaling resources for services.
New commands for shutting down and restarting services
The cpd-cli manage command now includes shutdown and restart sub-commands to make it easier to shut down and restart the IBM Cloud Pak® for Data services on your cluster. For details, see Shutting down and restarting services.
Action skills
The classic Watson Assistant experience now supports action skills.

13 October 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5.3 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.5.3 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5. See the support matrix for more details. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.
Support for autoScaleConfig
Support for automatically scaling resources using the Red Hat OpenShift Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA). See Automatically scaling resources for services.

3 August 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5.1 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.5.1 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5. See the support matrix for more details. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.
New deployment sizes
Two new deployment sizes are now available. The two new sizes are Starter and Production. The Starter size is equivalent to the small deployment size, and the Production size is equivalent to the medium deployment size.

29 June 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5.0 is available

Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.5.0 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5. See the support matrix for more details. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform support

You can deploy IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5 on the following versions of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform:

  • Version 4.6.29 or later fixes
  • Version 4.8.0 or later fixes
  • Version 4.10.0 or later fixes
New IBM Cloud Pak® for Data CLI commands and reference

Starting in IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.5, the cpd-cli includes new commands and a new command reference. For more information, see the cpd-cli command reference.

Microsoft Edge browser support

Beginning in Version 4.5, Microsoft Edge is fully supported for use with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data. For more information, see Browser support.

Language support improvements

Entity recognition and intent classification for Japanese and Korean languages changed to improve the reliability of Watson Assistant. You might see minor differences in how {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} handles entity recognition and intent classification.

Any visible changes are most likely to be seen in dictionary-based or pattern-based entity matching. For more information about defining entities, see Adding entities. As a suggested practice, you can test your dialog skill with your current test framework to determine whether your workspace is impacted before you update your production workspace.

If entity values or synonyms that previously matched no longer match, you can update the entity and add a synonym with white space between the tokens, for example:

  • Japanese: Add “見 た” as a synonym for “見た”
  • Korean: Add “잘 자 요” as a synonym for “잘자요”
Assistant preview link can be disabled

Assistant preview now includes a toggle to disable the preview link. This allows you to stop access to the preview link if necessary. For more information, see Using the preview link integration to test your assistant.

27 April 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.8 is available

Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.8 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0 on Red Hat OpenShift 4.8. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.

Closed entity matching with accent-normalized values in French

Closed entities exact matches in French are completed using accent-normalized values or synonyms. For example, if you define a closed entity with a value or synonym with accent marks (for example, garçon or déjà), then variants without accent marks are also recognized (garcon or deja). Likewise, if a closed entity value or synonym is defined without accent marks, then user inputs with accent marks are also recognized. For more information about defining entities, see Defining information to look for in customer input.

Pattern entities do not prevent spelling autocorrection

Pattern entities that match all characters and words that are usually used to count input words do not prevent spelling autocorrection. For example, if a customer defines the ^..{0,19}$ pattern entity that matches the first 20 characters of an input, then the entity match does not affect spelling autocorrection. In this example, an input of cancl transaction is autocorrected to cancel transaction.

This change applies to the following languages: English and French. For more information, see Correcting user input.

Fuzzy matching updates

Previously, an update was made so that interactions between the stemming and misspelling fuzzy matching features were not allowed. This change applied to the following languages: English, French, German, and Czech. This was updated so that this change applies only to the English language. For more information, see How fuzzy matching works.

Improved irrelevance detection for Dutch

Irrelevance detection for Dutch disregards any punctuation in an input sentence. For example, you can now expect the same confidence score for the following two inputs: ik ben een kleine krijger? and ik ben een kleine krijger. In this example, the question mark (?) doesn't affect the confidence score.

Improved enhanced intent detection

The exact match in enhanced intent detection now better handles small differences between training examples and runtime utterances when the differences do not change the meaning of a sentence.

For example, suppose in your training examples, covid-19 is in the #covid intent and @doctortype_facilitytype around Palm Beach is in the #find_provide_master intent. In this example, the @doctortype_facilitytype direct entity reference contains entity values, including hospital. At run time, covid19 is predicted as 100% confident for the #covid intent, and hospital around palm beach is predicted as 100% confident for the #find_provide_master intent.

This update applies to the following languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, and the universal language model. For more information, see Accessing intents.

30 March 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.7 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.7 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0 on Red Hat OpenShift 4.8. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.
Enhanced irrelevance detection update
We revised the enhanced irrelevance detection classification algorithm. Now, enhanced irrelevant detection uses any provided counterexamples in training. This change does not affect workspaces without counterexamples. This update applies to the following languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, and the universal language model. For more information, see Defining what's irrelevant.
Fuzzy matching updates
Interactions between the stemming and misspelling fuzzy matching features are not allowed. Improve fuzzy matching behavior by limiting the interactions between different fuzzy matching features. This change applies to the following languages: English, French, German, and Czech. For more information, see How fuzzy matching works.

23 February 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.6 is available

Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.6 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0 on Red Hat OpenShift 4.8. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes and features.

New API version

The current API version is now 2021-11-27. This version introduces the following changes:

  • The output.text object is no longer returned in message responses. All responses, including text responses, are returned only in the output.generic array.
Configure webhook timeout

From the Pre-message webhook and Post-message webhook configuration pages, you can configure the webhook timeout length from a minimum of 1 second to a maximum of 30 seconds. For more information, see Webhook overview.

Rich response types

Your assistant can now send responses that include elements such as audio, video, or embedded iframe content. For more information, see Rich responses.

Analytics overview change

To improve reliability, the Values column has been removed from Top entities on the Analytics Overview page. Top Entities continues to provide counts of entity types. For more information, see Top intents and top entities.

Dialog skill Try it out improvements

For dialog skills, the Try it out pane now uses the React UI framework similar to the rest of the Watson Assistant user interface. You shouldn't see any change in behavior or functionality. As a part of the update, dialog skill error handling has been improved within the Try it out pane.

Disambiguation feature updates

The dialog skill disambiguation feature now includes improved features:

  • Increased control: The frequency and depth of disambiguation can now be controlled by using the sensitivity parameter in the workspace API. There are 5 levels of sensitivity:

    • high
    • medium_high
    • medium
    • medium_low
    • low

    The default (auto) is medium_high if this option is not set.

  • More predictable: The new disambiguation feature is more stable and predictable. The choices shown may sometimes vary slightly to enable learning and analytics, but the order and depth of disambiguation is largely stable.

These new features may affect various metrics, such as disambiguation rate and click rates, as well as influence conversation-level key performance indicators such as containment.

If the new disambiguation algorithm works differently than expected for your assistant, you can adjust it using the sensitivity parameter in the update workspace API. For more information, see Update workspace.

26 January 2022

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.5 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.5 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0 on Red Hat OpenShift 4.8. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes various fixes. {{site.dassistant_classic_shortrsationshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.5 is compatible with FIPS-enabled clusters.

20 December 2021

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.4 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.4 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0 on Red Hat OpenShift 4.8. This release of {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data includes critical security fixes. {{site.dassistant_classic_shortrsationshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.4 is not compatible with FIPS-enabled clusters. The upcoming release of {{assistant_classic_short.assistant_classic_short}} for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.5 will be compatible with FIPS-enabled clusters.

4 October 2021

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.2 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.2 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0 on Red Hat OpenShift 4.8.
Integration with the IBM Cloud Pak® for Data auditing service
Watson Assistant integrates with the IBM Cloud Pak® for Data auditing service feature, providing standard auditing records for important lifecycle and security events. The service generates audit records for events such as intent edits, entity creation, dialog node deletion, and more.

29 July 2021

IBM Watson® Assistant Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.0 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0.0 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 4.0 on Red Hat OpenShift 4.6. See the support matrix for more details.
Universal language
You now can build an assistant in any language you want to support. If a dedicated language model is not available for your target language, create a skill that uses the universal language model. The universal model applies a set of shared linguistic characteristics and rules from multiple languages as a starting point. It then learns from training data written in the target language that you add to it.
Premessage, postmessage, and log webhooks
A set of new webhooks are available for each assistant. You can use the webhooks to perform preprocessing tasks on incoming messages and postprocessing tasks on the corresponding responses. You can use the new log webhook feature to log each message with an external service.
Features not included
This release does not include the following features, which are available for cloud instances at the time of this release:
  • Service desk support is not included.
  • The phone integration is not supported.
  • The actions skill is not available.
  • The intent recommendations feature and the enhanced intent detection model are not supported.

19 March 2021

IBM Watson® Assistant 1.5.0 patch 1 is available
For installations on IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 3.5, patch 1 includes configuration changes for FIPS compatibility and other fixes. See Available patches for IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data

9 December 2020

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 1.5.0 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 1.5.0 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 3.5 and IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 3.0.1 deployments on Red Hat OpenShift 4.6, 4.5, or 3.11. See the support matrix for more details.
IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 1.5.0 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 1.5.0 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 3.5 and IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 3.0.1 deployments on Red Hat OpenShift 4.5 or 3.11.
Access conversation logs and metrics
An Analytics page is now available. From this page, you can see conversation logs and metrics that give you insights, such as what topics your customers are asking about and how often the assistant succeeds in addressing customer requests. For more information, see Metrics overview.
Introducing the Web chat integration
Deploy your assistant in minutes. Create a web chat integration to embed your assistant into a page on your website as a chat widget. Web chat version 3.3.0 is included in this release. For more information, see Integrating the web chat with your website.
Introducing the Preview link integration
Deploy your assistant to an IBM-branded web site for testing purposes. When you add both a dialog skill and search skill to your assistant, you can test the overall interaction between the two skills by using the preview link integration. For more information, see Testing your assistant from a web page.
Improved system entities
A new interpretation property is returned for the system entities in all languages. The new property provides additional information about the recognized entity which can be leveraged by your dialog. For more information, see System entities.
Irrelevance detection
The irrelevance detection classification algorithm was updated to make it even smarter out of the box. Now, even before you begin to teach the system about irrelevant requests, it is able to recognize user input that your skill is not designed to address. The new algorithm is enabled by default for any English-language skills that you import or create. For more information, see Irrelevance detection.
Search was added to the Dialog, Intents, and Entities pages
You can now search within the product. For example, if you want to find any dialog nodes that condition on an intent, you can open the Dialog page and search on the intent name.
v2 Logs API is available
Use the v2 API logs method to list log events for an assistant. For more information, see the API reference documentation.
Features not included
This release does not include the following features, which are available for cloud instances at the time of this release:
  • While the web chat integration is now available, service desk support is not included.
  • The Facebook, Slack, Intercom, Phone, SMS with Twilio, and WhatsApp integrations are not supported.
  • The actions skill is not available.
  • You cannot enable FAQ extraction when you add a web crawl data collection to the search skill.
  • You cannot use the Activity Tracker service to track user actions for auditing purposes.
  • The intent recommendations feature and the enhanced intent detection model are not supported.
  • The Learning center and its associated product tours are not available.
  • You cannot manage user access at the individual skill and assistant level. You can control only who can access the entire service instance, which includes all of its skills and assistants. For more information about granting access to services in IBM Cloud Pak for Data, see 3.5 Managing users or 3.0.1 Managing users.

19 June 2020

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 1.4.2 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 1.4.2 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 3.0.1 on OpenShift Red Hat 3.11 or 4.5 and IBM Cloud Pak® for Data 2.5 deployments on OpenShift Red Hat 3.11. The 1.4.2 release is certified on Red Hat OpenShift 4.5.
Autocorrection support was added
Autocorrection helps your assistant understand what your customers want. It corrects misspellings in the input that customers submit before the input is evaluated. With more precise input, your assistant can more easily recognize entity mentions and understand the customer's intent. This feature is not available in all languages. See Correcting user input for more details.
French-language dialog skill improvements
Added full support for fuzzy matching and contextual entities and added beta support for autocorrection. For more information, see Supported languages.
The Covid-19 content catalog is available in Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish
The content catalog defines a group of intents that recognize the common types of questions people ask about the novel coronavirus. You can use the catalog to jump-start development of chatbots that can answer questions about the virus and help to minimize the anxiety and misinformation associated with it. For more information about how to add a content catalog to your skill, see Using content catalogs.
Backup automation
Support was added for doing data backups on a schedule. For more information, see Backing up and restoring data.
Stateless v2 message API
The v2 runtime API now supports a new stateless message method. For more information, see the API Reference.
Architecture improvements
The Skill-conversation microservice was removed. The microservice used to convert v2 API calls to v1 format and the other way around. The conversion is now done within the Store microservice. Reimplementing this function in the Store increased the overall speed with which v2 API requests are processed. The Spellchecker and CLU Embedding microservices were added. The word embeddings that are used by the language understanding pipeline (training, TAS, ED-MM) now are stored in the CLU Embedding microservice instead of MongoDB. For more information, see Service architecture.
Slot prompt JSON editor
You can now use the context or JSON editors for the slot response field where you define the question that your assistant asks to get information it needs from the customer. For more information about slots, see Gathering information with slots.
Bug fixes
Multiple bug fixes were made.
Features not included
This release does not include the following features, which are available for cloud instances at the time of this release:
  • There are no metrics or analytics capabilities. Therefore, the Analytics page is not included in the product user interface.
  • There are no deployment connectors or built-in integrations available. You must build a custom client application that can host the assistant. As a result, the Integrations page is not included in the product user interface.
  • The @sys-person and @sys-location system entities are not supported and the new version of the numeric system entities is not available.
  • There is no search function in the pages of the product.
  • You cannot use the Activity Tracker service to track user actions.
  • Intent recommendations and the new irrelevance detection model are not supported.
  • The product tour that is available to some first-time users of the cloud-based product is not available.
  • You cannot manage user access at the individual skill and assistant level. You can control only who can access the entire service instance, which includes all of its skills and assistants. For more information about granting access to services in IBM Cloud Pak for Data, see 3.0.1 Managing users.

14 April 2020

IBM Cloud Private End Of Support
Effective 30 September 2020, IBM will withdraw support for IBM Watson® Assistant on IBM Cloud Private. For more information, see the announcement.

28 February 2020

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.4.1 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.4.1 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 2.5.
New backup and restore
A new backup and restore script is available. See Backing up and restoring data.
Webhooks now generally available
The Webhooks feature is now generally available. See Making a programmatic call from dialog.
Bug fixes
Multiple bug fixes were made.
Features not included
This release does not include the following features, which are available for cloud instances at the time of this release:
  • There are no metrics or analytics capabilities. Therefore, the Analytics page is not included in the product user interface.
  • There are no deployment connectors or built-in integrations available. You must build a custom client application that can host the assistant. As a result, the Integrations page is not included in the product user interface.
  • The @sys-person and @sys-location system entities are not supported and the updated numeric system entities are not available.
  • There is no search function in the product.
  • You cannot use the Activity Tracker service to track user actions.
  • Autocorrection, intent recommendations, and the new irrelevance detection model are not supported.
  • The product tour that is available to some first-time users of the cloud-based product is not available.

27 November 2019

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.4 is available

Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.4 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 2.5.

Czech language not automatically enabled

The Czech language is not enabled automatically anymore.

Assistants and Skills navigation menu update

The main menu options of Assistants and Skills have moved from being displayed at the top of the page to being shown as icons in a new navigation pane.

  • Assistants menu icon Assistants
  • Skills menu icon Skills
Skills secondary navigation menu update

The tabbed pages for the tools that you use to develop a dialog skill were moved to a secondary navigation bar that is displayed when you open the skill.

Skills secondary navigation menu

Rich response types support

Rich response types are now supported in a dialog node with slots. You can display a list of options for a user to choose from as the prompt for a slot, for example. For more information, see Gathering information with slots.

Improved Entities, Dialog, and Intents page responsiveness

The Entities, Dialog, and Intents pages were updated to use a new JavaScript library that increases the page responsiveness. As a result, the look of some graphical user interface elements, such as buttons, changed slightly, but the function did not.

Creating contextual entities is easier

The process you use to annotate entity mentions from intent user examples was improved. You can now put the intent page into annotation mode to more easily select and label mentions. For more information, see Adding contextual entities.

Webhook callouts are available

Add webhooks to dialog nodes to make programmatic calls to an external application as part of the conversational flow. This capability is being introduced as a beta feature. For more details, see Making a programmatic call from dialog.

Testing improvement

You can now see the top three intents that were recognized in a test user input from the Try it out pane. For more details, see Testing your dialog.

3 September 2019

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.3 is available
Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.3 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data versions 2.1.0.1 and 2.1.0.2. There is now added support for installing IBM Cloud Pak for Data with Red Hat OpenShift.
Federal Information Security Management Act support
Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) support is available for Watson Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak for Data for this version (V1.3). FISMA support is also available to those who purchased V1.2 (28 June 2019) and upgraded to V1.3. {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Pak for Data is FISMA High Ready.
Provision more instances in a single deployment
You can now provision up to 30 instances of Watson Assistant in a single deployment.
Search skill now generally available
The search skill is now generally available.
Features not included
This release does not include the following features, which are currently available for cloud instances:
  • Autocorrection, intent recommendations, and webhooks are not supported.
  • The product tour that is available to some first time users of the cloud-based product is not available.
  • The new JavaScript library that is being used in cloud instances to increase the page responsiveness is not in use.

28 June 2019

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.2 is available
The Watson Assistant tool now works with IBM Cloud Pak for Data 2.1. It does not work with stand-alone IBM Cloud Private. The following changes were made in this release:
Assistants are now available
An assistant can manage user sessions on your behalf. See Assistants.
Search skill is a new beta feature
You can create a search skill to trigger a search in an external data source that you configure in Watson Discovery. See Creating a search skill.
Introducing dialog skills
Instead of creating a workspace as the container for your training data and dialog, you create a dialog skill. See Creating a dialog skill.
Intent conflict resolution is available
Prevent your assistant from answering the wrong question by keeping your intents distinct from one another. Intent conflict resolution is now available. It can find intents with overlapping user examples, and gives you a graphical user interface in which to fix them. Nondistinct intents can result in misclassifications of user input. See Resolving intent conflicts.
Synonym recommendations
You can opt to see synonym recommendations that are made by Watson as you create a dictionary-based entity. See Synonyms.

21 February 2019

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM® Cloud Private version 1.1 is available
The Watson Assistant tool now works with IBM Cloud Private 3.1.0. It does not work with IBM Cloud Private 2.1.0.3. {{site.data.keassistant_classic_shortnshort}} for IBM Cloud Private version 1.1 is compatible with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data version 1.2.
Decrease in the number of required Virtual Private CPUs
The number of required Virtual Private CPUs has decreased from its previous number (of 60 VPCs).
Improvements to language support
Language support was improved, which means you do not need as many additional resources when you add support for more languages.

23 November 2018

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM® Cloud Private version 1.0.1 runs on IBM Cloud Private 2.1.0.3
A revised Helm chart (version 1.0.1) was published, which improves the Helm chart and packaging.
New configuration settings
New configuration settings were added that allow you to specify domain names and IP addresses for the coordinator and proxy nodes of the IBM® Cloud Private cluster. A new checkbox is visible for enabling recommendations; however, do not select it as the feature is not fully supported yet.
Development deployment required resources
The resources required for a development deployment changed for Minio from one 20 GB replica to four 5 GB replicas. This change means you need to create 13 persistent volumes instead of 10 to support the deployment.

5 October 2018

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM® Cloud Private version 1.0.0.1 runs on IBM Cloud Private 2.1.0.3
A revised Helm chart (version 1.0.0.1) was published, which improves the installation process.

26 September 2018

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM® Cloud Private 1 is available

IBM Watson® Assistant for IBM® Cloud Private version 1 runs on IBM Cloud Private 2.1.0.3.

Introducing the Build tab

The IBM Watson® Assistant tool includes a Build tab that offers pre-built intents you can add to your workspace from a content catalog, the ability to define your own intents and entities, and has a graphical user interface you can use to build a dialog. The following key features are also available:

  • Dialog: Digression and disambiguation support, nodes with slots, rich responses (including Connect to human agent)
  • Entities: Contextual entities, system entities for currency, date, number, percentage, and time.
  • Intents: Content catalog
Features not included

These features are not available from IBM® Cloud Private, but are available in the public IBM Cloud instance at the time of this release:

  • There are no metrics or analytics capabilities. Therefore, the Improve tab is not included in the tool.
  • There are no deployment connectors or built-in integrations available. You must build a custom client application that can host the assistant. As a result, the Deploy tab is not included in the tool.
  • You cannot search within the tool.
  • The @sys-person and @sys-location system entities are not supported.
  • You cannot make programmatic calls to Cloud Functions actions from the dialog.
  • No entity synonym recommendations are available.
  • No intent conflict detection is available.