Chatbot with QnA maker & Azure Bot Services
As you all know chatbot has been all buzz these days. You can see them in abundance in Facebook Messenger, or chat messenger, or any websites.
If you see the main purpose of the chatbot you will get to know from booking an appointment with whether it is a doctor, teacher, or any other professional to ordering foods or quitting queries of customers. Chatbot plays a vital role in business. It gives support and scale business. Doing this helps the business save a lot of money which is why many business owners are adopting this technology. A chatbot is also very flexible we can integrate with many platforms like Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, telegram, skype, and many more.
A chatbot is artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging
applications, websites, mobile apps, or through the telephone.
If you see at the most basic level, a chatbot is simply a computer program that simulates and processes human conversation either it is written or spoken. It allows humans to interact with digital devices like we are communicating
with a real person. A chatbot is powered by rules and sometimes with artificial intelligence (AI) like google assistant, Cortana, or Alexa.
Get started with QnA Maker and Azure Bot Service
QnA Maker: QnA Maker is a cloud-based Natural Language Processing (NLP) service, an ability of a computer program to understand the human language as it is spoken that easily creates a natural conversational layer over your data.
We can create a chatbot using a QnA maker without coding.
Azure Bot Services: Azure Bot Service is basically Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot platform offered as a service on the Azure cloud service marketplace. Azure Bot Services offers the ability to chatbot developers to add intelligent agents to their bots that are capable of conversation without having to commit the resources to develop one’s own AI.
Azure Bot services are the part of Azure which is Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform. It provides a range of cloud services, including compute, analytics, storage, and networking.
This service Azure bot service can be added to websites, apps, email, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, SMS, Cortana, and many more.
Note: As azure is not a free service, so when you create your account in Azure. You will get 100$ credit to use Azure services.
Theory over!!
Let start to make a simple Space chatbot without coding using QnA maker & Azure Bot Services…
Step 1: Come to the QnA Maker page. In the up-right corner, you will see a sign in. Simply sign in if you have an account or create a new account.
Here, you can there is no knowledge base created. Knowledge Base means it is custom to your needs, which you’ve built with documents such as PDFs and URLs. When you want to provide the same answer to a request, question, or command that means when different users submit the same question, the same answer is returned.
Step 2: Now Create a Knowledge Base.
Step 3: There you will see written step 1, just click on Create a QnA service. You will be navigated to the Azure portal where all the data will be hosted.
Step 4: Now you have to fill some necessary details like Name, subscription, Pricing tier, Resources, App name, and location.
Note: In Subscription, you have to choose your own subscription. I have a Visual Studio Enterprise subscription.
Just do the same for all as I have done. In Azure Search pricing tier, choose F(3 Indexes) as it is a free pricing tier.
Now click on Create. It will take a minute to validate all the process. So be patient.
You can see your deployment process by clicking on the Bell icon in the up-right corner.
After getting a successful deployment process, just close the window and again come to the QnA maker website.
Step 5: Now you come to in step 2, where you have to connect your QnA maker to the knowledge base. Just click on refresh, it will take a second and then just choose services using the options below.
Step 6: Now name your KB. As we are making a Space Chatbot. You can name as Space Bot.
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Now in step 4 of QnA maker, we have to upload one document file where all the facts are written.
Like this, you can create your document file. Just add the question and in down add your answer. It is the way of creating a QnA maker chatbot.
Download the document: https://amzn.to/2SD6xmA
Step 7: After uploading the file, don’t do any other changes and just click on Create your KB.
Step 8: You can see all the question and answer pair.
you can also add alternative phrasings. Just click on + sign and add more utterances or simple phrases.
Then click on Save and Train. Then click on Test to test your chatbot.
Step 9: After testing comes to Publish. Click on Publish. There you will Create Bot, it will create your bot in azure bot services.
Step 10: Now you will come, Azure portal. There we will create a Web App Bot. Just fill the necessary details. In Subscription, choose your defined subscription. If the Resource group is not created, then create a new resource group.
In Pricing tier, select F0 means free pricing tier. See the image to check all the details
We have to create a new App Service plan. Then select Application Insights off. Then after just click on validation. It will take a minute.
Step 11: After successful validating, you will come to the overview section. Now just come to Test in Web Chat. There you can test your chatbot again for the final turn.
Step 12: Below Test in Web Chat, you can channels. Channels are the main thing that is used to publish your chatbot to the world. There are many channels like FB messenger, slack, email, skype, telegram, and many more.
Step 13: One thing important, if you are learning and just testing how to make a chatbot. Then delete all resources of this chatbot so that azure won’t cancel all your Azure credit which is $100.
Hurray !! you successfully created your first chatbot using QnA maker and Azure Bot Services. If you really want to become a chatbot developer, Azure will help you do so. I recommend you upgrade your subscription from free to the Pay-As-you-Go model means meaning subscribers receive a bill each month that only charges them for the specific resources they have used.
