Changing locale in a Node.js bot

Back in March we implemented a new feature in the BotBuilder SDK for Node.js which allows developers to provide simple localization switching in their bots. This means your bot will be able to prompt your users for different language options. Using the Node SDK’s LocalizedRegExpRecognizer To add this feature, we included a new recognizer to the core library – LocalizedRegExpRecognizer. This….

Writing a Recognizer

Last month, we announced new number recognizers for LUIS and that we were releasing them open source. In this article, we’ll go over the structure and core concepts of the Recognizers-Text library so that you can build your own! NOTE: We’ll be using the English Number Recognizer to show you the internal workflow. Understanding Recognizers First we’ll examine the IModel interface which defines a contract as shown: public interface….

Bot Framework presentations at Build 2017

In case you weren’t able to attend this year’s Microsoft Build conference, we’ve put together a list of all of the Bot Framework presentations from Microsoft Build 2017 here in this post. We’re deeply proud of all of the new features and changes we’ve made to the Bot Framework, and also confident that we will continue to make it easier to develop….

Microsoft LUIS with Botkit Studio

The Howdy team has released a new version of the Botkit Studio which provides seemless integration with Microsoft LUIS to make it easier for Bot developers to fully utilize the power of conversational AI via language understanding. Check out the official announcement. Providing a focused subset of LUIS’s features, the new Botkit Studio tool is designed to ease the day-to-day workflow of applying natural language tools through….

Bot Framework at Microsoft Build 2017

New Channels, New Docs, New Ways to Make Great Bots Today, Microsoft is announcing numerous updates to the Bot Framework designed to help developers make great conversationalists. 1 New Channels Three new channels are available today, increasing your bot’s reach to even more of the Microsoft audience, as well as people engaged in many of the world’s most popular messaging….

Bing Location Control v2 for Bot Framework

Since the release of Bing Location Control for Bot Framework back in December 2016, we’ve been working continuously on adding on improvements and new features. We’ve since released location control v2.0.0 both npm and nuget modules for NodeJS and C# bot development respectively. New features of Location Control v2 Today we are announcing the addition of the Favorites feature to location control. This….

New Date Entities in LUIS

New date time entities in LUIS Previously we announced new number recognition in LUIS, but this was just the beginning! There are many more features coming to LUIS and the Bot Framework, of which today we are excited to announce that LUIS now has new pre-built date time entities which not only provide more accurate date-time recognition, but also contextual recognition for date….

(Updated 08/08/2017) Upgrade your Bot Builder SDK to v3.5 or greater by July 31, 2017

UPDATED 08/08/2017: We revised our security protocols on July 31, 2017. Update to Bot Builder 3.9+ or compatible security configuration to keep your bot working All Bot applications using the Microsoft Bot Builder SDK must be upgraded to Bot Builder SDK v3.5 and greater. This applies for both C# and NodeJS Bots. All bots using any SDK below v3.5 will stop being supported by this date.….

Saving Bot Activities in Azure SQL Database

In this article we’ll provide a walkthrough of how to create a Bot using the C# Bot Builder SDK and store message activity to an Azure SQL server using the Entity Framework. Prerequisites: Free Azure Trial account Visual Studio 2017 or 2015 Community (update all extensions) Visual Studio Bot Application Template Creating the Bot Project The Bot Application template .zip file (see Prerequisites) should be in….