An Introduction to Chatbot Development and Why DevOps for It?

Bot & DevOps
  • Ankit Patel Ankit Patel
  • May 11, 2019
  • 3 min read

Everyone who must have heard about DevOps and creating solutions with bots in them would be interested to explore more about it. This article chiefly is aimed at helping readers understand what bot is all about, how bots are built, and why DevOps should be applied to Chatbot development. In short, they will know about the benefits of applying the best practices of DevOps for the Chatbot framework.

For those who are hearing about Chatbots for the very first time or have heard but just have a faint idea about them, let’s look at what bots are.

• What are Chatbots?

Bots are apps possessing an interface that facilitates more natural interactions. These days chatbots are common. Whenever you land up on a website and if it is more attentive to delivering personalized service to customers, then you will find a chatbot popping up and giving you an option of chatting or asking you to chat with them in case of any queries.

Chatbots are increasingly getting popular because of the improved technology and with that their ability to interact more naturally is also on the rise due to the inclusion of emotional element. It provides an easy way for businesses to provide information to their customers.

Chatbots are dependent on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, though not totally. This implies that developers can create chatbots and make them work even without the use of artificial intelligence. The success of any bot depends on its ability to carry out successful interactions with humans. Bots not only communicate through text, but they can also interact through speech.

Programmers usually believe that it is just for creating bots for Microsoft or Skype. However, this is not the case. The bot framework consists of a bot connector that enables developers to write the bot a single time. The bot code thus generated assumes the form of a web API. This API will create interfaces in various places which have support for bots. Hence, if you wish to create a bot that runs on more than one platform, all you need to do is write the bot code and enable the interface into various endpoints from your bot dashboard.

An example of Chatbot on Website:

Chatbot

• What you can do with Bot SDK?

1. Create instances of dialogues
2. Create single or multiple flows for the bot to use with customers
3. Store and remember bot conversations with multiple users

– For FAQs, you can use Q&A makers based on different frameworks which help to easily create a bot based on the existing content.

– You can get the following facilities with the Bot framework

1. Easy interface to intelligent services
2. A connector to configure different support and end points
3. Facility to launch the bot code (web API) on various platforms

Basically, the bot functions as a web service that utilizes the Azure framework so that it turns into a bot that carries on conversations with users. As the bot is also software, many of them from the developer community would want to utilize DevOps best practices alongside it. As the size of the project increases, you may want to include other DevOps guidelines in the Bot project. Now, you may want to know what exactly is DevOps.

• What is DevOps?

DevOps refers to a range of practices that facilitate the collaboration of software engineers and IT and Infrastructure Operations in order to bring down the time involved in bringing the product to the market. It chiefly aims to instill features into the manufacturing process at speed, identify and rectify problems as and when they occur, and ensure that other services carry on uninterruptedly.

In short, it is about consistently delivering value. It aims at helping to carry out something smoothly. Whether it is a software program or an app, you will want it to run seamlessly.

>According to Donovan Brown (Principal DevOps Manager);

DevOps is the union of people, process, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to our end users

If any program, website, app, Chatbot, or function has to be successful and lead to end-user satisfaction, it has to run without any hiccups or breaks.

• Applying DevOps Best Practices to Bot Development

The chief reason why you should apply DevOps to your Chatbots because Chatbots function as software programs. If there are any interruptions in the running of these programs, it may leave the end-user or the prospective customer communicating with the Chatbot dissatisfied or even frustrated. For instance, when a specific question is asked to your Chatbot on your website and it is unable to answer it, the customer may opt for your competitor, who perhaps has better programmed bots.

As the use of Chatbots is becoming frequent with a number of businesses embracing it, it is obvious that Chatbots, of similar businesses, will function in the same way. If you want your customers to stick to your business then you should implement the best DevOps practices. This ensures that you deliver value to your customers on a consistent basis.

Have you applied the principles to DevOps in your Chatbot development project? If no, you may consider doing that now. If yes, please let us know which principles helped you yield the maximum results. Please feel free to comment about any of your queries related to this write-up in the comment section below.

About: Ankit Patel

Ankit Patel is a Director of Sales & Marketing at XongoLab Technologies LLP and PeppyOcean, A leading mobile app development companies. In his free time, He likes to write articles about technology, marketing, business, web, and mobile. His articles featured on YourStory, E27, Datafloq, JaxEnter, TechTarget, eLearningAdobe, DesignWebKit, InstantShift, Business Magazine, SimpleProgrammer, and many more.

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