Chicago .NET User Group – May 2018

How to build an E-commerce Chat bot with Azure Bot Framework By Brian McKeiver

SPR is a sponsor of the Chicago .NET User Group’s May Meetup.

Learn how to build and connect an intelligent bot to interact with your e-commerce website. See how you can use the following to create a bot that can check a customer’s order history, order status, or tracking number:

• Microsoft Bot Framework
• Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS)
• .Net Core

We use bots all the time at our office and love them. However, they typically are “dumb” bots that handle simple notifications to our Slack channels. I wanted to create a bot that was a little bit more complex and a lot smarter than the standard fair. With that goal in mind, I came up the idea of making a sort of “self service” way for someone who has placed an order on a e-commerce site to come up with a way to check their order history and/or order status by chatting with an automated Bot. I also originally wanted the bot to work on Slack, and when I discovered that the Microsoft Bot Framework delivered that ability plus many more channels, it was “game on” from there. The smartness of the bot comes from the Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) that Microsoft Cognitive Services provides. After getting the project up and running I realized that this combination of technologies was down right amazing.

Speaker: Brian McKeiver

Brian McKeiver is Co-Owner & Solutions Architect at BizStream, a software development company in Allendale, MI. He has over 15 years of experience leading his agency of more than 25 employees. In addition to his expertise in web development, integration, and digital marketing, Brian is active with the tech community via his blog at www.Mcbeev.com.