Developing Bots with Microsoft Bots Framework : Create Intelligent Bots Using MS Bot Framework and Azure Cognitive Services

Develop Intelligent Bots using Microsoft Bot framework (C# and Node.js), Visual Studio Enterprise & Code, MicrosoftAzure and Cognitive Services. This book shows you how to develop great Bots, publish to Azure and register with Bot portal so that customers canconnect and communicate using famous communication channels like Skype, Slack, Web and Facebook. You'll also learn how to build intelligence into Bots using Azure Cognitive Services like LUIS, OCR, Speech to Text and Web Search.Bots are the new face of user experience. Conversational User Interface provides many options to make userexperience richer, innovative and engaging with email, text, buttons or voice as the medium for communication.Modern line of business applications can be replaced or associated with intelligent Bots that can use data/historycombined with Machine intelligence to make user experience inclusive and exciting.With __Developing Bots with Microsoft Bots Framework__, you'll see just how simple Bot building can be.**What You'll Learn** * Build Bots using MS Bot framework on Windows and Non-Windows platforms * Publish your Bot to the cloud in minutes * Create rich communication platforms between your application and users * Apply Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to your applications **Who This Book Is For**Developers and Architects who design and build modern applications or communication platforms using MS stack or open source technologies. Business Analysts and UX Specialists interested in designing and building trendy user interfaces/platforms using Bots and Azure ML Contents 4 About the Authors 10 About the Technical Reviewer 11 Introduction 12 Target Audience 14 Chapter 1: Conversations as Platforms 15 Types of User Interfaces 16 Drawbacks of Conventional UI 17 Conversations as Platform 19 Introduction to Microsoft Bot Framework 21 Meet a Few Bots 23 Summarize 23 Your Face 24 Azure Bot Service 25 LUIS Bot 27 QnA Bot 27 Proactive Bot 28 Direct Line 29 IOT and Bots 30 Other Bot Frameworks 30 Bot Abuse 31 Summary 31 Chapter 2: Develop Bots Using .NET Core 32 Designing Bot Applications 33 Setting Up the Development Environment 36 Testing the Bot 39 Debugging the Bot Application 40 Bot Application Life Cycle 41 Bot Architecture 44 Bot Authentication 45 Building a Bot 46 Deploy Bot to Azure 51 Register the Bot 55 Configure Channels 58 Configuring Skype Bot 60 Configuring Web Chat 63 Summary 65 Chapter 3: Develop Bots Using Node.js 66 Setting Up a Development Environment 67 Build Hello World Bot Using VS Code 67 Debugging Using VS Code 73 Building Bots with Conversations 74 Dialogs 74 Prompts 75 Input Choice 77 Text Input 78 Confirm 78 Number 79 Time 79 Attachment 79 Messages 80 State 81 Deploying to Azure 82 Summary 86 Chapter 4: Channels 87 Channels and Channel Data 87 Channel Data 90 Build a Chat Bot Using an Email Client 92 Build a Chat Bot Using Slack Channel and API 99 Multi-dialog Bot Using Slack and Slack Channel Data 101 Onboarding a Slack Bot 107 Remote Debugging Slack Bot on Development Machine 108 Summary 109 Chapter 5: Bot Conversations 110 Understanding Conversations 111 Messages 111 Activity 112 Relationship Between Channels, Conversation, User, and Bot 113 Message Under the Hood 114 Conversation Under the Hood 115 Building Bots with Conversations 116 Attachments 116 Hero Card 122 Thumbnail Card 124 Carousal 125 Buttons 127 Prompts 127 Summary 132 Chapter 6: Skype Calling Bot 133 Introducing Skype Calling Bots 134 Use Cases for Skype Calling Bots 134 Enabling Calling for Your Bot 135 Building a Skype Calling Bot 136 Sequence of Events 140 Debugging Skype Calling Locally Using Ngrok 149 Speech-to-Text Using Bing Speech API 151 Summary 159 Chapter 7: Storing State 161 Stores for Bot State 162 State Service 163 Storing and Retrieving State Using StateClient 165 Storing and Retrieving State with Dialogs 168 More Control over State with Dialogs 172 Custom State Data Store 175 Overview of Cosmos DB 176 Cosmos DB as Custom State Data Store 176 Table Storage as Custom State Data Store 183 Summary 190 Chapter 8: Dialogs 191 The Dialog Model 191 IBotData 192 IBotTouser 192 IDialogStack 192 IBotContext 193 Dialog Stack 193 Dialog Context 193 Root Dialog 193 Building a Simple Dialog Bot 194 SimpleDialog.cs 194 MessagesController.cs 198 Creating Multi-Dialog Bots 199 Scenario 200 Solution 201 RootDialog.cs 202 Synonym.cs 204 Antonym.cs 204 Support.cs 204 MessagesController.cs 205 FormFlow 205 Building a Simple FormFlow Bot 206 FormBuilder 209 Customizing the Prompts 209 Customizing the Order of Prompts 210 Conditional Fields 210 Summary 212 Chapter 9: Natural Language Processing 213 Cognitive Services 214 LUIS 214 Intents 214 Entities 215 Utterances 215 Features 216 LUIS Development Lifecycle 216 Create Application 216 Add Intents 217 Add Entities 218 Add Utterances 219 Train and Test 220 Publish 220 Sample Application 221 Creating Intelligent Bots 225 Creating Intelligent Bots Without Dialogs 225 Creating Intelligent Bots with Dialogs 230 Summary 242 Chapter 10: Azure Cognitive Services 243 Introduction to Microsoft Cognitive Services 244 Getting Started 248 Building Smart Bots with Bing Web Search 254 Query Parameters 257 Bing Search Request 259 Handling Errors 263 Optical Character Recognition with Computer Vision API 266 Summary 270 Chapter 11: Bot Operations 271 Application Insights 271 Getting Started 272 Enable Bot Analytics 281 Advanced Analytics 287 Summary 288 Index 289 Develop Intelligent Bots using Microsoft Bot framework (C# and Node.js), Visual Studio Enterprise & Code, Microsoft Azure and Cognitive Services. This book shows you how to develop great Bots, publish to Azure and register with Bot portal so that customers can connect and communicate using famous communication channels like Skype, Slack, Web and Facebook. You'll also learn how to build intelligence into Bots using Azure Cognitive Services like LUIS, OCR, Speech to Text and Web Search. Bots are the new face of user experience. Conversational User Interface provides many options to make user experience richer, innovative and engaging with email, text, buttons or voice as the medium for communication. Modern line of business applications can be replaced or associated with Intelligent Bots that can use data/history combined with Machine Intelligence to make user experience inclusive and exciting. With Developing Bots with Microsoft Bots Framework, you'll see just how simple Bot building can be. What You'll Learn Build Bots using MS Bot framework on Windows and Non-Windows platforms Publish your Bot to the cloud in minutes Create rich communication platforms between your application and users Apply Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to your applications Who This Book Is For Developers and Architects who design and build modern applications or communication platforms using MS stack or open source technologies. Business Analysts and UX Specialists interested in designing and building trendy user interfaces/platforms using Bots and Azure ML Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Conversations as Platforms (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 1-17 Develop Bots Using .NET Core (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 19-52 Develop Bots Using Node.js (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 53-73 Channels (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 75-97 Bot Conversations (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 99-121 Skype Calling Bot (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 123-150 Storing State (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 151-180 Dialogs (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 181-202 Natural Language Processing (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 203-232 Azure Cognitive Services (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 233-260 Bot Operations (Srikanth Machiraju, Ritesh Modi)....Pages 261-278 Back Matter ....Pages 279-283