microsoft-2019

Demonstrate the core capabilities of the Microsoft Bot Framework

This bot has been created using Bot Framework, it shows how to create a simple bot that accepts input from the user and echoes it back.

Prerequisites

• Node.js version 8.5 or higher

  # determine node version
  node --version

To run the bot

• Install modules

  npm install

• Start the bot

  npm start

Testing the bot using Bot Framework Emulator v4

Bot Framework Emulator is a desktop application that allows bot developers to test and debug their bots on localhost or running remotely through a tunnel.

• Install the Bot Framework Emulator version 4.2.0 or greater from here

Connect to the bot using Bot Framework Emulator v4

• Launch Bot Framework Emulator
• File -> Open Bot Configuration
• Navigate to microsoft-2019 folder
• Select microsoft-2019.bot file

Deploy the bot to Azure

Prerequisites

• Azure Deployment Prerequisites

Provision a Bot with Azure Bot Service

After creating the bot and testing it locally, you can deploy it to Azure to make it accessible from anywhere. To deploy your bot to Azure:

# login to Azure
az login

# provision Azure Bot Services resources to host your bot
msbot clone services --name "microsoft-2019" --code-dir "." --location <azure region like eastus, westus, westus2 etc.> --sdkLanguage "Node" --folder deploymentScripts/msbotClone --verbose

Publishing Changes to Azure Bot Service

As you make changes to your bot running locally, and want to deploy those change to Azure Bot Service, you can publish those change using either publish.cmd if you are on Windows or ./publish if you are on a non-Windows platform. The following is an example of publishing

# run the publish helper (non-Windows) to update Azure Bot Service.  Use publish.cmd if running on Windows
./publish

Getting Additional Help with Deploying to Azure

To learn more about deploying a bot to Azure, see Deploy your bot to Azure for a complete list of deployment instructions.

Further reading

• Bot Framework Documentation
• Bot Basics
• Azure Bot Service Introduction
• Azure Bot Service Documentation
• Deploy Your Bot to Azure
• Azure CLI
• msbot CLI
• Azure Portal
• Language Understanding using LUIS
• Restify
• dotenv