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Setting up Microsoft Bot Framework Dev Environment

In the past several decades, the corporate, government, and business world has experienced several waves of IT architecture foundations, moving from mainframes, to minicomputers, to distributed PCs, to the Internet, to social media / mobile, and now to the Cloud / Internet of Things (IoT) stack. We call this the sixth wave of corporate IT, and like its predecessors, cloud and IoT technologies are causing significant disruption and displacement, even while they drive new levels of productivity. Each architecture focuses on key business processes and supports killer technology applications to drive new levels of value. Very soon we will be looking at an enormous networked interconnection of everyday machines to one another, as well as to humans.

Lets have a look at the fifth wave of corporate IT:

The machine-to-machine-to-human connectivity will have a profound impact on the consumer and corporate IT experience. As these machines become social and talk to us, we have an enormous opportunity to greatly enhance their value proposition through improved product quality, customer experience, and lowered cost of operations. A heightened consumer expectation for more personal and real-time interactions is driving business to holistically embrace the next wave of technology innovation such as cloud, IoT, and bots to boost business performance. In this age of billions of connected devices, there is a need for such a technology where our apps, such as bots, could talk back. Bots that have specific purposes and talk to any device or any app or to anyone, live in the cloud, we can talk to via any communication channel such as e-mail, text, voice, chat, and many others, can go where no apps have gone before when it comes to the machine-to-machine-to-human connectivity. In order to make this happen, we will need a whole new platform, a platform for conversations.

Conversation as a Service (CaaS)

Messaging apps in general are becoming a second home screen for many people, acting as their entry point to the Internet; where the "youngins" are, the brands will follow. Companies are coming up with messaging apps as bots and apps that offer everything from customer service to online shopping and banking.

Conversations are shaping up to be the next major human-computer interface. Thanks to advances in natural language processing and machine learning, the technology is finally getting faster and accurate enough to be viable. Imagine a platform where language is the new UI layer. When we talk about conversation as a platform, there are three parts:

There are people talking to people. The Skype translator is an example where people can communicate across languages.
Then, there is the opportunity to enhance a conversation by the ability to be present and interact remotely.
Then, there are personal assistants and the bots.

The following screenshot shows the Conversation as a Service:

Think of bots as the new mechanism that you can converse with. Instead of looking through multiple mobile apps or pages of websites, you can call on any application as a bot within the conversational canvas. Bots are the new apps, and digital assistants are the meta-apps. This way, intelligence is infused into all our interactions.

This leads us to the Microsoft Bot Framework, which is a comprehensive offering from Microsoft to build and deploy high quality bots for your users to interact using Conversation as a Platform (CaaP). This is a framework that lets you build and connect intelligent bots. The idea is that they interact naturally wherever your users are talking, such as Skype, Slack, Facebook Messenger, text/SMS, and others. Basically, with any kind of channel that you use today as a human being to talk to other people, you will be able to use them to talk to bots, all using natural language:

The Microsoft Bot Framework is a Microsoft operated CaaP service and an open source SDK. The Microsoft Bot Framework is one of the many tools that Microsoft is offering for building a complete bot. Other tools include Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS), Speech APIs, Microsoft Azure, Cortana Intelligence Suit, and many more.

Setting up the development environment

In this section, we will see how to set up the development environment but, before that, let's check out the prerequisites needed for setting it up.

Prerequisites

To use the Microsoft Bot Framework Connector, you must have the following:

A Microsoft account (Hotmail, Live, or Outlook) to log into the Bot Framework developer portal, which you will use to register your bot.
An Azure subscription (free trial at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/). This Azure subscription is essential for having an Azure-accessible REST endpoint exposing a callback for the Connector service.
Developer accounts on one or more communication service (such as Skype, Slack, or Facebook) where your bot will communicate.

In addition, you may wish to have an Azure Application Insights account so that you can capture telemetry from your bot. There are additionally different ways to go about building a bot: from scratch, coded directly to the Bot Connector REST API, the Bot Builder SDK's for Node.js and .NET, and the Bot Connector .NET template, which is what this quick start guide demonstrates.

Setting up the Bot Framework Connector SDK .NET

This is a step-by-step guide to setting up the development environment to develop a bot in C# using the Bot Framework Connector SDK .NET template:

Install the prerequisite software:
1. You can download the community version of Visual Studio 2015 (latest update) for free at www.visualstudio.com.
2. Update all VS extensions to their latest versions by navigating to Tools | Extensions and Updates | Updates.
Download and install the Bot Application template:
1. Download the file from the direct download link, http://aka.ms/bf-bc-vstemplate.
2. Save the ZIP file to your Visual Studio 2015 templates directory, which is traditionally in %USERPROFILE%DocumentsVisual Studio 2015TemplatesProjectTemplatesVisual C#.
Open Visual Studio.

Create a new C# project using the new Bot Application template:

The template is a fully functional Echo Bot that takes the user's text utterance as input and returns it as output. In order to run, however, the following has to take place:
1. The bot has to be registered with the Bot Connector.
2. The AppId and AppPassword from the Bot Framework registration page have to be recorded in the project's web.config.
3. The project needs to be published to the web.
4. Use the Bot Framework emulator to test your bot application.

The Bot Framework provides a channel emulator that lets you test calls to your bot as if they were being called by the Bot Framework cloud service. To install the Bot Framework emulator, download it from https://emulator.botframework.com/.

Once installed, you're ready to test, by starting your bot in Visual Studio using a browser as the application host:

Key benefits

Develop various real-world intelligent bots from scratch using Microsoft Bot Framework

Integrate your bots with most popular conversation platforms such as Skype, Slack, and Facebook Messenger

Flaunt your bot building skills in your organization by thoroughly understanding and implementing the bot development concepts such as messages (rich text and pictures), dialogs, and third-party authentication and calling

Description

Bots help users to use the language as a UI and interact with the applications from any platform. This book teaches you how to develop real-world bots using Microsoft Bot Framework. The book starts with setting up the Microsoft Bot Framework development environment and emulator, and moves on to building the first bot using Connector and Builder SDK. Explore how to register, connect, test, and publish your bot to the Slack, Skype, and Facebook Messenger platforms. Throughout this book, you will build different types of bots from simple to complex, such as a weather bot, a natural speech and intent processing bot, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) bot for a bank, a facial expression recognition bot, and more from scratch. These bots were designed and developed to teach you concepts such as text detection, implementing LUIS dialogs, Cortana Intelligence Services, third-party authentication, Rich Text format, Bot State Service, and microServices so you can practice working with the standard development tools such as Visual Studio, Bot Emulator, and Azure.

What you will learn

Set up a development environment and install all the required software to get started programming a bot

Publish a bot to Slack, Skype, and the Facebook Messenger platform

Develop a fully functional weather bot that communicates the current weather in a given city

Help your bot identify the intent of a text with the help of LUIS in order to make decisions

Integrate an API into your bot development

Build an IVR solution

Explore the concept of MicroServices and see how MicroServices can be used in bot development

Develop an IoT project, deploy it, and connect it to a bot

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Instant access to your digital copy whilst your Print order is Shipped

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Building Bots with Microsoft Bot Framework

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J1971 Aug 30, 2017

This book does not provide any depth on the topic. The author simply walks you through step-by-step instructions on how to create a specific application using the bot framework. The author apparently coded a few small bot applications, then attempts to walk the reader through setting up these applications by copying the authors code (which is not complete or error free) but does not explain what the app being built consists of, or why certain bot framework components are being used. I also purchased the Kindle format, which did an awful job at displaying the text and images. This book truly lacks in any substance about the topic for the reader. Search the internet and you will find much more compelling and informative information.

Michael Freeman Aug 18, 2017

I bought this book right when it was released. Already out of date. For example, LUIS website is completely changed from the book. Would recommend you don't waste your money.

Building Bots with Microsoft Bot Framework: Creating intelligent conversational interfaces

What do you get with Print?

Building Bots with Microsoft Bot Framework

Setting up Microsoft Bot Framework Dev Environment

Conversation as a Service (CaaS)

Your bot

The Bot Connector

The Bot Directory

Setting up the development environment

Prerequisites

Setting up the Bot Framework Connector SDK .NET

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