Some hints to better design your chatbot using Microsoft Bot Framewrok

1. Bot Design: come creare un
bot e vivere felici... (forse)
JESSICATIBALDI
Software Engineer | Microsoft CSE Southern Europe
jessica.tibaldi@microsoft.com
@_jetiba

2. Topics
• General architecture of bots
• Patterns and best practices
• First interaction
• UI elements
• Dialog Stack management
• Global Handlers
• Language understanding
• Bot State management
• Handoff to human
• Authentication and web flows
• Proactive Messages
• Analytics

3. Bot web service
Your bot code
Entity
Extraction
Speech
Vision/Face
Natural
Language
Translation
+ Microsoft Cognitive Services
Search
Emotion
Knowledge
API
…
Message input <> output
State Management
Bot Connector Service
Conversation Canvas/Channels
……
…
Other services, APIs,
Databases, Azure Machine
Learning, Azure Search,
etc…
Bot Builder SDK
Web Chat
Direct Line…
Email
Facebook
GroupMe
Kik
Skype
Slack
Telegram
Twilio (SMS)
General Architecture of a Bot
Bot Builder SDK
Your bot code goes here

4. Patterns & Best Practices

5. First Interaction
PromptDialog.Choice
Microsoft.Bot.Builder.Dialogs.PromptStyle.Auto

6. Demo: First interaction & UI

7. UI Elements – Rich Cards
• Adaptive Card
• Animation Card
• Audio Card
• Hero Card
• Thumbnail Card
• Receipt Card
• SignIn Card
• Video Card
http://adaptivecards.io/visualizer/
Carousel

8. Dialogs are for bots like screens are for apps
They separate concerns and organize flows, exactly the same way:

9. Dialogs are serialized into stacks
• context.Call() / context.Forward()
• context.PostAsync()
• context.Wait()
• context.Done(smtghtopass) / context.Fail(exception)

11. Global message handlers using scorables

12. Demo: Working with dialogs

13. Form Flow
• Automatically generate and manage the conversation
• Provide clear guidance and help
• Understand both numbers and textual entries
• Provide feedback to the user regarding what is understood and what
is not
• Ask clarifying questions when necessary
• Allow the user to navigate between steps

14. Language understanding
• Define a language model (intent and entity)
• Provide sample utterances and test model
• Publish as a REST endpoint
• Consume the model in your bot
None Intent must be
well managed
Human Handoff
QnA dialog support
Detailed info, links, ...

15. Demo: LUIS & QnA
Useful links:
https://luis.ai
https://qnamaker.ai

16. Handoff to Human bot
humanNuGet Package:
https://github.com/tompaana/bot-message-routing

17. Demo: Human Handoff

18. Manage state data
• In-memory data storage
• Custom data storage
• Azure Table Storage
• Cosmos DB
• Azure SQL Database

19. Demo: Manage Bot State

20. Authentication and web flow
https://github.com/MicrosoftDX/AuthBot

21. Proactive Messages
Typically bots react (respond) to messages.
In some cases, they need to proactively send a message (e.g. a
reminder or some async activity that triggers a notification).
Bot needs to keep track of user addresses trigger when to send out
new messages

22. BotMessage();
context.Done(S
In ConversationStarter.cs

23. Bot Analytics
Analytics is an extension of Application Insights. Application Insights
provides service-level and instrumentation data like traffic, latency, and
integrations. Analytics provides conversation-level reporting on user,
message, and channel data.

24. Links
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bot-framework/bot-service-
design-principles
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bot-framework/dotnet/bot-
builder-dotnet-manage-conversation-flow
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bot-framework/dotnet/bot-
builder-dotnet-state
• Samples https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder-
Samples/tree/master/CSharp

25. Grazie ☺
JESSICATIBALDI
jessica.tibaldi@microsoft.com
@_jetiba