The Journey to Conversational Interfaces

Romin Irani | Xoriant | @iRomin

Agenda

• Chatbot Ecosystem
• Our Story
• Help Desk Bots
• Initial Target Platform - Slack
• NLP + ML + API.AI
• Go Language

Chatbots! Chatbots! Chatbots!

• It is usually another way to interact with your Web Application, API or Mobile Application
• Multiple Messaging Platforms
• “Chatbots” are expected to be “The Thing” to do in 2017 ;-)

​

Rule-based v/s AI

• /find * contains=`xyz`
• /find pdf since=2d

• I’d like all documents that contain “xyz”
• Get me all PDF documents created in the last 2 days

Why Slack ?

• Popular Messaging Platform
• Integrates with Popular Applications
• APIs for Custom Integration
• Good Documentation
• App Store
• Starting point to learn more

Slack API - Go Language packages

• You can do everything with standard Go packages
• Alternately, here are a couple of packages to consider:
• https://github.com/nlopes/slack
• https://github.com/bluele/slack
• Skills needed
• Basic Go Syntax (Struct, Dealing with JSON)
• HTTP Basics + Go Language http packages

​

• Respond
• Notify
• Analyze

Respond

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/ticket list

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Reporting Issue - Slash Command

• Slash Command → Messages that start with a slash (/)
• For e.g. /ticket or /report or /search

​

​

/ticket listlist

​

Handling a Request from Slack

http.HandleFunc("/ticket", MyTicketHandler)

func MyTicketHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {

//Extract out multiple params from Request

//Validate if the request is coming from Slack and your team

//Perform business logic

//Compose the Response Struct

json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(/* Slack Response Struct */)

}

Slack Incoming POST parameters

token=oyIQ0AjzcBNgxGMcIsEumUpQ�team_id=T0001�team_domain=example�channel_id=C2147483705�channel_name=general�user_id=U2147483697�user_name=romin�command=/ticket�text=list�response_url=https://hooks.slack.com/commands/1234/5678�

​

​

Slack Message Formats - 1

{

"username": "Server Monitor"

"text": "Cloud Storage Service is facing intermittent � issues.\nhttp://status.cloud.google.com",

}

Slack Message Formats - 2

{

"attachments": [

{

"title": "New Ticket: Printer is not working",

"title_link": "https://api.slack.com/",

"text": "The Printer is not functioning….",

"fields": [

{

"title": "Priority",

"value": "High"� },

{

"title": "Reported by",

"value": "romin",

}

],

"footer": "My Help Desk system",

"ts": 1395676789

}

]

}

Notify

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Sending Notifications - Incoming Webhook

• A mechanism to post a message to a Channel or a specific user
• New Tickets are routed as Notifications to respective Channels (Teams)
• Updates to Tickets are routed to the specific Users

v := url.Values{"payload": {string(b)}}

http.PostForm(WebhookURL, v)

Analyze

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Analytics - Outgoing Webhook

• Calls your Webhook based on messages sent in a Channel
• Any message or specific Trigger Words
• Track Command Usage , Sentiment Analysis and more

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Explosion of Commands

…

/ticket list�/ticket create <title> <details> <priority> <department>�/ticket update <status> <comment>�/ticket close <id>�/ticket view <id>�/ticket help

….

Can we do better?

General AI Agents

Messaging Platforms

NLP , AI as a Service �Platforms

Frameworks & Deployment

Platforms

Source: https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/infographic-the-bot-platform-ecosystem

Our current architecture

Bot Endpoint + Logic

How it works?

Diagram inspired from : https://rasa.ai/

Lessons Learnt

• Go + Slack is a powerful combination to get going with your Bots.
• Need to target most popular Chat platforms.
• Build v/s Buying a Machine Learning Engine. Good Alternatives out there but choose carefully.
• Voice Interfaces.
• It is a journey.

Thank You