PART I. Getting Started

CHAPTER 1 Exploring Bot Framework Architecture

CHAPTER 2 Setting Up a Project

CHAPTER 3 Building Conversations: The Essentials

CHAPTER 4 Fine-Tuning Your Chatbot

It’s easy to set up a first project with the Bot Framework and build a simple chatbot. For a more sophisticated chatbot, however, you’ll need a foundation to help you know the platform you’re working on and the essential features available to you. That’s what this part of the book helps you with.

There are four chapters in the Getting Started part of this book: Chapter 1, Exploring Bot Framework Architecture, Chapter 2, Setting up a Project, Chapter 3, Conversation Essentials, and Chapter 4, Fine-Tuning Your Chatbot. In Exploring Bot Framework Architecture you’ll get a birds eye view of all the major components of the Bot Framework. This is important because it could affect design, construction, and deployment decisions for your chatbot and will help throughout the book as you learn about how each concept fits together with others. In Setting up a Project, you’ll learn how to create a Visual Studio project, the different artifacts in that project, and how the artifacts of a project work together. You’ll also run and interact with your first chatbot. The Conversation Essentials chapter explains the code you’ll need to work with to manage conversations and other types of communication with your chatbot. In Fine-Tuning Your Chatbot, you’ll take a deep dive into the Bot Emulator and see what options are available for testing your chatbot locally. You’ll also learn about advanced activities and additional ways to communicate with users.

These essential, Getting Started chapters will set you up for Part II where you’ll need this information before learning how to manage conversation flow with dialogs.