Accounts Payable Bot using Azure Bot Service

Prerequisites

• Active Azure Subscription

• Install Visual Studio Code

• Install nodejs 8.11

• Install Bot Framework Emulator

Bot Service

Note: Creating the web app bot in Azure also creates an AAD App. If you do not have access to create apps in AAD you can ask your administrator to create a Converged Application at apps.dev.microsoft.com and add you as Owner. Once you are added as owner, you can generate a new password and use it while creating the web app bot

• Create a Web App Bot
  • Under Bot template select Language Understanding NodeJS.
• Click on Application Settings and copy values for MicrosoftAppId,MicrosoftAppPassword,LuisAppId andLuisAPIKey and update it in the web\sample.env file.

LUIS

Note: If you have created the Web App Bot the LUIS app will be created for you automatically.

• Log in to www.luis.ai and under My Apps click the app that was created.
• Copy name of the LUIS App and update it in the luis-model\contosoapbot.json file.
• Under Settings tab, click on Import new version and upload the luis-model\contosoapbot.json file.
• Click on Train Button to train the updated model.
• Under Publish tab, click on Publish button to publish the model to both Production and Staging.

Service Bus

• Create a new Service Bus namespace in Azure
• Under the namespace create a new queue named requests
• Under Shared access policies, click on RootManageSharedAccessKey and copy value for Primary Connection String.
• Update the ServiceBusConnectionString in web\sample.env and console\sample.env files.

Databases

• Analytics DB

  • Create a new Azure SQL DB (or a local SQL Server DB).
  • Create table in the DB using web\analytics\dbscript.sql.
  • Update the SqlAnalyticsConnectionString in web\sample.env file.

• Invoice DB

  • Create a new DB on your local SQL Server named ContosoEdw.
  • Run console\dbscript\localdb.sql.
  • Update the sqledwConnectionString in console\sample.env file.

Servicenow

• Create a servicenow developer account and create a new dev instance.

• Login to the dev instance and update the admin password.

• Copy dev instance url, password and update ServiceNowUrl, ServiceNowPassword in web\sample.env file.

• Note: While testing you can click on Incidents to see the new tickets created by the Bot

Test Locally

• Rename web\sample.env, console\sample.env to .env

• Start Bot Web App

  • cd web
  • npm install
  • npm start

• Start Bot Request Processor Job

  • cd console
  • npm install
  • npm start

• Start Bot Emulator

  • Endpoint Url : http://localhost:3978/api/messages
  • Microsoft App ID: [Use MicrosoftAppId from .env file]
  • Microsoft App Password: [Use MicrosoftAppPassword from .env file]
  • Click Connect

• Type Hi in the bot emulator, it should return the text from the Greeting Dialog

  

• Test bot processor job integration using below sentences, you can always type help to get more details:

  • Payment Status - what is the payment status for invoice number 11001 and vendor Contoso Inc
  • PO Status - what is the status for po number 11001
  • Invoice Copy - could I have a copy of invoice 11001 from vendor Contoso Inc

  

• To Test Servicenow, log in to the dev intance and click on Incidents to see the tickets created/updated by the Bot

  

  

  • Servicenow tickets are created for each conversation session and the entire history of the conversation is saved under activities.
  • The Ticket ID is updated based on the human handoff response.

Human Handoff

• Human handoff is done via ticket assignments. If the user is idle for more than 30 seconds than the Bot will ask user if they need to talk to human and update the ticket in Servicenow and assign to specific group.

Deploy on Azure

• Update Application Settings

  • Click on Application Settings under Bot Service and add all environment variables from web\.env file.
  • Add a new variable to update nodejs version with name=WEBSITE_NODE_DEFAULT_VERSION and value=8.11.1

• Update Nodejs version

  • Under Build in Bot Service click on Open online code editor.
  • Updated the iisnode.yml file to point the nodeProcessCommandLine to 8.11.1 path nodeProcessCommandLine: "D:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\6.9.1\node.exe"

• Deploy Code

  • Copy all the code from web folder into the wwwroot folder on Azure. (Do not copy .env file and node_modules folder)
  • Under Build in Bot Service click on Open online code editor.
  • Click on Open Console button and run npm install to install all the dependencies.
  • Restart the App Service