wa-webhook-covid19-count

This will demonstrate how to have your Watson Assistant provide a user with the latest count of confirmed cases for COVID-19. This will work for any country, state, or city. The information is sourced from an open API provided by covidtracking.com and sourced from information from CDC and WHO.

Prerequisites

1. Watson Assistant Skill
2. IBM Cloud Function

Instructions

Cloud Function Instructions

1. Create a new Cloud Function with a NODE.JS runtime
2. Copy/paste the Javascript code from covid19-webhook-function.js into the Function
3. Click on Endpoint, copy down the URL from the CURL command (including blocking=true) and the API Key

Watson Assistant Instructions

1. Create a Skill, import from the Content Catalog the intent named Covid_Case_Count
2. Go to Options > Webhook, paste in the URL
3. Click Add authorization, paste in API Key
4. Create a Dialog node that recognizes this intent
5. Click on Dialog settings, enable Webhook
6. Add parameter key stateCode to call out to webhook (this can either be collected by your Assistant or hard coded in). Acceptable values include "NY", "CT", etc. To find a full list, visit https://covidtracking.com/api

7. In Assistant responds section, if assistant recognizes the return variable, respond with something along the lines of: In the State of New York, approximately $webhook_result_2.message.positive people have been tested positive for COVID-19. Instead of hard coding the state you can use a context variable instead.
8. Highly Recommended: Include a disclaimer message in case this data is inaccurate. Something along the lines of: Please note that this data is sourced from the CDC and World Health Organization but inaccuracies may exist.
9. Include an error message in the anything_else such as Sorry, I'm unable to retrieve this information at this time. Please visit covidtracking.com/api for the latest update.

Try it out

Navigate to the right side of Watson Assistant, click on Try it, type in "how many cases of COVID-19 are there in New York?" and make sure you get the appropriate response back. You can double check this response with information directly from covidtracking.com to ensure it is accurate.