Basic Integration Concept in BigFix AEX

The Enterprise Integration feature in BigFix AEX allows you to configure integrations with various backend Enterprise systems in your organization to make calls to them to fulfil various user requests and queries. For example, you can configure the integration with Cherwell Instance of your organization so that users can easily create incident or service requests while chatting with BigFix AEX.

The execution flow in BigFix AEX is described below and shown in Figure 1  Execution Flow of Integration Management .

1. The user types the message in the BigFix AEX Chat UI that sends it to the BigFix AEX App on the server.

For Example: “what is the status of my ticket INC20050?”

1. BigFix AEX App forwards the message to the Watson Assistant for interpretation.
2. Watson Assistant performs Natural Language Processing (NLP) on the user message. It determines the intent of the message as well as extracts various context variables from the message. For example: Intent is “GetIncidentStatus” and context variable is “ticketNumber” with a value of “INC20050”. Based on the identified intent, Watson Assistant is configured to call an Integration with Integration ID, Get_Incident_Status. Watson Assistant returns all this information back to the BigFix AEX App.
3. BigFix AEX App determines that it needs to execute the Integration having the Integration ID and makes a request to the Integration Management module along with all the information sent by Watson Assistant. It also passes the user Session information for the transaction within BigFix AEX to understand the user specific context.
4. Integration Management module looks up the configuration information of the given Integration ID that was created in the module earlier. This helps it determine what kind of Integration to execute – execute an internal function, execute an OpenWhisk cloud external function, make a call to its database, or make a call to the configured webhook. It also uses the Integration’s configuration information to extract parameters from the information sent by Watson Assistant as well as the User Session object and executes the Integration. The OpenWhisk function can internally make a call to the organization’s backend Enterprise system either directly or through an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). For example, make a call to the Cherwell instance to get the ticket status.
5. After executing the Integration, Integration Management module again looks up the Integration configuration and determines how to format the output of the Integration and where to send it. There are 2 options configured in the Integration – either to send it directly to the BigFix AEX Chat UI or to send it back to Watson Assistant for further interpretation. If sent to Watson Assistant, the flow re-starts from step (3) above Cognitive Console provides GUI based customizations to its Administrators through various role-based consoles. These role-based consoles enable BigFix AEX to be robust and enterprise ready. The BigFix AEX Configuration Guide covers each of these consoles comprehensively.