What's new and changed in watsonx Assistant

IBM watsonx Assistant updates can include new features, bug fixes, and security updates. Releases are listed in reverse chronological order so that the latest release is at the beginning of the topic.

For a complete list of what's new and changed, see the watsonx Assistant release notes.

You can see a list of the new features for the platform and all of the services at What's new in IBM Cloud Pak for Data.

Installing or upgrading watsonx Assistant

Ready to install or upgrade watsonx Assistant?

To install watsonx Assistant along with the other Cloud Pak for Data services, see Installing Cloud Pak for Data.
To upgrade watsonx Assistant along with the other Cloud Pak for Data services, see Upgrading Cloud Pak for Data.
To install or upgrade watsonx Assistant independently, see watsonx Assistant.
Remember: All of the Cloud Pak for Data components associated with an instance of Cloud Pak for Data must be installed at the same version.

Cloud Pak for Data Version 5.0.3

A new version of watsonx Assistant was released in September 2024 with Cloud Pak for Data 5.0.3.

Operand version: 5.0.3

This release includes the following changes:

New features

This release of watsonx Assistant includes the following features:

Configure security certificates: You can now secure the search integrations, custom extensions, conversational skills, and webhooks by configuring TLS certificates in your watsonx Assistant. For more information, see Configuring Security certificates.

Use custom service integration to search information: You can now use a custom service integration to create your own search capability in your watsonx Assistant that uses conversational search for enhanced AI responses. For more information, see Custom service integration.

Tune the generated response length in conversational search: When you use conversational search in your watsonx Assistant, you can now define the length of the generated responses that your watsonx Assistant gives to better fit your needs. For more information, see Conversational search.

Updates

The following updates were introduced in this release:

See source chunks in citations: You can now see full source chunk in citations of your watsonx Assistant even when the PDF viewer and the source link to a website are not available.

New End the action step behavior: Using End the action in the last step no longer ends the action immediately. For more information see, Choosing what to do at the end of a step.

Referencing user-defined variables with user_defined_ prefix: You can now reference the user-defined action or session variables through expressions in actions by using a reserved keyword prefix user_defined_ . For more information, see Variables.

Replace OpenAPI document for custom extension: You can now replace the OpenAPI document of a custom extension to change the extension behavior and authentication method. For more information see, the Building the custom extension and Replacing OpenAPI document topics.

Server-Sent Events for custom extensions: Your watsonx Assistant now supports defining a JSON Path to stream text from Server-Sent Events (SSE) in custom extensions. This feature ensures that text is streamed and stored correctly, with built-in checks to handle potential errors. For more information, see Streaming from an extension.

Issues fixed in this release

The following issues were fixed in this release:

After upgrade, NLU pod gets stuck in ContainerCreating state

Issue: NLU pod gets stuck in ContainerCreating state after upgrade.
Resolution: This issue is now fixed.

Cloud Pak for Data Version 5.0.1

A new version of watsonx Assistant was released in July 2024 with Cloud Pak for Data 5.0.1.

Operand version: 5.0.1

This release includes the following changes:

Updates: The following updates were introduced in this release:
The autocorrection feature is now disabled for search integration in your watsonx Assistant. For more information, see Auto correction

Cloud Pak for Data Version 5.0.0

A new version of watsonx Assistant was released in June 2024 with Cloud Pak for Data 5.0.0.

Operand version: 5.0.0

This release includes the following changes:

New features

This release of watsonx Assistant includes the following features:

Conversational search: The new conversational search feature has a built-in retrieval-augmented generation(RAG) solution that helps your watsonx Assistant to extract an answer from the highest-ranked query results and returns a text response to the user. For more information, see Conversational search in the watsonx Assistant documentation.

Integration of Elasticsearch to the search feature: You can now integrate Elasticsearch to the search feature in your watsonx Assistant. With Elasticsearch, your watsonx Assistant can perform different types of searches such as metric, structured, unstructured, and semantic with higher accuracy and relevance by making use of enterprise content. The data analytics engine in Elasticsearch expands the scope of search integration to larger data sets in watsonx Assistant. For more information about Elasticsearch search integration, see Elasticsearch search integration setup in the watsonx Assistant documentation.

Behavioral tuning for conversational search: You can now optimize your conversational search behavior with the Tendency to say “I don’t know” option in the conversational search settings. This option can help to reduce Large Language Model (LLM) hallucinations and provide higher fidelity answers for conversational search by tuning your assistant's tendency to fall back to the “I don’t know” answer. For more information, see Behavioral tuning in the watsonx Assistant documentation.

Streaming response for conversational search: You can now use streaming response in your watsonx Assistant for conversational search. With the help of watsonx.ai capabilities, streaming response can provide continuous and real-time responses. For more information, see Streaming response in the watsonx Assistant documentation.

Overwrite all or skip all when you copy actions to another watsonx Assistant: You can now choose to overwrite all references or skip all references when you copy actions from one watsonx Assistant into another. For more information, see Copying an action to another assistant in the watsonx Assistant documentation.

Add a custom result filter for the Watson Discovery search integration: You can now filter your search result in the Watson Discovery search integration by adding custom text strings in the Custom result filter field in Search integration. For more information, see Configure the search for Watson Discovery in the watsonx Assistant documentation.

Configure search routing: You can configure the search routing for your watsonx Assistant when no matches are available for the customer response. For more information, see Configuring the search routing when no action matches in the watsonx Assistant documentation.

Conversational skills: You can now use conversational skills in your watsonx Assistant to begin tasks or workflows. You must register a pro code conversational skill provider on your watsonx Assistant instance and begin building skill-backed actions to fit your use cases. For more information, see Conversational skills API documentation.

Service monitors: Your watsonx Assistant can now use service monitors to monitor the health of your watsonx Assistant instances. For more information, see Installing service monitors.