What's new

Learn about what's new in each release of Watson Assistant Solutions.

27 December 2018

• An important notices banner is added: The banner is added to the console and is visible only when a notice is active. A notice might inform you that a service is down.
• The ability to register your skill key from the Watson Assistant Solutions console.: Generate a skill key, for example, using an online GUID generator. On the Connect Skill panel in the Add Skill dialog of the console, enter the key you generated. For more information about configuring skill authentication, see Configuring skill authentication.

29 November 2018

• The names of the three Watson Assistant Solutions offerings have changed: The product name, IBM Watson Assistant Solutions, is unchanged.
  • IBM Watson Assistant for Industry changed to IBM Watson Assistant for Connected Platforms.
  • IBM Watson Assistant for Automotive changed to IBM Watson Assistant for Connected Vehicles.
  • IBM Watson Assistant for Hospitality changed to IBM Watson Assistant for Connected Spaces.
• Support for built-in context was added to the NodeJS skill SDK: You can access the built-in shared context from both the NodeJS skill SDK and the Context REST API. The built-in shared context object parameters are part of the evaluate and converse responses from skills. Four new methods are added to the skill SDK to set, get, delete, and validate the built-in context. Two pieces of information are currently supported in the built-in shared context; currentLocation and lastReferencedLocation. See Enhancing the conversation.
• The product documentation is hosted on IBM Knowledge Center: The product documentation at https://watson-personal-assistant.github.io/developer moved to IBM Knowledge Center.

1 November 2018

• Support for IAM authentication in Watson Assistant workspaces: In the NodeJS skill boilerplate, if you are using Watson Assistant as an NLU, you can specify an IAM APK key in the workspace credentials to use IAM authentication. See Creating a custom skill.
• Built-in shared context: A new type of shared context is added to the November 1 release. The built-in shared context has a prescribed structure and set of fields. In your assistant, if you choose to use the built-in shared context across skills, your skill developers benefit from having a shared understanding of what this information is, how to access this information, and the structure of this information. Two pieces of information are currently supported in the built-in shared context; currentLocation and lastReferencedLocation. See Enhancing the conversation. Restriction: Currently, you can access the built-in shared context from the Context REST API. No support is added to the Skill boilerplate and SDK. The built-in shared context parameters are not part of the evaluate or converse response from skills.
• Enabling and disabling routing by entities: If you turn off routing by entities by default for your skills, you can instead enable routing by entities in your skill code when it is applicable. Entity-based routing is enabled by default in the manifest file of the NodeJS skill boilerplate for compatibility with an earlier version. See Enhancing the conversation.
• Ability to associate a tenant with an IBM ID. If you are still using a Watson Assistant Solutions API key to access your tenant, you can log in to your console using your API key and associate your tenant with your IBM ID. Thereafter, you can access Watson Assistant Solutions using your IBM ID. See Managing your tenant.
• Multiple tenant support on the Admin console and Cognitive Portal: In new deployments of Watson Assistant for Connected Spaces, depending on how your deployment is provisioned, you log in to a specific tenant from the Admin Portal or the Cognitive Portal. If multiple tenants are configured for your deployment, you can switch between tenants.

6 September 2018

• Analytics tool improvements: The user interface has a new look and feel. Charts are rendered faster, the layout of charts has improved, and the pages are more interactive. On the Dashboard page, the delta value from the previous day is displayed with each metric. See Getting started with analytics.
• Conversation API updates: Tenant ID is sent in the evaluate and converse requests to skills.
• Self-management of new users: From the Watson Assistant Solutions console, you can add users with a valid IBMid to a tenant and remove users from a tenant. See Managing your tenant.

12 July 2018

• 90-day trial: You can sign up for a 90-day trial fo Watson Assistant for industry. Sign up for a trial from the console home page. To complete some trial tasks, start with Chat with the built-in skillset.

14 June 2018

• Analytics tool improvements: A new skills page was added to Bot Analytics (alpha) to provide detailed metrics about which skills are handling the most conversations or the most utterances, and which skills are returning the highest average confidence scores. A new conversation path flow page was added to Bot Analytics. Use the page to walk through the path of a conversation from its starting point through its various branches. View key metrics at each node.
• Tracking of relation IDs in world models: In Knowledge and reasoning (alpha) component, a new REST API endpoint, GET /knowledge/relation, returns information about all relations that are created in the knowledge store, and includes the relation ID. The GET /knowledge/object/{object_id}/{direction} endpoint was updated to return information about the relations that are associated with a specfic object ID.

17 May 2018

• Integration with IFTTT (alpha): Watson Assistant Solutions is integrated with IFTTT. You can use your assistant as the trigger and another IFTTT service for the action in your IFTTT applets. See Integrating with IFTTT.
• Analytics tools (alpha): A conversational analytics tool is added. From the dashboard page, view a summary of the key metrics that relate to user conversations, user retention, and skill performance for your assistant. Drill down to the other pages that display more detailed metrics for your assistant. See Getting started with analytics.
• Support for multiple tenants: Support for switching between multiple tenants is added to the console. You can edit your tenant configuration. See Managing your tenant.
• Audio support updates: Audio support is generally available. Connect to the audio gateway component using the sample audio client. See Using audio.
• Skill debug tool: A debug tool is available for debugging NodeJS skills locally without having to register them with Watson Assistant Solutions. See Debugging a skill.
• IAM authentication: You can log in to your tenant using an IBM ID or an API key. See Accessing your tenant.

19 April 2018

• Controlling personal information (PI): Disable the logging of personal information (PI) from the console.
• Support for multiple tenants: Use your tenant ID in the REST API calls to target a specific . Use your tenant ID to filter your log data.
• Knowledge and reasoning (alpha) updates: Subscribe proactive agents directly to the Message Hub for state change events from the world model.

Related information

Release notes