Get started with watsonx Assistant

IBM watsonx Assistant is an AI-powered virtual agent that provides customers with fast, consistent, and accurate answers across any messaging platform, application, device, or channel. Using AI and natural language processing, watsonx Assistant learns from customer conversations, improving its ability to resolve issues the first time while removing the frustration of long wait times, tedious searches, and unhelpful chatbots.

With watsonx Assistant, you can build conversational interfaces into any application, device, or channel. Most virtual assistants try to mimic human interactions, but watsonx Assistant knows when to search for an answer from a knowledge base, when to ask for clarity, and when to direct someone to a human. Like a human personal assistant, the assistant you build helps your customers perform tasks and answer questions. To accomplish this, you define actions for the assistant.

This tutorial provides an easy-to-follow guide on how to sign up for an IBM Cloud Account, provision a watsonx Assistant instance, launch watsonx Assistant, and configure the settings for your first Assistant.

To see the process, you can watch the following short video.

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you must have an IBM Cloud account.

Estimated time

It should take you approximately 10 minutes to complete the tutorial.

Steps

1. Go to the IBM Cloud website, and click Create IBM Cloud account in the upper-right corner of the page.

   

2. Follow the prompts to create a new IBM Cloud account. This requires that you provide your email address, create a password, select a country and region, and enter your credit card information.

   

3. If you've already purchased a subscription or have been provided a feature code, register using the code provided by selecting Register with a code.

   

4. After your account is created and verified, log in to the IBM Cloud dashboard.

   

5. From the dashboard, click Create resource in the upper-right corner of the page.

   

6. In the IBM Cloud Catalog section, type watsonx Assistant into the search bar and select watsonx Assistant from the search results.

   

7. On the Catalog page, select a location, select a pricing plan, and read and agree to the license agreements. Finally, click Create.

   

8. Wait for the instance to be created, and then click Launch watsonx Assistant to open the watsonx Assistant user interface.

   

9. You can now begin using watsonx Assistant to build and manage your chatbot. Create your first assistant by giving it an internal nickname (not visible to customers) (a), then clicking Next (b).

   

10. On the Personalize your assistant tab, answer each question to the best of your ability. Anything that you enter can be changed later, so don't worry about anything being permanent. On the final screen, click Create.

    

Congratulations! Watsonx Assistant is ready for you to build your first assistant.

Summary

You are now ready to begin building your very first assistant. In the next tutorial, you'll learn about the interface's navigation and how it ties to the concepts that I covered in the product overview.