Microsoft Bot Framework : Overview
Microsoft Bot Framework is a framework for developers to build, publish and manager their bots.
Advantages
Developers benefit in the following way:
- Reach a broad set of users that are already chatting.
- More capable of supporting services like Azure Cognition, translation and history
- Build bots with Bot Builder SDK
They benefit business because:
- Reduced cost of development
- higher quality bots
Components of Microsoft Bot Framework
The bot framework has 3 components:
- Bot builder SDK
- Bot framework developer portal
- Bot directory
Lets talk about them one by one:
Bot Builder SDK
The bot builder SDK is available in Node.JS, .NET with lots of built in features like Dialogs, cards, Yes/No prompts, number choices, formflow etc. The SDK provides rich interaction with attachments like images and videos. There is a great support for services extension for Azure Cognitive Services like Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) as well. Along with SDK we get online and offline chat emulator for testing our bot.
Bot Developer Portal
There is a new portal on dev.botframework.com from where you can :
- Register your bot
- Connect to Channels(Skype, messenger and lot more)
- Test the bot
- Publish the bot to the world
- Manage all of the bots in one place
- Measure the bot usage statistics
Bot Framework Emulator
- You can send requests and receive responses
- Inspect the JSON messages getting transferred.
- Simulate multiple Users
- or even emulate a specific user
Bot Directory
Bot directory is huge repo of bots made using Microsoft Bot Framework that you can immediately add to about a dozen different channels like messenger, skype, slack etc.
Microsoft Bot Framework is a very powerful platform that lets you create feature rich bots very quickly. With all the necessary tools for management, integration and testing together with rapidly growing market to easily publish to, it is something developers can use to create the bots of their dream.
Links:
Developer Portal : www.dev.botframework.com
Cognitive Services: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/
