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Evan Lin
Evan Lin

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Chatbots 17 at Dcard: Conference Notes (March 17, 2020)

#ai #api #community #developer

Preface

Hello everyone, I am Evan Lin, a Technical Evangelist at LINE Taiwan. I am very happy to be invited by the chatbot community to participate in the "Chatbot meetup 聊天機器人小小聚 17 @ Dcard" meetup event and share the LINE API updates and my personal development experience. Here, I would also like to share my experience of participating in this event, and I hope that through the power of community sharing, the development momentum of chatbots can be even more prosperous.

Since Chatbots Meetup is a community-driven event, there are also many lightning talks sponsored by community friends. All the content inside is also quite rare and interesting. I also hope that through this article, everyone can get a little understanding of the charm of the Chatbots Meetup community lightning talks.

Thanks to Dcard for sponsoring the venue in the Dcard 14th-floor office, which has a space specifically for technical community sharing. It's quite good, and I hope more communities will come here to share.

Due to the requirements of epidemic prevention, this is also the first time I have participated in an offline physical event wearing a mask throughout. Thanks to the organizers for preparing complete alcohol disinfection and mask-wearing reminders, so that the participants and staff can be well protected.

LINE Platform Update 202003 / Senior Development Technology Evangelist Evan Lin

Listening to developer feedback, taking LIFF Server API as an example:

LINE values the feedback from developers and welcomes every developer to grow with us, operating this platform with mutual trust and benefit. On January 21, 2020, it was announced on the website that the LIFF Server API would cease to function at the end of March, and many developers responded that the way they cooperate with customers would be greatly troubled by the discontinuation of the LIFF Server API.

After the DevRel team collected relevant cases and discussions and discussed them with the headquarters development team, they were also happy to get the understanding of the project team. The schedule has been stopped, more information can be found in LIFF v1 API and the change of the discontinuation date.

More user-friendly, faster-reading LINE Developer website

On January 27, 2020, we announced that the developer website (LINE Developer) has been significantly updated, which is faster! More user-friendly! Recently, there is a more detailed article describing how they migrated from Middleman to VuePress. Welcome to read it.

Related articles:

More effective audience messaging - Narrowcast and Custom

"We don't dislike ads... we just don't like ads that are irrelevant to us." Colleague Tan mentioned this fact in the article "Sending "precise" and "pleasing" messages on LINE Chatbot via Narrowcast API". Users don't hate ads, but they hate being harassed by ads that are irrelevant to them and that they don't care about. The frequent appearance of irrelevant ad messages will increase the user's friend blocking rate.

Therefore, LINE launched the relevant API for audience management at the end of January, through the three main audience methods provided:

  • Demographic data selection method:
  • Audience segmentation through user statistical information, age, gender, and even region, are all ways that developers can use to segment groups.
  • Click Retargeting:
  • Based on the users who clicked on the webpage links in the messages sent, related marketing is done for those users.
  • Exposure Retargeting:
    • Based on the users who received and read the messages sent, related marketing is done for those users.

For the above three methods, you can also perform related calculations and comparisons (OR, AND), which can further allow businesses to find the customers they want to target:

  • Friends who joined ninety days ago and are young men
  • Female friends who have clicked on shoe-related product links

These are all very useful examples. More examples can be found in the related introduction video of the "LINE Official Account" official fan group provided by colleagues from the advertising and business departments.

Related information:

The new LIFF App will no longer support the BLE (Bluetooth) communication function in LINE Things

LINE Things Developer Trial has stopped providing the new LIFF app BLE function, and will not be restored in the future; currently, only the automatic communication function (automatic communication) is provided.

New apps created after February 10, 2020, will not be able to use the new LIFF app BLE function in the LINE Things Developer Trial.

Related links:

LIFF: Share Target Picker

Since the LIFF v1 era, the function of sending messages back to the chat room (in the user's name) via liff.sendMessages（） only opens the chat room of that LIFF.

Many developers suggest that LINE add the ability for LIFF to share messages with friends or groups. This is liff.shareTargetPicker（）.

Five things you need to know before development

  • From version 10.3.0 onwards, the LINE App will support "Share Target Picker" . (Note: If in an external browser, there is no need to wait for the LINE App update)
  • "Share Target Picker" is only available in LIFF v2.
  • Messages from "Share Target Picker" will be sent on behalf of the user. (Just like we send messages to friends)
  • Plain text, images, videos, audio, location, Template Message (URI operation only) and Flex messages are messages that can be sent via "Share Target Picker".
  • "Share Target Picker" can be used in external browsers, but you must first authenticate using LINE Login

Regarding the version support of Share Target Picker:

  • Open the webpage inside LINE -> IAB (In-App-Browser), depends on the LINE App version. iOS requires 10.3.0 (currently not yet launched)
  • Open the webpage in an external browser -> External Browser does not depend on the LINE App version.

So, it is recommended that everyone can develop LIFF v2 in your e-commerce websites...

Related demonstrations:

Or watch the following demonstration video:

Related information:

LINE Bot Case Sharing - Mask Inquiry / David Dong Dawei

Slides

Recently, due to the prevalence of the new coronavirus, the whole country is busy with epidemic prevention. Teacher Dong also kept up, by creating a mask inquiry chatbot to teach everyone about the quick deployment of some essential skills.

Related development process:

  • Data conversion: The information from the Ministry of Health and Welfare is in csv format, which needs to be converted into JSON data.
  • Easy to query: Use LINQ to query the data.
  • How to update data regularly: Due to the surge in data query demand in the first few days after the data went online. It is necessary to save the data in local storage to prevent the data from not being displayed due to the inability to query. And test whether the service is still online through external services (the method is to refresh the relevant data).

In addition to development, the deployment and maintenance process is also very important:

  • Need to be able to handle a large number of users: Build an HA (High Availability) architecture that can automatically scale horizontally (Auto-Scale).
  • Deployment stability: Automatic version update (automatic versioning), blue-green deployment (Canary Release: that is, deploying new features to some users, you can understand if there are problems, to avoid the problem of being disabled due to large-scale deployment).
  • **Service Measurability**: Use external service Azure AppInsights to help measure the health of the service.

How to actively notify users with LINE Notify (free method):

LINE Notify is a free service provided by LINE with subscriptions. Many developers not only use it for subscription services, but also to notify users. But how do you get users to "actively subscribe" to LINE Notify?

In fact, it can be subscribed through the Action Button, but there are some things to pay attention to:

  • In the subscription service screen, scroll to the bottom and you need to agree to the user terms. And confirm the subscription.
  • Users often accidentally block the OA of LINE Notify, resulting in the inability to subscribe to other information.

Lightning Talks

After the three speakers, the next part is to introduce the most attractive part of this community, which is the lightning talks. All the lightning talks can be found in this collaborative note https://hackmd.io/@chatbot-tw/meetups-017. Since they are all five-minute lightning talks, the main content is quickly introduced to you in a list:

  • Epidemic Prevention Hackathon, 4 hours to create "Find Masks" LINE Bot! / Chen Jiaxin
    • Slides
    • Introduction:
    • The speaker introduces how to create a "Find Masks" chatbot in the fastest way within four hours.
  • Cross-group chat! / Kami-ge
    • Slides
    • Introduction:
    • Create a cross-chat room chatbot by combining a LINE Chatbot with the LINE Notify service. The conversations in different groups will be transmitted to each other through LINE Notify. Quite an interesting idea!!
  • Playing board games with LINE - Killer Game / Dairan
    • Slides
    • Introduction:
    • Create an online killer game (a game similar to Werewolf) through LIFF and a chatbot, the game process is quite interesting.
  • LINE Anti-Group Flip Bot / Dairan
    • Slides
    • Introduction:
    • The speaker's inspiration while developing the killer game, also through LIFF and Chatbot to allow users to receive a link to rejoin the group when they are flipped out by the anti-group flip bot.

Event Summary

Community sharing is always the best way to stimulate creativity, and Chatbots Meetup is a very passionate and creative community organization. I also hope that more creative developers are willing to join the development of LINE Chatbot, and I hope to enthusiastically participate in community activities and share together.

Join the "LINE Developer Official Community" official account immediately, and you can receive the first-hand Meetup events, or push notifications of the latest news related to the developer program. ▼

"LINE Developer Official Community" official account ID: @line_tw_dev

About the "LINE Developer Community Program"

LINE launched the "LINE Developer Community Program" in Taiwan at the beginning of this year, and will invest long-term manpower and resources in Taiwan to hold developer community gatherings, recruitment days, developer conferences, etc., both internally and externally, online and offline, and has already held more than 30 events. Readers are welcome to continue to check back for the latest updates. For details, please see:

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