Jakub Kaczmarek demonstrates using the Microsoft Bot Framework:
Before starting a new bot project, you need to consider if it really is a solution for your business case. It’s not recommended to start bot development just because it’s a hot topic. However, in some cases, this kind of software can save a lot of time, money and resources. The following list of bot example use cases might help in making the decision:
-
Answer for typical questions
- A bot can make use of Q&A knowledge to receive user question and provide an appropriate answer.
- Questions can be matched to correct answers using a LUIS (language understanding intelligent service) cognitive service.
- Reduced time can be spent by help desk staff answering typical questions.
- Example use cases are help chat, contact pages and web stores.
-
Alternative system interface
- By integrating a bot with external systems (e.g. Outlook, Jira, CRM, SharePoint) a bot can become an alternative interface to work with these systems.
- A bot can simply ask some questions and gather the answers given by the user to submit data that normally would be filled in on a form.
- Example use cases are creating support tickets, uploading SharePoint documents, making calendar appointments, and providing translations.
-
Entertainment & education
- A bot can be also used to entertain and educate its recipients by sending various kinds of content to the user.
- It’s a good idea to use media types like videos, audio, images and links to knowledge base articles.
- Example use cases are workout coach, recipes book and product adviser.
-
Notification bot
-
A bot can be scheduled to initialize conversations at appropriate time, notifying the user about some actions or reminding about things he should do.
-
It’s important to remember that sending proactive messages is not always possible – it depends on the channel used for communication.
-
Example use cases are meeting reminders and timesheet reminders.
-
I try to avoid the term “intelligent bots” because we’re at least 2 or three generations away from that. But it’s definitely worth getting your hands dirty with them today, at least to learn their limitations.