QnA Maker

Bot Framework v4 QnA Maker bot sample

This bot has been created using Bot Framework, it shows how to create a bot that uses the QnA Maker Cognitive AI service.

The QnA Maker Service enables you to build, train and publish a simple question and answer bot based on FAQ URLs, structured documents or editorial content in minutes. In this sample, we demonstrate how to use the QnA Maker service to answer questions based on a FAQ text file used as input.

Prerequisites

This samples requires prerequisites in order to run.

Overview

This bot uses QnA Maker Service, an AI based cognitive service, to implement simple Question and Answer conversational patterns.

• Node.js version 10.14 or higher

  # determine node version
  node --version

Create a QnAMaker Application to enable QnA Knowledge Bases

QnA knowledge base setup and application configuration steps can be found here.

To try this sample

• Clone the repository

  git clone https://github.com/microsoft/botbuilder-samples.git

• In a terminal, navigate to samples/javascript_nodejs/11a.qnamaker

  cd samples/javascript_nodejs/11a.qnamaker

• Install modules

  npm install

• Setup QnAMaker

  The prerequisite outlined above contain the steps necessary to provision a QnA Knowledge Base on www.qnamaker.ai. Refer to [Use QnA Maker to answer questions][41] for directions to setup and configure QnAMaker.

• Run the sample

  npm start

Testing the bot using Bot Framework Emulator

Bot Framework Emulator is a desktop application that allows bot developers to test and debug their bots on localhost or running remotely through a tunnel.

• Install the Bot Framework Emulator version 4.3.0 or greater from here

Connect to the bot using Bot Framework Emulator

• Launch Bot Framework Emulator
• File -> Open Bot
• Enter a Bot URL of http://localhost:3978/api/messages

QnA Maker enables you to power a question and answer service from your semi-structured content.

One of the basic requirements in writing your own bot is to seed it with questions and answers. In many cases, the questions and answers already exist in content like FAQ URLs/documents, product manuals, etc. With QnA Maker, users can query your application in a natural, conversational manner. QnA Maker uses machine learning to extract relevant question-answer pairs from your content. It also uses powerful matching and ranking algorithms to provide the best possible match between the user query and the questions.

Deploy the bot to Azure

To learn more about deploying a bot to Azure, see Deploy your bot to Azure for a complete list of deployment instructions.

Further reading

• Bot Framework Documentation
• Bot Basics
• QnA Maker Documentation
• Activity processing
• Azure Bot Service Introduction
• Azure Bot Service Documentation
• Azure CLI
• QnA Maker CLI
• Azure Portal
• Language Understanding using LUIS
• Channels and Bot Connector Service
• Restify
• dotenv