What's new in IBM watsonx Orchestrate™

As new features and capabilities are added to IBM watsonx Orchestrate for May 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.

24 May 2024

The following sections describe new features, enhancements, and changes that happened on the release of 24 May 2024.

Discovering skills from UiPath

Now, you can discover skills from UiPath to use them on Orchestrate. See how to connect to the UiPath app and use its skills by accessing the UiPath content.

Important: Currently, the call-back URLs are not supported on UiPath. Hence, a "Fire & forget" approach is implemented on Orchestrate. Upon job completion, Orchestrate will be unable to retrieve any output parameters resulting from the automation or robots, nor will it be able to retrieve a status back from UiPath. The functionality will be enhanced to make it available as soon as UiPath supports it. Therefore, if you are adding any UiPath skill in a workflow or a skill flow, you must do it last. For any processes that are affected, the results must be manually added on Orchestrate.

More apps and skills

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

Anaplan
- Get all import definitions
- Get all export definitions
- Get all processes
- Get the current period
- Get the current fiscal year
- Set the current fiscal year
Coupa
- Create an address
- Create a lookup value
- Get all the lookup values
- Get all addresses
- Update an address
- Update a lookup value
Microsoft OneNote
- Create page with embedded content
- Delete a page
- Get all recent notebooks
- Get all section groups
Microsoft Teams
- Add a member
- Create a group
- Create a team
- Delete a group
- Delete an owner
- Delete a member
- Get all owners
- Set an owner
- Update a group
DnB
- Get a beneficial ownership list
- Get a beneficial ownership structure
- Get a company's financials L1
- Get a company's financials L3
- Get a company's information L2
- Get a company's information L3
- Get a company's information L4
- Get a control and ownership list
- Get a control and ownership structure
- Get a diversity insight L2
- Get a diversity insight L3
- Get a payment insight L1
- Get a payment insight L2
- Get a third-party risk insight L1
- Get all ESG insights L3
- Get all principal contacts L1
- Get an event filings L1
- Get an event filings L2
- Get an event filings L3
- Get financial strength insight L2
- Get financial strength insight L3
- Get hierarchies and connections L1
Seismic
- Get all contents
- Get all digital sales rooms
- Get all digital sales room templates
- Get all external users
- Get all groups
- Get all LiveSend link contents
- Get all LiveSend links
- Get all page content history
- Get LiveSend content viewing sessions
- Get LiveSend page views
watsonx.ai
- Salesloft email summary
ZoomInfo
- Get all board members
- Get all company rankings
- Get all company types
- Get all contact departments
- Get all continents
- Get all countries
- Get all employee count ranges
- Get all industry codes
- Get all job functions
- Get all management levels
- Get all metro areas
- Get all NAICS codes
- Get all revenue ranges
- Get all SIC codes
- Get all states
- Get all sub unit types
- Get all tech products
- Get company enrich results
- Get company search results
- Get contact enrich results
- Get contact search results
- Get job title hierarchy

Other enhancements and changes

Read about other enhancements that are related to the 24 May 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
Editing input for imported skills	Builders can choose the way that users need to provide input to skills. In past releases, builders were unable to switch between the options while editing input response for imported skills. Builders can now switch between Options, Single-line text, and Multi-line text while enhancing a skill. See more information in Configuring the input of a skill.	Builder
Using watsonx.ai skills in workflows	This release brings an important update for building automations. Now, builders can orchestrate watsonx.ai skills within workflows to drive productivity improvements in the user tasks. For more information about workflows, see Creating workflows.	Builder

Read about issues that were fixed for the 24 May 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
Duplicated watsonx.ai skills	Fixed an issue where the skills of the watsonx.ai app were duplicated in the skill catalog.	User
Next button in table pagination	Fixed an issue where the Next button in a table was disabled after the user remove the data from the Filter table field.	User
IBM RPA skills icons	Fixed an issue where the icons of the IBM RPA skills were not being displayed in the Orchestrate chat page.	User
Skill flow with response message in loop	Fixed an issue where the user was getting the message `No records were found. Try again later.` in loop after starting a skill flow. This behavior was noticed in skill flows with the following configured options: Repeat this skill and Hide this form.	User Builder
Mapping input for arrays in skill flow	Fixed an issue where the mapped input for arrays in skill flow was applied only to the first row in the skill.	User Builder
Repair information in the AI assistant chat	Fixed an issue where the user was not able to repair an information in the AI assistant chat for skills that were connected to a decision.	Builder

Documentation updates

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

Known issues and limitations

The Building automations section has the following updated notes:
- Previewing or calling a workflow as a skill
- Publishing an automation as a skill

New sections

Expressions in workflows: See the new section about expressions that can be used in the workflow activities.

Updated sections

Glossary: The Glossary section has new entries with terms and definitions for Orchestrate.
Enhancing and publishing skills: This section was updated with new information about input configuration in the enhancing skill process.
Skill IDs of prebuilt apps: The list of skill IDs was updated with the IDs of the new skills for this release.
The following sections about apps were updated to improve the connection details:

16 May 2024

The following sections describe new features, enhancements, and changes that happened on the release of 16 May 2024.

New home page for the AI assistant builder

Get a holistic view of your AI assistant with the new home page. In the home page, you can:

Create or view all assistants in your tenant, and switch to a preferred one.
Improve your assistant with recommendations.
Get an overview of your assistant's structure.

AI assistant builder home page. — Figure. The image shows the Homepage interface in the AI assistant builder.

13 May 2024

The following sections describe new features, enhancements, and changes that happened on the release of 13 May 2024.

More apps and skills

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

MailChimp
- Create a file
- Get all files
monday.com
- Add users to a workspace
- Add teams to workspace
- Create a group
- Create a workspace
- Delete a group
- Delete teams from a workspace
- Delete users from a workspace
- Get all teams
Trello
- Create a list
- Create a team
- Delete a team
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Connector
- Create a campaign
- Create a customer
- Create a product
- Create a store
- Delete a campaign
- Delete a customer
- Delete a product
- Delete a store
- Get all campaigns
- Get all catalogs
- Get all customers
- Get all products
- Get all sites
- Get all stores
- Update a campaign
- Update a customer
- Update a store
Square
- Create a customer
- Create an order
- Delete a customer
- Get all customers
- Get all invoices
- Get all orders
- Update a customer
- Update an order

Other enhancements and changes

Read about other enhancements that are related to the 13 May 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
Conversational skills	Starting from this release, you no longer need to mark skills as conversational on the Enhance this skill page. All skills are conversational by default, which includes skill flows.	Builder
Success and action messages in the AI assistant	Messages that appeared after running a skill in the AI assistant were removed. This configuration creates a clean user interface for the AI assistant.	Builder

Read about issues that were fixed for the 13 May 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
Members tab on the Manage team page	Fixed an issue where the Members tab on the Manage team page was not loading.	Admin
Box view mode on the Skills and apps page	Fixed an issue where the builder was able to enhance the skill of other builder through the Box mode view on the Skills and apps page.	Builder
Hiding form in AI assistant chat	Fixed an issue where the form was appearing in the AI assistant chat even configuring to hide the form from the user in the skill flow.	Builder
User redirection to the Skills and apps page	Fixed an issue where after importing a skill from a file, builders were redirected to the Apps tab instead of the Skill tab on the Skills and apps page.	Builder
Marketo and Coupa skills	Fixed an issue where the Marketo and Coupa skills were not working in the Orchestrate chat.	User
Retrieve files skill from Box app	Fixed an issue where the user was not able to click a few of the checkboxes in the Retrieve files skill.	User
Select a record from a skill for the next best skill	Fixed an issue where the user was not able to select a record from a skill to get data mapped for the next best skill.	User
Data transformation	Fixed an issue where the skill was returned the absolute value instead of integers only.	User
Webex skill flow Get all snippets of a meeting transcript	Fix an issue where the Webex skill flow Get all snippets of a meeting transcript was displaying only 100 records. Now, this skill flow is displaying all available records.	User
Decision from automation builder	Fixed an issue where the changes applied to a published decision were not reflecting when the user started this automation in the chat.	User Builder
Repeat this skill based on each character	Fixed an issue where the Repeat this skill feature was repeating based on each character of the input field on looping with a single record.	User Builder
Repeat this skill and array at root level	Fixed an issue where the data mapped was not being displayed when the user started a skill flow. This error was happening in skill flows when the Repeat this skill option was enabled and the input was coming from skill with a response as array at root level.	User Builder
Skill flow in AI assistant web chat	Fixed an issue where a skill flow was failing to run when started from an embedded AI assistant web chat.	User Builder
Data mapping in skill flows	Fixed an issue where the data that was mapped for a skill flow was not displayed in the Orchestrate chat.	User Builder
Data mapping for arrays	Fixed an issue where the input and output mapping in skill flow was not working for arrays.	User Builder
Data mapping for skill flows which component skills are skill flows	Fixed an issue where after running a skill flow, its output was getting printed in the chat instead of getting mapped to the second skill. In this case, the skill flow combined two skill flows as component skills, in which the output from the first skill flow was mapped to the second skill flow.	User Builder

Documentation updates

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

Known issues and limitations: The Building automations section has two updated notes about:
- The impact that the changing roles action has on the automations.
- The unsupported Box skills in the automation builder.
Known issues and limitations: The Managing teams section has an updated note about team skill sets.
Skill IDs of prebuilt apps: The list of skill IDs was updated with the IDs of the new skills for this release.
Understanding x-ibm properties: The Configuring secure tunnel section has additional information about how to set up secure tunnel.
Contents about OpenAPI files that were updated:

09 May 2024

The following sections describe new features, enhancements, and changes that happened on the release of 09 May 2024.

Configure large language models (LLMs) to create seamless interactions with your AI assistants

The LLMs in AI Assistant Builder enable your customers to interact with the assistants seamlessly without any custom-built conversational steps. Prepare the large language model by:

Selecting a large language model (LLM) for your AI assistant

Use the llama-3-70b-instruct, llama-3-8b-instruct, granite-13b-instruct-v2, and mixtral-8x7b-instruct-v01 models. For more details about the models and how to select the model, see Selecting a large language model for your assistant.
Adding prompt instructions

Train your LLM in your assistant to guide the conversations with clarity and specificity to achieve the end goal of an action. For more details on how to add the prompt instruction, see Adding prompt instructions.
Selecting the answering behavior of your assistant

Configure your AI assistants to answer in a general-purpose answering, where the LLM gives responses to customer queries based on general topics, or in a content-grounded answering, where the LLM uses content that is preinstalled during the search integration to respond to customer queries.

For more information about answering behaviors, see Selecting the answering behavior of your assistant.

Build AI-guided actions to your AI assistants

Build AI-guided actions to help your assistants to respond to inquiries that are based on the prebuilt knowledge and instructions. With AI-guided actions, you can use large language models (LLM) and context-based content that suits your enterprise ecosystem and requirements.

For instructions on how to build an AI-guided action, see Creating an AI-guided action.

03 May 2024

The following sections describe new features, enhancements, and changes that happened on the release of 03 May 2024.

Conversational search and the Elasticsearch integration are now generally available

Conversational search, our watsonx.ai powered built-in RAG solution, and the Elasticsearch search integration are now generally available. Note that for conversational search usage, add-on pricing and terms apply. This pricing will take effect June 1, 2024, with free usage being provided for the month of May.

For more information about customizing your assistants with search integration, see Customizing and developing assistants.

For more information about conversational search, see Conversational search.

For more information about the Elasticsearch search integration, see Elasticsearch search integration setup.

Streaming response support from conversational search

You can now use streaming response support from conversational search that uses watsonx.ai capabilities to provide continuous, real-time responses in your assistant. For more information, see Streaming response support.