PART II. Bot Builder
CHAPTER 7 Customizing FormFlow
CHAPTER 8 Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) with LUIS
CHAPTER 9 Managing Advanced Conversation
As you learned in Part I, the promise of chatbots go beyond a set of platforms for surfacing a new type of app. It has a lot to do with building software that can engage in a conversation with users. This goes beyond a command-type interface to being able to code and manage multi-turn interactions. This is where the Bot Builder excels, giving you the tools to manage different types of conversations and freeing your time to concentrate on the purpose of the chatbot, rather than the mechanics of the conversation itself.
This part of the book contains five chapters, detailing various aspects of the Bot Builder to help you manage conversations. Chapter 5, Building Dialogs, explains the fundamental type, IDialog<T>, that shows how to manage a conversation. Chapter 6, Using FormFlow introduces a different type of dialog, called FormFlow, allowing you to build quick question and answer chatbots. Because FormFlow is so sophisticated, Chapter 7, Customizing FormFlow continues the story by showing you how to customize FormFlow. In Chapter 8, Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) with LUIS , you learn how to make a chatbot understand human sentences. Finally, in Chapter 9, Managing Advanced Conversation you’ll learn about how the dialog stack works, how to use chaining for even more dynamic conversations, and a few other advanced topics that show the power and flexibility of the Bot Builder library.
After reading this part of the book, you’ll understand how dialogs work and what’s available. Additionally, you’ll have a suite of useful tools for building and managing conversations.