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AI assistant widget

Overview

Sitefinity AI Assistant (SAIA) serves as a conversational interface — an intelligent chatbot — designed to enhance the visitor experience by providing intuitive access to your site's content.
You use the AI Assistant, for example, to enable your visitors to use natural language in self-service experiences, including dynamic FAQ and Q&A content, thus reducing friction and improving user satisfaction.

Sitefinity AI Assistant offers you two types of work:

  • Progress Agentic RAG
    This type is based on Progress Agentic RAG and is available in Sitefinity CMS on-prem and Sitefinity Cloud.
  • Sitefinity AI Assistant
    This type leverages a Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technique, combined with the latest large language models (LLMs) and a vector database provided by Microsoft Azure. To use this type of AI Assistant, no special integration or configuration is required but you can use it only in Sitefinity Cloud. 

You use an out-of-the-box AI assistant widget to surface the chatbot UI in your sites without any programming.

Progress Agentic RAG

PREREQUISITES:
  • Progress Agentic RAG is built-in and supported in Sitefinity CMS 15.4.8623 and later.
    To integrate Progress Agentic RAG into your solution based on Sitefinity CMS 14.4 or later up to version 15.3, you can use the code sample for Next.js.
  • You have already configured a Progress Agentic RAG knowledge box.
    For more information, see What is a knowledge box.

Progress Agentic RAG enables your site visitors to search in every resource you store in its Knowledge box, including PDFs, videos, images, and so on.
For more information, see What is a Knowledge Box.

Before you can use Progress Agentic RAG, you must configure the respective Sitefinity connector.

To configure Progress RAG settings, perform the following:
  1. Log in to the Progress Agentic RAG Dashboard.
  2. From the NucliaDB API endpoint, copy the host part of the URL without the rest of the URL.
  3. In Sitefinity CMS backend, navigate to Administration » Settings » Advanced.
  4. In the tree on the left, expand the AgenticRAG node.
  5. In Base URL, paste the endpoint you from Step 2.
    For example, https://europe-1.rag.progress.cloud.
To configure the Knowledge box, perform the following:
  1. Log in to the Agentic RAG Dashboard.
  2. Copy the Knowledge Box UID and save it somewhere, for example – in Notepad.
    You will need this value later.
  3. In the Agentic RAG Dashboard, navigate to Advanced » API Keys
  4. Create a new API key, copy it, and save it somewhere, for example – in Notepad.
  5. In Sitefinity CMS backend, navigate to Administration » Settings » Advanced.
  6. In the tree on the left, expand the AgenticRAG » Knowledge Boxes node.
  7. Click Create new.
  8. In Knowledge box UID, paste the UID from Step 2.
  9. In Knowledge box API key, paste the API key from Step 4.
  10. Save your changes.
To configure the Sitefinity AI Assistant settings, perform the following:
  1. In Sitefinity CMS backend, navigate to Administration » Settings » Advanced.
  2. In the tree on the left, expand the AgenticRAG » Assistant node.
  3. In AdminApiBaseUrl enter https://api.sitefinity.cloud/Version
  4. In CdnHostName enter cdn.assistant.api.sitefinity.cloud

Sitefinity AI Assistant

PREREQUISITES:
  • Sitefinity AI Assistant is available only on Sitefinity Cloud.
  • You must have purchased the Sitefinity AI Assistant add-on.
  • The Next.js widget for AI Assistant is available with Sitefinity 15.3.8527 and newer versions.
  • To comply with data residency requirements and ensure that your customers' data handling is fully compliant with the applicable local laws, the AI Assistant is available only when your subscription is provisioned in the US and EU regions.
    This ensures data residency - any data stored at rest or processed for inference in these regions is ensured to remain in the location of your deployment.
  • If your subscription is provisioned in a different region and you want to use the AI Assistant, contact the Sitefinity Support team.
    For information about the supported Sitefinity Cloud regions, see Architecture.

To learn how to set up and configure an AI Assistant, see Sitefinity AI Assistant.

Sitefinity AI Assistant enables your site visitors to search in the content of your site, such as pages, content items, and Word and PDF files stored in your libraries.

Use the AI assistant widget on your site

PREREQUISITES: To use the AI assistant widget, you must have at least one Progress Agentic RAG or AI Assistant that is already configured as described above.

Place the AI assistant widget on a page

To place the AI assistant widget on a page, perform the following:

  1. Log in to your Sitefinity backend.
  2. Create or navigate to an existing Next.js page.
  3. If needed, add a Section widget.
  4. Click Add widget here...
  5. From the right panel, select the AI assistant widget.
    NOTE: If your Sitefinity CMS project is on version 15.3 or earlier, and you have integrated the GitHub code sample, the widget is named Progress Agentic RAG Assistant.

RESULT: The AI assistant widget is placed and ready to be configured.

Configure an existing AI assistant widget

To configure an existing AI assistant widget, click its Edit link.

The AI assistant page opens, where you can configure the following:

  • From the AI assistant type dropdown, select whether you want to use Progress Agentic RAG or Sitefinity AI Assistant type.
    • If you are using Progress Agentic RAG:
      • Select an already configured Knowledge box.
        You configure the knowledge box in the Progress Agentic RAG backend.
        For more information, see What is a knowledge box.
      • Optionally, select an already configured Search configuration.
        You configure the search configuration in Progress Agentic RAG backend.
        For more information, see Stored search configurations.
    • If you are using Sitefinity AI Assistant, select an already configured AI Assistant using the Select an AI assistant dropdown.
  • Give a nickname of the AI assistant.
    Your site visitors will see this nickname every time the AI assistant generates an answer.
  • Customize the welcome message for your site visitors.
    The AI assistant displays the greeting message when a site visitor opens the chat window for the first time.
    By default, the AI assistant uses the greeting message that the site administrator has configured upon creating the AI assistant you are using.
  • Set an avatar of the AI assistant.
    Your site visitors see this image every time the AI assistant generates an answer.
  • Display sources
    If set to Yes, the AI assistant widget will display links to the source content which the AI Assistant used to generate its answers.
    NOTE: The Display sources setting is available only when you are using Progress Agentic RAG.
  • Enable visitor feedback
    If set to Yes, the AI assistant widget shows a prompt to the site visitor for feedback about their satisfaction with the answers the AI Assistant provides.
    NOTE: The Enable visitor feedback setting is available only when you are using Progress Agentic RAG.
  • Configure how the AI assistant is displayed on the page:
    • If you select Display overlay mode, your site visitors see an icon in the lower-right corner of the page. Clicking this icon opens a chat window.
      You can set custom icons for opening and closing the chat window.
    • If you select Display inline mode, the chat window appears directly on the page, integrated with other widgets and using the space allocated for the AI assistant widget.
    • Optionally, you can set the HTML element ID that hosts the chat UI. To do this, set the name in the Container ID field.
  • Configure the message box where your site visitors enter their prompts. You can set the following:
    • Placeholder text
      The text is displayed as a tip inside the input box. This text is replaced by whatever text the visitor enters.
    • Notice
      The text visible at the bottom of the chat UI, which reminds the site visitors that they are interacting with AI and the responses are generated by AI.
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