Deploy an inactive topic or an updated topic to save it and make it available to users on Virtual Agent clients.

Before you begin

If you're using Natural Language Understanding (NLU) topic discovery, you can publish the model at the same time as the topic if the model meets publication criteria. Make sure that your model has passed through all phases of development and is ready to publish. If you haven’t refined, tested, and optimized your model, you may not be able to publish it in Virtual Agent Designer. For more information, see Model management.

Role required: virtual_agent_admin or admin

About this task

You can also publish topic blocks and custom controls to make them available for use in calling topics.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to All > Conversational Interfaces > Virtual Agent > Designer.
  2. In the Topics page, select the topic, topic block, or custom control to publish or republish.
  3. In the topic header bar, select Publish.

    Selecting Publish when there are issues present opens an Issues shelf at the bottom of the diagram, which counts up and details all issues needing correction. These details include a hyperlink for each incomplete item. If the issue is in a node, selecting the hyperlink opens the property sheet for that node. As each issue is resolved, the list on the shelf updates to show the remaining errors. Once there are no issues to resolve, the publishing dialog box opens.

    If you're using NLU topic discovery, the Choose what to publish dialog box appears. Select the available items to publish with the topic, such as the NLU model and language mappings, and then select Publish.

    Note: If the Publish option is unavailable, the model may need some work. For example, the model may not have enough intents or may need more utterances for some intents. Fix these issues before proceeding. Also, if a model language is unavailable, the language-specific model has never been published. Publish it from the NLU Workbench. For more information, see Model management.

    The topic header bar displays a Saving in progress... message. The toast message Successfully saved your topic appears in the lower-right corner afterward for four seconds, and can be closed by selecting the X in the message.

    For topics, the topic state is Active, and the Published state changes to Published just now.

  4. If you published a conversation topic, verify that your keywords or NLU utterances for the topic work as expected.
    1. Return to the Topics page, and then select Test Active Topics.
    2. In the conversation window, verify that the topic opens.
      You can enter keywords or NLU utterances that correspond to the topic intent. For the pre-built Virtual Agent topics, the bot returns a list of topics that match the entered keyword or utterance.

    For information about testing Now Assist LLM topics, see Testing LLM topics.

Result

The topic blocks and custom controls are published and are available for use in calling topics.

Note: Active topics, including setup topics and small talk topics, can also be available for use after the topics are published. For more information, see Control topic discovery and visibility.