Monthly Archives: January 2017

Custom BotFramework Intent Service Implementation

Developing a chatbot with language understanding capabilities is a huge leap from basic pattern recognition on the input to match to specific commands.

If you have a botframework chatbot, you’re currently limited to using LUIS as your NLP (Natural Language Processing) provider via the various Luis classes: LuisDialog, LuisModelAttribute, and LuisService.

If you’re trying to compare alternative NLP services, such as kitt.ai or wit.ai or even Alexa, then implementing support for another NLP service in Botframework for this can be a bit tricky.

In this article I’ll show you one approach to decoupling your botframework bot from a specific NLP solution.

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MVP Bling!

As I recently mentioned, I’m now a Microsoft MVP!

I thought you might like to see what bling you get when you’re awarded the MVP, so here it is:

MVP Bling

The box

It’s a pretty big box, and quite heavy too..

MVP Award 2017 box

Would you look at that picture though?! I mean, all those pens in the pots – these MVPs mean BUSINESS.

In grey.

Contents

There’s a bunch of goodies in there:
MVP Award 2017 contents

A nice certificate from The Gugges with my MVP area – Data Platform (although I actually focus on BotFramework) – a hefty glass wedge and a little puck with “2017” on it which slips on to the wedge, all ready to start building up my many years of MVP-age to come no doubt 😉

There’s also a little MVP pin and a conference/ID card thingy. Finally there’s a sheet of MVP stickers of various sizes; expect my laptops and phones to be totally covered in them the next time you see me!

So there you have it – the tangible side of an MVP award. Now I just need to find a space somewhere in my flat clear enough to put this stuff…

London Buses use TLS1.2!

My lovely little London Bus “app” (possibly the most basic web page you can imagine + connection to the Transport for London API) broke recently, and given the tube strike today I felt I the urge to fix it.

The error occurred when the web page called the proxy (to avoid Cross Origin Request errors there needs to be a server-side api proxy on the same domain as the html page) which calls the TFL API. The proxy is THE WORLD’S MOST BASIC PROXY

It’s just “File -> Add -> New Item -> Web Service (ASMX)”, with this single method:

[WebMethod]
public string getMeTheDataFrom(string here)
{
    using (var response = new System.Net.WebClient())
    {
        return response.DownloadString(here);
    }
}

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Sending Proactive Botframework Messages

Having a botframework chatbot up and running and responding to user messages is one thing, but how can you send a new message to bring the user back into the conversation if they haven’t just sent a new message for you to reply to?

The botframework documentation and other tutorials will point you towards using Azure Functions and the new ActivityType.Trigger to handle this which, although being a great use case for Azure Functions, make the underlying implementation harder to understand. It also means you couldn’t easily implement this on AWS, for example.

In this article I’ll show you how to easily implement Proactive Botframework Messaging just using BotFramework fundamentals.

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I’m a Microsoft MVP!

Microsoft MVP Logo

I’m extremely pleased to announce that I’ve just received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award!

Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community.
They are always on the “bleeding edge” and have an unstoppable urge to get their hands on new, exciting technologies.
MVPs are driven by their passion, community spirit and their quest for knowledge. Above all and in addition to their amazing technical abilities, MVPs are always willing to help others – that’s what sets them apart.

During 2016 I discovered – and became quite obsessed with – the concept and development of chatbots; I’m am excited with the possibilities. Microsoft’s own product is the BotFramework and various Cognitive Services.

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