Building Bots with Node.js

2h 8mIntermediate2019-10-16

Authors

Daniel Khan

Technology Lead, Developer, Application Architect

Course details

Bots are the hot new development trend. Bots are interactive solutions, based on artificial intelligence frameworks, that fit an ever-growing number of user cases, from customer service to marketing, sales, and IT. With today’s cloud-based cognitive services, all you need to get starting building your own bots is your existing Node.js skills. This course shows how to build custom bots using Node.js and popular natural language processing (NLP) services such as Google Dialogflow and Alexa Skills Kit. Instructor Daniel Khan shows you how to set up the infrastructure, work with NLP services and APIs, and connect the bot back-end to front-end services like Slack and Alexa. The bots you create will be able to conduct natural and realistic conversations by responding to text or voice commands.

Learning objectives
Creating a Slack bot
Setting Slack credentials
Subscribing to Slack events
Handling events and sending messages
Setting up a your Dialogflow AI
Using the WIT API
Creating conversational flows
Creating sessions and threads on methods
Handling threaded messages
Handling greetings and goodbyes
Creating a voice bot with Alexa

Skills covered

Node.jsJavaScript FrameworksNatural Language Processing (NLP)ProjectArtificial Intelligence (AI)Web DevelopmentOpen Source

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - How bots can change your life as a developer
02 - What you should know
03 - Using the exercise files
04 - Get to know the course project

1. Creating a Slack Bot

05 - Introducing Slack and its APIs
06 - Setting up a Slack app and a bot user
07 - Obtaining and setting credentials for Slack
08 - Creating an endpoint for Slack events
09 - Setting up a proxy with ngrok
10 - Subscribing to events
11 - Handling events and sending messages

2. Understanding Natural Language

12 - Understanding natural language
13 - Setting up WIT.AI
14 - Training the model
15 - Using the WIT API
16 - Booking your first table via Slack

3. Creating Complex Conversations

17 - Creating conversational flows
18 - Creating a session management service
19 - Preparing to add threaded sesssions
20 - Creating sessions and threads on mentions
21 - Handling threaded messages
22 - Implementing a conversation service
23 - Adding conversation awareness to slack
24 - Training special and partial utterances
25 - Handling greetings and good byes

4. Creating a Voice Bot with Alexa

26 - Creating an Alexa skill
27 - Creating an Alexa endpoint
28 - Trying out and tuning the Alexa skill

Conclusion

29 - Next steps