Configure context variables for AI Agents

Applies to: Dynamics 365 Contact Center—standalone and Dynamics 365 Customer Service only

This article lists the context variables for Azure and Copilot Studio agents, and how you can configure them in Omnichannel for Customer Service. To understand how to create context variables, see Manage context variables.

Context variables for Copilot Studio agents

The following table contains the list of context variables available in Omnichannel for Customer Service that you can use for configuring Copilot Studio agents.

• ¹ Data is retrieved from your Dataverse environment as a part of automatic customer identification. Your AI agent might experience latency when receiving this data.
• ² To use other context variables for voice, you can obtain them from Copilot Studio. Learn more in Work with variables.

Configure context variables for Copilot Studio agent

To have your Copilot Studio agent read context variables from Omnichannel, do the following steps:

1. On the Conversation Start topic, add a new node, and select Variable management > Set a variable value.
2. In your new node, under Set variable select Create new.
3. Select the new variable name. The Variable properties pane appears. In the pane, set the Variable name to match the Omnichannel context variable's name exactly (it's case sensitive).
4. In the Reference section, select the ellipses (...) and select Get value from this node if empty. The Copilot Studio agent retrieves the variable value from this node at runtime.
5. In the Usage section, select Global (any topic can access) and External sources can set values so that Copilot Studio agent accepts data from omnichannel and this variable can be used in any topic.
6. If you are using data from your work classification rules in the variable, ensure you set a time-out length in the variable definition. Learn more in Set global variables from external sources.
7. Close the Variable properties pane.
8. In your node, enter a value in To value that matches the data type your agent expects. For example, if your agent should use the customer's phone number from omnichannel, set it to Activity.From.Name.

11. Save and publish the changes.

During a conversation, the data from the Omnichannel context variable is set in the Copilot Studio variables and can be used in the agent's logic.

The agent can also set Omnichannel context variables during a conversation. To set an Omnichannel variable from your Copilot Studio logic, make sure that your agent is using the correct variable name and set the value in the "To value" property in your variable management node. Copilot Studio hands off the variable to Omnichannel during transfer to a customer service representative. This is often used to link the conversation to a case when the agent escalates the conversation to a service representative. More information on how to link records in Omnichannel from this data: Link customer and case to a conversation

The global variables that are created in Copilot Studio can be passed to Omnichannel for Customer Service when a conversation is escalated. For the complete list, see Contextual variables available upon hand off.

Parse JSON object to extract record ID

Make sure that you have the following details:

• The Omnichannel for Customer Service context variable, such as msdyn_contact_msdyn_ocliveworkitem_Customer.
• The schema details

A copy of the sample schema details is as follows:

        Schema: 
        {
            "type": "array",
            "items": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                    "RecordId": {
                        "type": "string"
                    },
                    "PrimaryDisplayValue": {
                        "type": "string"
                    }
                },
                "required": [
                    "RecordId",
                    "PrimaryDisplayValue"
                ]
            }
        }

PrimaryDisplayValue contains the value from the attribute in the Dataverse entities. The mapping for the entity attributes is as follows:

• Cases: Case title
• Contacts: Full name
• Accounts: Name

Here's a sample context record.

{
    "msdyn_contact_msdyn_ocliveworkitem_Customer": [
        {
            "RecordId": "<GUID>",
            "PrimaryDisplayValue": "<FullName>"
        }
    ],
    "msdyn_liveworkitemid": "<GUID>"
}

Context variables for Azure agents

The following table contains the list of context variables in Omnichannel for Customer Service that you can use for configuring Azure agents.

Related information

Integrate a Copilot Studio agent
Integrate an Azure agent
Configure agents to escalate and end conversations
Live chat SDK reference