Introduction To Bot Service In Azure

Introduction

In this article, we will see how to create a Bot Service in Azure.

• Concept
• Implementation – Creating a new Microsoft Bot Service in Azure.
• Implementation – Access the Microsoft Bot Service.

About

• Bot is used as an app that helps users interact in a conversational way.
• It may be simple as basic pattern matching with a response or it may be sophisticated handling the artificial techniques with complex conversational state and integration to existing business services.
• The Bot framework helps you to build the bots which support different types of interactions with users.
• You can design conversations with your bot for more freedom.
• You can design the bot in such a way that where it provides the user choices or user actions.
• The conversations in bot use the simple text strings or more complex things which contains text, images, and action buttons etc.
• The best advantage of Bot is with Visual Studio where you can download, debug, republish your C# bot.
• Setup is also very simple. It can be continuously deployed with Visual Studio online and GitHub.

Implementation – Creating a new Microsoft Bot service in Azure.

• Sign in to the Azure Management portal.
• Open Azure portal and click on “+”.
• Click on "AI + Cognitive Services" and then select an option of “Bot Service “.
• Click "Create" on the next screen.
  
  
  

• Fill all the details like App Name, Subscription, Resource Group, Location etc.
• Use an existing Resource or create a new one as per your requirement.
• Give appropriate name and pricing tier according to your requirement and replication.
  
  
  

• Once you fill all the required details, then click on "Create".

• Once your bot service deploys successfully, open it.
  
  
  

Implementation – Access the Microsoft Bot Service.

• Open bot service which you just created.
• Choose "Template".
• Choose C# and choose the basic template.
• Click on "Next" button.
• Now, create a Microsoft App ID by clicking on "Create Microsoft App ID" and password.
  
  
  

• Note down the App name and App ID in the Notepad and click on "Generate an app password" to continue.
• After this, you will see the password in the dialog box. Just note it down on the Notepad.
  
  
  

• Then, click on "Finish" and go back to Bot Framework, as shown in the above picture.
• Enter the password which you obtained in the previous step.
• Then, click on "I agree" checkbox.
• Now finally, click on the "Create Bot" button.
  
  
  

• On the next screen, click on the "Test" button which you see at the top right of your screen.
  
  
  

• Now, type the message "Hi" in the chat window and see the response which it will give you back, as shown in the below picture.
  
  
  

Summary

This is how you can use Azure Bot Service in Azure.