S’il est possible de créer un bot en quelques minutes, construire des assistants interactifs professionnels représente un réel challenge : assez vite, nous voilà confrontés à des patterns de développements avancés, des enjeux d’architecture propres aux API Web. Sans compter les compétences spécifiques au domaine des bots. Au cours de cette session, nous présenterons le code de bots permettant de gérer des interactions Chat et Voix, et explorerons les défis rencontrés lors de la construction de ces bots : stockage des contextes, approches NLP, scopes OAuth, meta-données. Nous présenterons ensuite les tendances actuelles en terme d’architecture : plateformes de bots, exécution de bots sous forme de micro-fonctions / serverless… Depuis un an, j'interviens sur la mise en place de bots, et ai pu coder un framework de bots en nodejs, et tester quelques framewokrs de bots. Ce talk est un retour d'expérience. Le support est en anglais et au format 4/3.

1. Créer un bot, pas si simple.
Faisons le point
Stève SFARTZ
API Evangelist - Cisco DevNet
stsfartz@cisco.com, @SteveSfartz, github://ObjectIsadvantag

2. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
/Cisco/DevNet/SteveSfartz
• API Evangelist @CiscoDevNet
• Cisco Spark Apps & Tropo APIs
• code addict, nodejs, love story
with #golang
• France and all around Europe
• hosted @PIRL – Paris Innovation
Center & Research Lab
• twitter://@SteveSfartz
• github://ObjectIsAdvantag
« Tout objectif
flou conduit à
une connerie
très précise »
Frédéric Dart
stsfartz@cisco.com
@SteveSfartz

3. 3
 Zero to advanced Voice Machines
 Taking your Chat bots to the next stage
so what’s on the menu

4. From Zero to advanced
Voice Machines with Tropo

5. Taper
1 si c’est votre 1ère fois
2 si vous êtes déjà venu
07 56 78 01 50

6. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
What is Tropo ?
Cloud APIs enabling developers to quickly
and easily embed communication capabilities
into their applications and business processes.

7. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
+
• Ask
• Call
• Conference
• Hangup
• Record
• Reject
• Say
• Transfer
7
Tropo in a nutshell

8. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
say("hello world");
8
Text to Speech

9. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 9
Play an Audio File
say(“http://.../troporocks.mp3");

10. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Outbound Voice Call
call("+14155550100");
say("Tag, you’re it!");
1

11. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Send a Text Message
call("+14155550100",
{network:"SMS"}
);
say("Tag, you’re it!");
1

12. Asking a Question
var result = ask("What's your favorite
color? Choose red, blue or green.", {
choices:"red, blue, green"
});
say("You said " + result.value);
log("They said " + result.value);
1

13. Voicemail Application
record("Leave your message. Press
pound when finished.", {
beep:true,
timeout:10,
silenceTimeout:7,
maxTime:60,
terminator:'#',
recordFormat:"audio/mp3",
recordURI:"ftp://.../file.mp3" });
1

14. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
How to setup a custom IVR
• The IVR is composed of :
• a local phone number
• a custom script executed by the Tropo Scripting platform
dials #1
07 56 78 01 50
« Welcome »
details via SMS
calls
Voice Machine
script
14

15. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
How to setup your own Voice Machine
• Signup at http://tropo.com
• Create a new Scripting app
• Point to an IVR script:
http://bit.ly/TROPO-IVR
• Pick a phone number
• Save the application
15

16. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Globally available
Global Outgoing Calls & Messages
Numbers in 42 countries
80 speech languages
16

17. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Account Types
• Free
• Low-volume
• Restricted use
• No production
usage
• 24x7 support
Developer
• Pre-paid
• Credit Card
• Self-service
signup
• Shared Cloud
• one minute billing
increments
Production
17

18. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Join the Cisco DevNet code labs
https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/codemotion-rome-2017

19. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Serverless is great
• no deployment hurdles, scalability from day 1
… but
• tedious dev cycles (commit, push, test)
• painful to diagnose (read logs through)
 local emulators to the rescue
 run and debug locally
 integrate in a CI/CD tool chain
Lessons learnt

20. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Tropo Ready!
• Tropo Ready!
• + URL to the project
• Browse the project
https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/tropo-ready-vscode

21. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Best practices: ChatOps
Diagnose & follow real time activity
“Follow your
application usage in
real-time”

22. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Best practices: ChatOps
Diagnose & follow real time activity
“Follow your
application usage in
real-time”

23. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Best practices: ChatOps
Diagnose & follow real time activity
“Diagnose a Serverless script”

24. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
How to setup ChatOps
To stream logs and get
instant view about your
Voice Machine activity:
1. Create a ChatOps
room
2. Add an Incoming
Webhook
3. Post messages
Voice Machine
script
Log2Spark
library
/new
logs
POST
message
« ChatOps »
Room
1
2
3
24

25. From Zero to advanced
Chat Bots with Cisco Spark

26. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Cisco Spark
Secure & Open
Complete & Simple
Spark for Developers
User Integrations, APIs/SDKs...
Spark Hybrid Services
Cloud + Prem
Partner Services
Interconnect
Message Meeting Call
1:1 and team messaging Cloud-based phone systemAudio, video, and web meetings
26

27. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
‘Your App’
now with
Cisco Collab!
Spark APIs
extend Cisco Collaboration Cloud
GET
POST
DELETE
PUT
/Rooms
/Memberships
/Messages
/Webhooks
/People
27
/Teams
https://developer.ciscospark.com/

28. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 28
Meet the roomId bot
• Add roomId@sparkbot.io
to a room
1. The bot sniffs room identifier,
2. Posts the identifier in a 1-1 space,
3. And finally leaves the space you originally invited it to join
https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/node-sparkbot-samples

29. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
• nothing more than an API responding to
events
• a few lines of code with a Bot framework
What it takes to build a Chat Bot
29

30. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Run a bot sample
• Leverages the node-sparkbot framework
• aimed at Cisco Spark bot education
• https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/node-sparkbot
• Community frameworks
• Flint: https://github.com/flint-bot/flint
• BotKit: https://github.com/howdyai/botkit
https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/node-sparkbot-samples

31. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Cisco Spark Cloud
Service
1. interacts in spaces
via a Cisco Spark client
Cisco Spark User
Your Bot code running
On-premise or on a Public Coud
2. posts notifications to
registered WebHooks
Publicly accessible APIs
3. posts messages
as notifications fly in
Bot Architecture
 Register WebHook
events your bot is
interested to
listened to
 Messages /
created
 Memberships /
created
 As events happen
in spaces, receive
notifications from
Cisco Spark

32. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Cisco Spark Cloud
Service
1. interacts in spaces
via a Cisco Spark client
Cisco Spark User
DMZ
2. posts notifications to
registered WebHooks
Publicly accessible
3. responds to
Webhook events
Your Bot code running
on-premises
Enterprise secured
2b. forwards notifications
Bot Architecture: on-premises

33. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Cisco Spark Cloud
Service
1. interacts in Rooms
via the various Spark Clients
Cisco Spark User
Tunneling
infrastructure
Your Bot code running
on your local machine
2. posts notifications to
registered WebHooks
Dev environmentPublicly accessible
2b. forwards
Webhook events
3. responds to
Webhook events
Bot Architecture: dev machine
ngrok, localtunnel…

34. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Bot Contest
Sign in on CiscoSpark
Meet the Bot
quizbot@sparkbot.io
Take the challenge
Win an iPhone7…

35. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Meet the QuizBot
35
https://github.com/LucaCalabrese/codemotion-spark-bot
Java, AWS, PostGreSQL, WebHooks @LukeCalab

36. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 36
@QuizBot help

37. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
@QuizBot now
37

38. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Enhance the User Experience
• Help command
• better show at the invite, welcome message
• But how much help does the bot really
provide?
• /hlp
• Help
• #help
• HELP!!!
 Fallback command

39. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Fallback command
39

40. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Add conversations to the game…
40
https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/devnet-botkit-sample

41. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
…and context storage
41
https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/botkit-ciscospark-samples

42. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 42
Bot Frameworks survey

43. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Bot community frameworks
• Flint, https://github.com/flint-bot/flint
• BotKit, https://github.com/howdyai/botkit

44. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Community frameworks for Cisco Spark
Flint
First Bot framework for
Cisco Spark
Highly tuned for the Cisco
Spark API (webhooks
events, moderation…)
Basic Key/Value data store
Coding best practices (ES6,
exception handling, logs,
retries, rate limitation)
BotKit
Largest community Bot
framework
Cross platform support with
code reuse (no magic
convert button: events
name, message formatting)
Advanced Key/Value data
store (user / space level)
Powerful conversational
paradigm
https://github.com/flint-bot/flint https://github.com/howdyai/botkit

45. Taking bots to the next
stage

46. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Taking bots to the next stage
• But who created the bot ?
• What is the usage policy ?
• How can I contact support, send feedback ?
• What about my data privacy ?

47. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
@CiscoDevNet /about
47

48. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Taking bots to the next stage
Is the bot down ?

49. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 49
Bot Metadata
HealthCheck

50. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Is the bot down ? a proposal
• Register the Bot in a Universal Database
• Chat services supported
• Healthcheck endpoints
• Author, Policies
• Metadata again…
• chatbot.land domain reserved
• who’s in ? twitter://@SteveSfartz
50

51. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Taking bots to the next stage
Hosting
• Many options: IaaS, Containers, PaaS
• Concerns: Availability, Scalability,
Security, Rate Limitation
• Pricing balance: who’s willing to pay for
the bot, and how much
• Heroku PaaS Free Dynos
• AWS/Google/Microsoft free plans
• Currently testing Serverless Functions

52. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Google Functions pricing
52

53. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
The Serverless Functions opportunity
53
https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/devnetexpress-bot
Remember?
a bot is nothing more
than a POST endpoint
…
with an healthcheck !

54. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
The Serverless Functions opportunity
> gcloud alpha functions deploy sparkbot
--entry-point googlefunction
--stage-bucket objectisadvantag-functions
--trigger-http
--memory 128MB
--timeout 1s
54
https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/devnetexpress-bot

55. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
The Serverless Functions opportunity
• An easy way to remove the Serverless burden
55
https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/devnetexpress-bot

56. Security

57. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
OAuth considerations

58. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 58
API Security Best Practices

59. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Taking bots to the next stage
• Pick Bots coding best practices & frameworks
• Exception management, Retries
• Help, Fallback command, Healthcheck
• Conversations (test is challenging)
• Choose the best hosting approach
• Monitor your bot activity
• Chatops + Analytics
• Think twice before going to NLP and then
choose the best approach (local vs 3rd party)
https://devnetcreate.io/2017 Nick Marus’s Talk

60. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Taking bots to the next stage
Machine Learning
• The bot companion learns from
interactions
• Use case: classify my Twitter Followers
• Who’s ready to pay for it ?
• Data Privacy vs Real Cost

61. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Join the Cisco DevNet code labs
https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/codemotion-rome-2017

62. Thank you
@CiscoDevNet
@CiscoSparkDev
@SteveSfartz