Connect Your Bot to Slack

2018-08-10 Azure Slack Josh Rickard

In my previous two posts we created a knowledge base of questions and answers using QnAMaker and we created our Web App Bot in the Azure Portal. Now that we have a bot created and it is responding as we intended, we can interact with our bot directly through our web browser (or embed it into a website) or we can integrate into our Slack workspace.

Please make sure you have a Slack workspace created and you have access to create a Slack application. Login to your Slack workspace API and select Create New App in the top right-hand corner. You will need to give your new application a name and select the appropriate workspace to create your new application.

Create a Web App Bot Using Azure Bot Services

2018-08-10 Azure Josh Rickard

In my last post, we create a QnA Maker knowledge base that our Azure Web App Bot will use as it’s repository of questions & answers. Now, we are going to create our bot using Azure’s Bot Services.

First thing is that we should go ahead and log into the Azure Portal. In the top left-hand corner click the Create a resource button. You will then need to Search the marketplace in the New blade for Web App Bot.

Using Qnamaker to Create Chatbot

2018-08-10 Azure Josh Rickard

The first thing we need to do is login to QnAMaker. QnA Maker is a Microsoft service that allows you to easily generate a bot using either existing documentation for a product (or service) or you can create your own questions and answers – hence the name QnA Maker.

Login to QnAMaker and navigate to the Create a knowledge base tab. You will need to walkthrough 5 steps to create your knowledge base. Luckily, Microsoft has provided clear instructions to make this as simple as possible.

Create a Question and Answer Chatbot for Slack in Azure

2018-08-10 Azure Josh Rickard

Chatbots are all the rage right now, and they have proven to be extremely useful for organizations around the globe. You can have simple bots that take lunch orders or tell you the weather in your location. You can also bots tht act as part of an advanced distributed security alerting system. Whatever the reason, bots are not going anywhere anytime soon.

To create our chatbot we are going to use a few different services. Please make sure that you have all the necessary access setup and ready to go before proceeding. Here is the list of services we will be using: