Intelligent Chat Bot App

Client and Business Goals

Serving for 22 years, the client is the leading Intellectual Property (IP) and innovation consulting firm. The client is well known for its world-class human capital and proprietary tools and methods around innovation, invention, and IP. In 2018, the client came up with a viable tool for IP management through Artificial Intelligence which improved efficiency, increased speed, and removed roadblocks within the innovation and invention workflow. They have worked around various areas of innovation and invention in the field of Software and Technology, Industrial and Manufacturing, Retail and Consumer, Financial services, and so on. They have delivered over 800 successful IP engagements, including over 10% of the Fortune 500, across industries.

Purpose and Challenges

As the client is providing support to innovations and inventions, the purpose is to create a tool that allows for the extraction of invention data for future review and manipulation in Microsoft Teams, as well as creating MS Word output of disclosure documentation. The client used the Microsoft Teams application for conducting the conversation with their clients but the conversation through the chatbot was always beginning from the start once the application restarts. It was not pointing to the location where the conversation was previously ended. Also, there was no option for uploading the documents required for providing consultation in the chat. While chatting, the client was using the earlier card layout system whose layout was more rigid which meant that they had to rely on custom HTML within the card to get the exact structure for the card. So this needs to be replaced by Adaptive Cards in Microsoft Teams which was new for the Csharptek team.

Solutions

Csharptek worked on the client’s Microsoft Teams Chatbot app and reshaped it to a much interactive and conversational app. Also, we worked on the Web admin application for the client. We used one of the leading clouds – Microsoft Azure for developing azure ai chatbot to fulfill the purpose and delivered the product timely.

Technology Stack

• 1. Azure ChatBot App Service to develop the Chatbot
• 2. Azure Storage Account as a storehouse for inventions data
• 3. Adaptive Cards to develop beautiful snippets of content for Teams

Building the Azure Chatbot

Csharptek used Azure ChatBot App Service to verify the previously saved chats from the database and retrieve them according to their id when the user fetches the chats for the next time. This has resolved the client’s problem of not beginning the conversation of the chatbot previously from where it was left. Microsoft Azure ChatBot not only resolved the above problem but also provided several features to the client’s bot. This azure chatbot was easily integrated with Microsoft Teams and has no downtime, i.e., working for 24*7. They provided real-life interactions, better end-user experience, higher productivity, and are cost-effective.

The Azure ChatBot App Service also provided support for uploading any required documents by the users eliminating the second problem of the client. For uploading the documents, Csharptek has integrated Azure ChatBot with the OneDrive and provided a redirected link into it. Microsoft Graph APIs have been used to send and receive files to and from the bot. Using the Graph APIs, required obtaining access to the user’s OneDrive through the standard OAuth 2.0 authorization flow.

Storage for Inventions

Innovations and inventions are the keys of client bots and for storing these inventions, Csharptek incorporated Azure Storage Account. Azure Storage account has provided support for all types of inventions data objects for the client: files, images, tables, queues, and so on. Azure storage has provided scalable and durable space for storing the invention's data. Automatic backup and Recovery, Data Encryption are inbuilt support of Azure Storage. The data stored have been made accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP/s. Whether the data is structured or unstructured, it doesn't matter, Azure storage takes care of everything. Finally, an Azure Storage Account was used for storing inventions with high scalability, accessibility, and security.

Adaptive Cards

The client’s application was also required to show adaptive cards replacing the traditional cards. For this purpose, Csharptek used Adaptive Cards in Microsoft teams which were more expressive and automatically styled. They are a great fit for bots and one card can render beautifully inside Microsoft Teams. They were presently created in JSON format but after integrating with Microsoft Teams, the JSON data was transformed into a native consistent UI pattern. The users can now send cards inside messages via the bot. Different aspects of adaptive cards such as theming, accessibility, and sizing were implemented with the help of Microsoft UI Toolkit. Hero, Thumbnail, List, Digest, Requesting ticket, and many more adaptive cards were created to provide ease to the users interacting with the client’s chatbot.

Conclusion

Csharptek with its great team members solved all the challenges of the client by providing a beautifully designed and developed chatbot through Azure ChatBot App Service. This chatbot Microsoft azure was not only providing an easy way of communication with the users but also allowing users to send their required documents to the client. The client was also able to store the IP inventions and innovations of its users with high scalability, availability, and reliability through Azure Storage Account. Creating Adaptive Cards and integrating with the bot was a very challenging task for the Csharptek team as we were new to it. But we finally figured out to achieve the task with perfection and delivered the product timely to the client.

With a Microsoft Silver Cloud Platform Competency, Csharptek aims to turn barriers into miracles for the clients and focuses on building a tailor-made enterprise platform to fulfill their technological needs today, tomorrow, and beyond. Csharptek is an end-to-end IT solution provider company that can build interactive and beautiful Azure Chatbots along with Microsoft Adaptive Cards. Csharptek also has experienced professionals working with Azure Services, SaaS solutions, Managed Services, and many more. So, if you are seeking any kind of help building a ChatBot or with Azure Services or some kind of custom software from Microsoft’s Silver Competency, get in touch with our front desk supporting team at info@csharptek.com or call on 18008902630