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When using suggested solutions, you can also restrict the suggested answers to be from the same product or category as the incident that is submitted. For more information on doing this, refer to Answer ID 1053: Restricting Suggested Solutions by Product or Category.

Option 1: Configuring a Rule to Display SmartAssistant Suggested Answers with Ask a Question Requests

The most direct way to suggest answers to end-users when they submit an incident through the Ask a Question page is to create a rule that includes the action Append SmartAssistant Response to Response Field.

This approach uses system-defined content to display the suggested solutions. When the end-user submits the Ask a Question request, if there are answers in the knowledge base that closely match the content of the incident, the user sees a screen that says:

Preliminary Response to Question
The following answers may be relevant to your question:

This heading is followed with links to the suggested answers along with a button that allows the user to submit the incident if the suggestions did not answer their question.  If you wish to customize the content that displays to your end-user, you must create a custom standard text and use the approach described in the section below.

Rule configuration:  To create a rule that displays suggested solutions to your end-users, configure the rule as defined below for the appropriate release.  (Documentation about Business Rules.)

To edit the incident rules in .NET console, use the path: Configuration > Site Configuration, select Rules. From the ribbon click on Incident and then click the Edit button.  Once you have updated the rules, be sure to compile and activate them for use.

To edit the incident rules in BUI console, use the path: Configuration > Site Configuration, select Rules. From the Business Rules Selector click on Incident and then click the Edit Rules button. Once you have updated the rules, be sure to save and deploy them for use.

There are two distinct incident sources that can be enabled for the rule.  

• End-User Pages > Ask a Question.  Use this source to append the suggested solutions to the incident response thread. This source option does not display the suggested solutions during the submittal process. 
   
• End-User Pages > SmartAssistant on Ask a Question. Use this source to display the suggested solutions to the end-user pages during the submittal process.  The suggested solutions are not appended to the incident itself.

In the IF part of the rule, you can use one source or the other or you can enable both sources if you want the solutions to display both during the submittal process AND to be appended to the incident.  In the THEN part of the rule, include the action Append SmartAssistant Response to Response Field.

For example, to only display the suggested solutions during the submittal process, configure the rule to look like:

IF Incident Source equals End-User Pages: SmartAssistant on Ask a Question
 
THEN Add Action > Append Thread > Append SmartAssistant Response to Response Field 

In this case, if you also want to append the solutions to the incident response field, then enable both the SmartAssistant on Ask a Question AND the Ask a Question box in the Incident Source field in the rule.

When using this approach, with both sources enabled, the suggested solutions display both during the submittal process AND the solutions are appended to the incident thread.

Option 2:  Configuring Smart Assistance Responses with a Custom Standard Text Response

When configuring your site to suggest solutions to your users, you can customize the content that displays on the page with the suggested solutions. For example, you can include a bolded statement to instruct users that they have not yet submitted their request and that they must still click the Finish Submitting button.

To customize the message that displays with the suggested solutions, you must create a standard text response and then use a rule to append that standard response to the response thread of the incident. 

To create a standard text, use the path Configuration > Service > Standard Text. 

To include links to suggested answers from your knowledge base in your standard response, you must append the SmartAssistant Solutions variable in the standard text response. The variable displays as $SOLUTIONS within the standard response.

• When creating the standard text item, the content in the HTML field is what displays to the end-users during the submittal process from the Ask a Question page.
   
  In the HTML field of the standard text, use HTML code to format your response. This includes adding paragraph tags or line breaks as well as font style and colors as appropriate.
   
• The content of the HTML Value field is what can be appended to the incident response thread and becomes part of the incident.

NOTE: Where an HTML value does not exist, the Text content will be used.

For example, you could use the following content in the HTML field so that it displays immediately to the end-user when submitting the Ask a Question request:

These answers were automatically selected for your consideration. If your issue is addressed in our public answers, the solution link should be listed below. If no solutions are listed or the solutions do not match your issue, then there were no public Answers matching your issue. <br /><br />

<b>Click the Finish Submitting Question button below to submit your issue to our support staff. </b> <br /><br />

$SOLUTIONS

Rule configuration:  When configuring the rule, the THEN part of the rule includes the action Append Response Template to Response field. 

If the standard text is also supposed to be sent to the end-user, include the action Email > Send Email Response to Sender.