What's new in IBM watsonx Orchestrate™

As new features and capabilities are added to IBM watsonx Orchestrate for June 2024, you can read about them here. Refer to Previous releases to learn more about changes that happened in the previous months.

Note: Do you want to get updates on new features, bug fixes, and security fixes for IBM watsonx Orchestrate as an on-premises solution in IBM Cloud Pak® for Data? See What's new and changed in IBM watsonx Orchestrate 🡥 in the IBM Cloud Pak for Data documentation.

20 June 2024

The following sections describe new features, enhancements, and changes that happened on the release of 20 June 2024.

Support for Japanese as default language

IBM watsonx Orchestrate now supports setting Japanese as the default language. If you want to change the default language from English to Japanese, contact the IBM Support and open a case. For more information, see Changing the Orchestrate default language.

Building skills and automations into a unified experience

This release brings the Skill Studio, a unified experience for you to have a centralized place to start building skills and automations. Open the Skill Studio by clicking the menu and Skill studio.

Using generative AI components and setting default values in workflows

This release brings new features for the creation of workflows in the Automation builder:

Use generative AI components as part of your workflow by using the new Generative AI activity.
Set default values in input variables so that the defaults are passed into a skill when you call it.

For more information, see Creating workflows.

More apps and skills

This release adds new skills to the skill catalog. See the list of new skills per app:

ClickSend
- Skills
  - Copy a contact to another contact list
  - Create a contact in contact list
  - Create a contact list
  - Create an allowed email for SMS communication
  - Get account information
  - Get all contacts by list ID
  - Get all contact lists
  - Get all SMS campaigns
  - Get all voice message history
  - Get contact list by ID
  - Get the list of allowed emails for SMS communication
  - Transfer a contact to the contact list
IBM Document processing
- Skills
  - Classify a document
  - Extract personal identifiable information (PII)
  - Extract key-value pairs (KVPs)
  - Extract text
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Digital Data
- Skills
  - Create an address
  - Create an inventory list
  - Create a product inventory record
  - Create a site coupon
  - Create a site promotion
  - Delete an address
  - Delete an inventory list
  - Delete a product inventory record
  - Delete a site coupon
  - Delete a site promotion
  - Get all addresses
  - Get all inventory lists
  - Get all site coupons
  - Get all site promotions
  - Update an address
  - Update an inventory list
  - Update a product
  - Update a site coupon
  - Update a site promotion
Salesloft
- Skills
  - Cadence membership delete
  - Create a cadence membership
  - Export a cadence
  - Get all actions
  - Get all cadence memberships
  - Get all cadences
  - Get all steps
  - Upsert a person
- Skill flows
  - Delete a cadence membership
Workday HCM
- Skills
  - Get a job change event
  - Get a job change profile
  - Get a job change start details
  - Get all location categories
  - Get all locations available for job change
  - Get all jobs available for job change
  - Get all reason categories
  - Get all workers from category
  - Get all workers by manager
  - Get all worker categories
  - Get job change location details
  - Get job change reasons
  - Get the position of a job change
  - Initiate a job change event
  - Save the job change event for later
- Skill flows
  - Create a job change event
  - Get all reasons available for job change
  - Get location details of a job change
  - Get the job profile of a job change
  - Get the start details of job change

Other enhancements and changes

Read about other enhancements that are related to the 20 June release. The following table details the enhancements that are delivered in this release and the user role that is affected by the enhancement.

Enhancements	Description	Affected role
Skills now support OAuth2 with `authorizationCode` as grant type	Builders can now create and import skills that use OAuth 2.0 with authorization code as grant type. For more information, see Configuring the API security scheme.	Builder

Read about issues that were fixed for the 20 June release. The following table details the fixes that are delivered in this release and the user role that is affected by the fix.

Bug fixes	Description	Affected role
Skills from some apps were returning “Form is empty” as a response	Fixed an issue where skills that get records from apps were returning “Form is empty” as a response. This issue happened when users provided wrong inputs for these skills.	User
The accordions in the Task in progress box were remaining expanded	Fixed an issue where the accordion items in the Task in progress box were remaining expanded even after users close and open the box again.	User
The icon was missing for some apps	Fixed an issue where the icon for some applications and skills was missing on the Orchestrate chat page.	User Builder
No icon for the UiPath skills	Fixed an issue where the icon for the UiPath skills wasn’t appearing.	User Builder
Skill output wasn’t accessible by subsequent skills in a skill flow	Fixed an issue where the list returned as an output of a skill cannot be properly accessed by subsequent skills in a skill flow.	Builder
Error after users delete the source of a mapping in a skill flow	Fixed an issue on the Skill flow page where users were getting the “`Catalog component error`” error after deleting the source of a mapping for a custom output form.	Builder
The Action button wasn’t triggering any action	Fixed an issue in the Skill flow page where the Action button wasn’t triggering any action after users clicked it.	Builder
Tooltip was truncated for the Delete button	Fixed an issue in the Next best skills tab where the tooltip of the Delete button tooltip was truncated.	Builder
Wrong text for the tooltip of Warning messages	Fixed an issue in the Add skills page where the tooltip for Warning messages was showing "`Object Object` ".	Builder
Duplicated entries from the Auto-generate phrases feature	Fixed an issue where the Auto-generate phrases was generating duplicated entries for phrases.	Builder

Documentation updates

Know the updates in the Orchestrate documentation and other contents for this release.

Updated sections

Skill IDs of prebuilt apps: The list of skill IDs was updated with the IDs of the new skills for this release.
Enhancing and publishing skills: The Configuring the output of the skill section was updated to improve the procedure about how to enhance output fields of skills.

7 June 2024

The following sections describe new features, enhancements, and changes that happened on the release of 7 June 2024.

Setting shared credentials to connect to apps across skill sets

As an admin, you can define whether the connection to an app requires personal or shared credentials. With this setting, you can control the way that the members of the tenant connect to the apps per skill sets or AI assistant environment. It gives to members the security to have the connection to the apps made by the admin or the possibility to use their personal credentials.

For more information, see Managing connections.

Accessing logs to debug errors in a tenant

Access and use logs to diagnose exceptions that occur while builders build and run skills. The information is available at tenant level.

For more information, see Enabling external logging.

Gathering information from users with slot logic flows

Use slot logic flows to gather the information that your AI assistant needs to route the conversation with a user to the right path. For each custom skill that you build, you can add a logic flow to define the conditions for the AI assistant to route the conversation to a defined flow with the proper input from users.

For more information, see Adding slot logic flow.

Dynamically displaying input and output fields in the form based on the values of a previous field

Create skills that request different data based on the inputs of their previous fields, so your users can be able to see only the fields that are relevant to them when they are filling complex forms. With this implementation, you can:

Create a dynamic form with a dropdown.
Create a dynamic form with two parent fields.

For more information, see Showing input fields dynamically.

Mapping the skill's utterance and history for AI assistants

Now you can pass the skill's utterance and session history through the skill request headers. With this implementation, you can map the skill input fields to receive the values of the skill utterance or skill history automatically in an AI assistant.

For more information, see Filling string fields automatically for Assistant skills

New customizations for user interfaces in workflows

This release brings new features for the creation of user interfaces in the Automation builder:

You can now customize the layout of your user task input fields into up to four columns. To customize, drag the input fields within the user interface.
The table control that shows a list of items can now be used to allow a single item selection or multiple item selections.
You can now use the single select control with variables that are not choice lists. The options are obtained from another variable in the workflow.