You are building a Power Virtual Agents chatbot for a company. You are working with an existing topic and would like to call an action. Which technology is available to perform the action?

Power Virtual Agents chatbots can perform actions by integrating with Power Automate. Within the topic authoring canvas, the "Call an action" node is used to invoke a Power Automate flow. This enables the chatbot to connect to hundreds of pre-built or custom connectors to interact with backend systems, APIs, and services. For example, a flow can be used to look up customer information in a CRM, check the status of an order, or send an email notification. The flow executes the required steps and can return data back to the chatbot to continue the conversation with the user.

A. Power Virtual Agent Entity: Entities are used to identify and extract specific information from a user's input, such as a date or order number, not to perform an action.
B. Power Apps: Power Apps is a service for building and using custom business apps. It is not the technology called from a chatbot topic to execute a backend process.
D. Power BI: Power BI is a business analytics service for data visualization and reporting. It is used to analyze data, not to execute transactional actions within a chatbot.

1. Microsoft Learn. (2023). Use actions in Power Virtual Agents. "You can enable your bot to perform an action by calling a Microsoft Power Automate flow. Flows can help you automate activities, or call backend systems." Retrieved from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/advanced-actions-dev

2. Microsoft Learn. (2023). PL-900: Work with topics and nodes in Power Virtual Agents. In the section "Node types," under "Call an action," it states: "The Call an action node allows you to call Power Automate flows from your topic." Retrieved from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/work-with-power-virtual-agents-topics/3-work-with-nodes

3. Microsoft Learn. (2023). Create and edit topics in your Power Virtual Agents bot. In the section "Add a node," under "Call an action," it specifies: "To have the bot perform an action, add an Action node. Actions are Power Automate flows that perform an action." Retrieved from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/authoring-create-edit-topics