A bot is an app that users interact with in a conversational way using text, graphics (cards), or speech. It may be a simple question and answer dialog, or a sophisticated bot that allows people to interact with services in an intelligent manner using pattern matching, state tracking and artificial intelligence techniques well-integrated with existing business services.
This application uses bot authentication capabilities in Azure Bot Service, providing features to make it easier to develop a bot that authenticates users to GitHub and provide frequent updates about PR and other CI/CD pipeline related updates.
[This guide is about Nodejs application. Please go here to see C# application guide.]
- Install modules and start the bot
Alternatively you can also use nodemon via
npm i & npm startnpm i & npm run watch
Microsoft Bot Framework Emulator is a desktop application that allows bot developers to test and debug their bots on localhost or running remotely through a tunnel.
- Install the Bot Framework emulator from here
- Launch Bot Framework Emulator
- File -> Open Bot Configuration
- Select
myChatBot.botfile
A key to good bot design is to track the context of a conversation, so that your bot remembers things like the answers to previous questions. Depending on what your bot is used for, you may even need to keep track of conversation state or store user related information for longer than the lifetime of one given conversation.
In this example, the bot's state is used to track number of messages.
A bot's state is information it remembers in order to respond appropriately to incoming messages. The Bot Builder SDK provides classes for storing and retrieving state data as an object associated with a user or a conversation.
- Conversation properties help your bot keep track of the current conversation the bot is having with the user. If your bot needs to complete a sequence of steps or switch between conversation topics, you can use conversation properties to manage steps in a sequence or track the current topic. Since conversation properties reflect the state of the current conversation, you typically clear them at the end of a session, when the bot receives an end of conversation activity.
- User properties can be used for many purposes, such as determining where the user's prior conversation left off or simply greeting a returning user by name. If you store a user's preferences, you can use that information to customize the conversation the next time you chat. For example, you might alert the user to a news article about a topic that interests her, or alert a user when an appointment becomes available. You should clear them if the bot receives a delete user data activity.
You can use the MSBot Bot Builder CLI tool to clone and configure the services this sample depends on.
To install all Bot Builder tools -
Ensure you have Node.js version 8.9.4 or higher
npm i -g msbot chatdown ludown qnamaker luis-apis botdispatch luisgen