This year at Ignite 2017, Microsoft is hosting many different sessions from the Bot Framework, with a range of topics geared towards beginner – advanced bot developers. In these sessions we’ll share with you what we’ve learned about bot design and practices, how our customers have been using the Bot Framework to meet their business needs, and the different ways you can integrate bots with cognitive services to create enriching and unique experiences. Below is a summary of just a small set of the ignite sessions this year related to the Bot Framework, this year’s Ignite conference has over 1500 scheduled sessions you can check out!
Getting started with the Microsoft Bot Framework
Bots and conversation-as-a-platform are gathering momentum and have the potential to radically change how people interact with software and services. In this session, learn how to build a chatbot with the Bot Framework and connect it to multiple channels.
Bot Framework patterns and practices straight from our customer
Bots, powered by AI, have the potential to transform how business provide services and interact with customers across all aspects of the consumer relationship. This session will take a deep-dive on the architecture and practices used by one of our Retail customers to show how they were able to incorporate the Bot Framework, Cognitive Services, such as LUIS and Computer Vision, and back end systems integration, to build a smart digital shopping assistant that provides a seamless online to in-store experience for both their customers and employees.
Designing bots that fit your organization
Simon Tyrrell, Chief Product Officer of global software company, LiveTiles, shares insights on what it takes to design bots that work for you. Why settle for out-of-the-box bot solutions, when now you can make them do and behave the way that suits your organization? Simon Tyrrell shows you how simple it can be in this compelling demonstration.
Developing enterprise bots with Office 365
The excitement around bots is perhaps even more relevant in the enterprise, where bots can be used to manage workflow, automate business process, and even disguise full applications. Bots can deliver all of this in a more natural user experience than a traditional user interface. In this session, explore how to develop bots for the enterprise that integrate with key technology and services, including Office 365. Learn the unique considerations for connecting to enterprise resources from a bot, including channel constraints, authentication, identity, and more. The session also covers patterns for delivering more impactful bots with Office 365 and the Microsoft Graph.
Low investment, high reach enterprise experiences using bots and Adaptive Cards
A key asset in the enterprise is the significant reach of the web. However, users want the fidelity and portability of experience provided by apps. Both take significant time and investment to achieve your goals for your customers and your users. Bots provide automatic reach in a low investment, high reward fashion and coupled with Adaptive Cards can give you rich layout and engaging interactivity that works across platforms wherever your users and customers go. When used with Windows, the same Adaptive Cards you’ve created can light up even more engaging experiences like Timeline to re-engage your customer base like never before.
Bots and brains: The Microsoft Bot Framework and Cognitive Services, better together
This meetup facilitates the discussion of how best to combine the communicative experience of the Microsoft Bot Framework with the behind the scenes artificial intelligence of Microsoft Cognitive Services to create great solutions for all people. Technologies discussed: Microsoft Bot Framework, Language Understanding Intelligence Service (Cognitive Services) API, other general Cognitive Services and how they can enhance the Bot experience.
Building an information bot with Microsoft Cognitive Services QnA Maker
Informational bots make it easy for you to quickly get information via simple text-based chat. In this session, learn how to build an informational bot which can answer questions defined in a knowledge set or FAQ using Cognitive Services QnA Maker.
Build smarter bots and devices by connecting to the Microsoft Graph
In this deep dive session, we look at how the rich context and deep insights available through the Microsoft Graph can be used to make smarter, more productive bots and devices. Come see demos of the delightful user experiences you can deliver, learn about common patterns that enable them, and walk away with the code to quickly apply them to your own projects.
Let’s talk about Conversation Design
Conversational digital affordances are fast becoming a norm for users everywhere – from the office, to the kitchen; the car to the living room – we can type, tap or talk to all manner of devices, apps, bots and agents to do all manner of things. When designed well, conversational experiences are natural, intuitive and efficient. In this session, we’ll provide practical guidance for designing for conversation. We’ll cover best practices for creating a great conversationalist and we’ll put the guidance to work using the Bot Framework SDK, Cognitive Services such as LUIS.ai and QnAMaker.ai, and show you a preview of Bot Framework’s new visual Conversation Designer.
Cognitive Services and chat bots – a natural way to interact
See an intelligent customer care scenario leveraging Microsoft Bot Framework, Cognitive Services, big data, Machine Learning, and Dynamics to showcase a customer who is looking for insurance for her new car. The intelligent customer care bot engages in a conversation with the customer and recommends quotes based on the customer profile and other factors. At some point, the bot involves a human agent when it senses churn risk. The human agent can access the customer profile information and determine the best promotions and offers. See how easy it is to connect Cognitive Services for text and speech analytics, Machine Learning for predictive analytics and the Bot Framework to deliver it all in a natural human interaction.
Microsoft Ignite 2017 will be hosted September 25 – 29, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando Florida. If you’re unable to attend in person, you can still be a part of Microsoft Ignite and join us online.
As always, happy making!
The Bot Framework Team