Configuring the delivered Skill in the ODA instance

This post will cover some tips and lessons that I learnt while setting up the delivered Skill HGA_CHAT_ASST(1.0) in my ODA instance. It also covers a few items that are not very obvious when we refer PeopleBooks documentation. Before we proceed it is assumed that we already have an ODA instance created.

PeopleBooks Reference: Importing and Setting up a Delivered Skill

Delivered Skill location

The delivered absence Skill will be located in the following location.

<PS_APP_HOME>/setup/chatbot/

In my case, since I am using a HCM 9.2 - PI 31 running on OCI (created by PeopleSoft Cloud Manager), the Skill - HGA_CHAT_ASST(1.).zip was located here.

/u01/app/oracle/product/pt/ps_app_home/chatbot/

We simply need to download this to a local machine (PC/laptop) and use it in the next step.

Importing the delivered Skill to ODA

This step is self explanatory. Here are some screenshots that will further assist you with this activity.

Select Skills from the Digital Assistant Designer UI menu.

Next, upload the delivered Skill HGA_CHAT_ASST(1.0).zip using the Import Skill button. Once the import process completes, we will see the 'Absence Assistant' Skill in the list (as shown above).

Note: During the import process, we may see the following error/warning. I was told that this can be ignored. And it was true! It did not cause any issues.

Clone Delivered Skill

As always, it is best practice to maintain a copy of the delivered Skill so that we can refer back to it if necessary. So, as advised in PeopleBooks, we need to clone the 'Absence Assistant' Skill and create a copy of our own. In my case, I named my copy 'Absence Assistant Skill'.

Configuring the Delivered Skill to point to our PeopleSoft Environment

Once we clone the delivered Skill, the next step is to configure it to point to our PeopleSoft environment. Our PeopleSoft environment can be running either on the Cloud (OCI) or on premises. In my case, my HCM 9.2 - PI 31 is running on OCI.

ODA > Digital Assistant Designer UI > Menu > Development > Skills (select your copy of the Skill) >  Settings > Configuration (Tab) > Custom Parameters

If we scroll down further on this page, we will find all the delivered custom (oxymoron?) parameters.

We can leave the HGAmarket, HGAnode and HGAportal as delivered in the 'Absence Assistant' Skill.

We need to use the <Proxy User> and password (which we created before getting started) to configure the PSHCMuserid and PSHCMpassword parameters.

Refer PeopleBooks for more details on how to create this userid:
Understanding Security for Chatbot Integration Framework

Next, we need to ensure that we configure PSHCMbaseurl parameter to point to our Integration Broker REST end point of the delivered PTCB_APPL_SVC.v1 service.

End Point Format:
https://<server>:<port>/PSIGW/RESTListeningConnector/<node>/PTCB_APPL_SVC.v1

server: Integration Broker hostname
port: Integration Broker port
node: Default Local Node

In my case, since I am running my HCM 9.2 - PI 31 instance on OCI and I did not setup SSL, I used http instead of https. Also, since I did not  have a virtual address that pointed to my server, I simply used the public ip address of my HCM instance. So, my end point was in the following format.

http://1.2.3.4:8000/PSIGW/RESTListeningConnector/PSFT_HR/PTCB_APPL_SVC.v1

Creating and Configuring an ODA Channel

PeopleBooks: Creating the Web Channel

Once our Skill is created and configured appropriately, we need to create a Channel and configure it to route to our Skill. This step is briefly mentioned in PeopleBooks but I missed the routing step because it was not very obvious and found out the hard way. Here are the steps to create and configure a Channel.

ODA > Digital Assistant Designer UI > Menu > Development > Channels > Create Channel

Next, we need to ensure that the Channel is enabled and that it is routing to the Skill we configured in the previous step. Finally, we need to note down the App Id. We will use this while configuring our PeopleSoft application to point to this ODA Channel.