Chatbot Terminology

Abhishek Raj Simon — Thu, 20 May 2021 19:24:40 +0000

Ever read an article that made you switch to Google and search for that secret programming word or jargon? Like you have no clue what the author is talking about in his post. This happened to me when I started coding my first Amazon Alexa Skill. If you are also one of those guys who is getting started with conversational AI, then this short read can be very useful to you. This post will help you understand the chatbot terminology in general that you will encounter in chatbot development, like Botpress.

Chatbot: A software application that mimics a human in terms of written or spoken language to simulate a human-like conversation.
Chatbot Builder: It's a platform or suite that can be used to build a chatbot with or without minimal coding.
Channel: It's a medium on which the chatbot is hooked to. Example: Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Website, etc.
AI: Artificial Intelligence means simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and act like humans and mimic their actions.
ML: Machine Learning is a part of AI. Machine learning algorithms build a model based on sample data, known as "training data", in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so.
NLU: Natural Language Understanding is a branch of AI (Artificial Intelligence) that transforms human language into a meaningful context that a machine can understand.
Intent: It signifies what the user wants to accomplish. Example: I want to book a flight.
Entities: It's a variable that complements the intent. Example: I want to book a flight from Montreal to Paris / Cities are entities because they are variables that can be extracted from the intent.
Slots: When you create an intent, you can tag different slots that can be used to extract the information required to act on the intent successfully. Example: I want to book a flight from New York to San Francisco for tomorrow. Your slots are the departing city, New York, the arrival city, San Francisco, and the date of departure, tomorrow.
Utterances: They represent the different ways an intent can be written by a user. It can take the form of a question, a command, or a statement. Example: Can you book me a flight? Book flight. I want to book a flight.
Flow: A series of logical steps put together to help a user to accomplish a goal.
Node: A step in a flow. They can be used to say something, to execute an action, to transition based on conditions, and more.
Start Node: The node where the flow begins. It's the first step of a user.
On enter: This is what happens when the user enters a node. Transition: This is composed of a condition and an action to be executed if the condition is met.
On receive: Action that happens after the user has said something

I hope this post on Chatbot Terminology will help you in your conversational AI journey.

Originally published at https://aabingunz.com on May 21, 2021.

How to embed and test a Botpress bot on any website?

Abhishek Raj Simon — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 05:57:16 +0000

You have created your Botpress bot and now you want to visualize it on your production website, but without exposing it to your customers. How can we achieve this? In this post we will see how to embed and test a Botpress bot on any website.

We will use a similar script which we discussed in one of my previous posts, but this time we will use it along with Tampermonkey, a tool to manage your user scripts and run scripts on the active website.

I will use Google Chrome Tampermonkey extension to store my embed script. Please follow the below steps

Install the Tampermonkey Google Chrome extension using your chrome browser
Once installed it should appear on your chrome toolbar

Tampermonkey icon on Google Chrome toolbar

Open any desired website, click on the tampermonkey icon and then "Create a new script..." from the dropdown menu.

Create a new script in Tampermonkey

It should open a new tab where we will write our Botpress embed script. Please ensure that @match points to the website on which you want to embed your bot. In my example I am using https://aabingunz.com

Tampermonkey user script template for the active website

Replace your bot id and bots host port details in below snippet and paste this snippet below "//Your code here...". Note: Your bot must be served over HTTPs. Please check How to enable HTTPS in Botpress? tutorial for enabling HTTPs on your Botpress bot.

const script = document.createElement('script');
    script.type = 'text/javascript';
    script.src = 'https://<host>:<port>/assets/modules/channel-web/inject.js';
    document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script);
    script.onload = function() {
        window.botpressWebChat.init({
            host: 'https://<host>:<port>',
            botId: '<botid>',
            extraStylesheet: 'https://<host>:<port>/assets/modules/channel-web/custom-style.css'
        });
    }

Save your script and enable your script by toggeling "Enabled" switch in Tampermonkey

My saved scripts in Tampermonkey

Now open https://aabingunz.com or whatever website you configured. You should be able to see and test your bot.

Ensure that you see a 1 notification on Tampermonkey icon

That's it. This is how we embed and test a Botpress bot on any website. Let me know in comments what other cool things you can accomplish using Tampermonkey.

This article was first posted on https://www.aabingunz.com. Click me to read from the author’s blog and find more Botpress tips and tricks on my blog.

DEV Community: Abhishek Raj Simon

Chatbot Terminology

How to embed and test a Botpress bot on any website?