The University of Canberra's push into artificial intelligence could see chatbots used to raise support requests with the organisation's IT team.
The university is deploying two chatbots to help faculty staff and the 11,500 students based at its Bruce campus get faster access to information.
The two bots – Lucy, aimed at students, and Bruce, for staff – were built using the Microsoft Azure Bot Framework and LUIS natural launguage service.
Bruce, which went live around two weeks ago, crawls content within the UC intranet for answers to staff questions, and the university is exploring whether staff could use the chatbot to log IT service tickets with its outsourced provider, Wipro.
"Bruce currently isn't connected to anything but we are looking to connect it to our service desk tool," Rebecca Armstrong, deputy director of projects and innovation, told iTnews on the sidelines of this week's Microsoft Summit in Sydney.
Staff can also ask Bruce questions through Microsoft Teams, which is being progressively rolled out across the university.
Lucy, which is set to launch in the near future, scans university support content like its AskUC websites to help answer students' questions.
The bot links to the university’s Dynamics 365 platform via API. If Lucy can’t find the answer to a question, it will raise a ticket with the student centre through the CRM.
The chatbots aim to offer an alternative to email, phone calls and FAQs for support.
"By soon adding chatbots we are giving our students and staff another avenue to find assistance quickly and easily,” Tom Townsend, University of Canberra deputy director of planning and architecture, said in a statement.
