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.