Microsoft Bot Framework Resources
There are quite a few great tutorials, samples and videos around on Microsoft Bot Framework.
I thought it would be useful to keep a list on these running within this blog for easy reference.
This is meant to help and is not an endorsed list of recommendations (although there is great material here :-))
I will keep adding to this list as new material appears and please contact me if you think I am missing something!
There are 5 sections:
**** GENERAL BOT FRAMEWORK LINKS **** Microsoft Bot Framework
Main landing page for MS Bot Framework
Github repo for the Bot Builder SDK (C# and node)
Microsoft Bot Framework Team Blog
Blog from the bot framework team with news on latest feature updates
A very useful technical FAQ maintained by the bot team.
Microsoft Developer 'Real-Life Code'
Microsoft real-life code site provides code samples, tutorials and guidance/advice. Covers other tech but also contains some very useful bot framework posts such as integrating Paypal, speech-driven applications etc.
**** BOT FRAMEWORK TUTORIALS ***** Bots 101 : scenarios for bots by Mat Velloso (March 2017)
Microsoft Bot Framework (.NET) video tutorial series by James Mann (UK MVP)
Learn how to use the Microsoft Bot Framework to create your own Bots using C# via easy to follow videos.
Microsoft Bot Framework (NodeJS) video tutorial series by James Mann (UK MVP)
Learn how to use the Microsoft Bot Framework to create your own Bots using Node.js via easy to follow videos.
Videos being added on regular basis!
'Getting Started with Bots' Microsoft Virtual Academy Course
Join Microsoft evangelists Ryan Volum and Christopher Harrison as they help you get started creating your first bot. Learn about the many ways of communicating with the user, beyond just text, that Microsoft Bot Framework includes. And get the details on using LUIS to handle natural language processing. Plus, find out how to publish your bot to the world, allowing people to interact with it. See how to deploy the logic, how to register your bot, and how to add it to Skype. Get started now!
Free course from Sitepoint covering bot framework development in NodeJS, Cognitive services such as LUIS and the Azure Bot Service.
Various bot sessions from UK Tech Days Online 2016 and 2017
These sessions cover topics such as what are bots, building a Bot using the framework in C#, adding language understanding using LUIS and adding sentiment analysis using the Cognitive Service APIs
- 'What is a bot and how to create one' (Sep 2016)
- 'bots': benefits of this technology (Sep 2016)
- 'bots': everything else that you need to know (Sep 2016)
- Code samples from 2016 sessions (Sep 2016)
- 'Conversational UI using the Microsoft Bot Framework' (Feb 2017)
- 'Microsoft Bot Framework and Cognitive Services': make your bot smarter' (Feb 2017)
- Code samples from 2017 sessions (Feb 2017)
Gary Pretty (UK MVP) - Bot Framework Tutorials
A number of tutorials from Gary covering building a bot, publishing it, adding LUIS and improving the NLP experience
Robin Osborne (UK MVP) - Debugging BotFramework locally using ngrok
In this article Robin shows you how to debug your bot code from Skype though to your local PC’s Visual Studio instance, using ngrok
Robin Osborne (UK MVP) - Create your first QnA bot using botframework’s QnA Maker
Creating an FAQ bot using the MS botframework QnA maker
Anthony Chu - Embed the Bot Framework Web Chat as a Collapsible Window
Nice short tutorial illustrating how to implement bot framework chat within collapsible window
Ankit Sinha - 4 part Bot Framework Tutorial:
Four part tutorial on MS Bot framework - links to other parts:
Using speech recognition and synthesis in Windows 10 to talk to your bot (and have it talk back!)
C# sample that allows a user to converse with a bot using speech in a Windows 10 UWP app.
Jamie Dalton - MS Bot Framework: FormFlow build and deploy a bot with ease
C# sample that provides a great introduction to Bot Framework 'Form Flow' functionality
Adding BotMetrics Analytics to Microsoft Bot Framework (Node)
Integrating Botmetrics consists of two parts — the first is the Bot Framework middleware module that instruments your Bot with a few lines of code and the second is the Botmetrics service which analyzes, visualizes and lets you act on the metrics collected.
Continuous Delivery of a Node.js bot
This tutorial demonstrates a Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline for a bot built on Node.js using the Microsoft Bot Framework.
Developing a Bot for ParkAround using Microsoft Bot Framework
ParkAround is a prominent startup in Greece which allows you to book your place in hundreds of car parks in the cities of Athens/Thessaloniki as well as the airports of Barcelona and Malaga.
This how the team built a Bot for ParkAround using Microsoft Bot Framework and hosted it in Azure platform
Building a physical bot using the BotFramework #FreddyTheFishBot
This blog post by Jamie Dalton describes how you can take a bot from the digital world into the physical world using the Microsoft Technologies such as Azure ML, UWP, Microsoft Bot Framework and a plastic Fish shaped bubble machine.... This was presented at Future Decoded 2016 by myself and Jamie.
**** BOT FRAMEWORK SAMPLES **** Microsoft Bot Builder C# Samples
Microsoft Bot Builder official C# samples repo
Microsoft Bot Builder Node Samples
Microsoft Bot Builder official Node samples repo
Microsoft bot framework engineering team samples - both C# and Node
Customisable web-chat window for Microsoft Bot Framework
Embeddable web chat control for the Microsoft Bot Framework
A common ask from developers using Microsoft Bot Framework is how to proactively initiate a message to the user. In other words, let's say some background process or notification causes the bot to initiate the message to the user, rather than just replying to a message received.
ExcelBot is a C# bot built by Jakob Nielsen with the Microsoft Bot Framework that demonstrates how to use Excel with the Microsoft Graph API
A node bot by Lilian Kasem that utilises the TFL API to check bus times in London
A bot that enables admin of some Azure services via conversational UI
C# general authentication/authorisation Bot Framework sample by Mat Velloso
A bot that presents about bots by Mat Velloso. Tutorial video and code provided.
A NodeJS news bot for Facebook Messenger, built with Microsoft Bot Framework by Alyssa Ong
Bing News Search (Cognitive Search) and LUIS
Bot sample in C# using cognitive services (Bing News Search and LUIS)
Build a Bot with Authentication
In the case that your bot needs to communicate with some 3rd party api (for ex, Facebook api, Office 365 api, twitter api, and Google api etc), your bot must show the login UI for the user and get some security information (like “token”) as the authenticated result. (If you’re using OAuth, your bot can call the api using OAuth token.). This talks through how to achieve this.
Microsoft Bot Framework Client in Elixir Elixir client for Microsoft bot framework
This library provides Elixir API wrapper for the Microsoft Bot Framework.
**** BOT 'SMARTS' - ADDING INTELLIGENCE TO YOUR BOT **** Microsoft Cognitive Services
Main landing page for Microsoft Cognitive Services
Language Understanding Intelligence Service (LUIS) - language intent
Main page about the LUIS functionality.
Portal for LUIS
Microsoft Cognitive Service text analytics functionality - useful for detecting user sentiment within bot conversations
The Microsoft Graph API enables single point of authentication and access to O365 functionality such as Onedrive, Excel, mail, calendar, user information etc. Adding a conversational UI to this can be very useful in many scenarios.
**** BOT AND COGNITIVE API CASE STUDIES **** Cognitive Services: API applications page
Microsoft Cognitive Services API application - see the APIs in action and read about developers using Cognitive Services.
The Microsoft Bot Directory - view and use a variety of bots built using the MS Bot framework
Cognitive Services: 'Seeing AI app'
Saqib is a core Microsoft developer living in London, who lost the use of his eyes at age 7. He found inspiration in computing and is helping build Seeing AI, a research project that helps people who are visually impaired or blind to better understand who and what is around them. The project is built using intelligence APIs from Microsoft Cognitive Services (www.microsoft.com/cognitive).
Cognitive Services: 'Recognition Tate'
Recognition is an artificial intelligence comparing up-to-the-minute photojournalism with British art from the Tate collection. The project is built using MS Cognitive APIs
This project uses MS Cognitive Face API for security.
Microsoft Bot Framework project targeting Skype that utilises many of the Skype media assets such as carousels/hero cards and also LUIS for language intent analysis