First published on MSDN on Mar 28, 2017
Microsoft QnA Maker Overview
One of the basic requirements in writing your own Bot service is to seed it with questions and answers. In many cases, the questions and answers already exist in content like FAQ URLs/documents, etc.
Microsoft QnA Maker is a free, easy-to-use, REST API and web-based service that trains AI to respond to user's questions in a more natural, conversational way. Compatible across development platforms, hosting services, and channels, QnA Maker is the only question and answer service with a graphical user interface—meaning you don’t need to be a developer to train, manage, and use it for a wide range of solutions.
With optimized machine learning logic and the ability to integrate industry-leading language processing with ease, QnA Maker distills masses of information into distinct, helpful answers.
The
QnA Maker
cognitive service has fast become the backbone for many customer service bot scenarios. Once you have created your QnA service and published it, it’s time to incorporate it into your
bot framework
bot. To date, there are a couple of ways to implement it from C#.
Watch the following short intro to developing using the QnAMaker
The following tips have been provided by
Garry Pretty
and documented by
Jaime Dalton
in the UK Conversations as a Platform team
Getting Started Option 1 – use the Microsoft.Bot.Builder.CognitiveServices nuget package
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Bot.Builder.CognitiveServices
You’ll then need to create a class that uses the QnAMakerDialog eg:
[Serializable]
public class FAQDialog : QnAMakerDialog
{
public FAQDialog() : base(new QnAMakerService
(new QnAMakerAttribute(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["QnASubscriptionKey"],
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["QnAKnowledgebaseId"],
"Sorry I don't understand, please rephrase your question.",
0.5)))
{ }
}
Then ensure you’ve set the following keys within your web.config:
<add key="QnASubscriptionKey" value="QnASubscriptionKey" />
<add key="QnAKnowledgebaseId" value="QnAKnowledgebaseId" />
Full sample here:
https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder-CognitiveServices/tree/master/CSharp/Samples/QnAMaker
...
Option 2 – use the QnAMakerDialog nuget package by
Gary Pretty
(MVP)
https://www.nuget.org/packages/QnAMakerDialog/
This has a couple of nice features, such as being able to attribute methods with the QnA confidence score and being able to add attachments to responses. More of which can be discovered
here
:
[Serializable]
[QnAMakerService("QnASubscriptionKey", "QnAKnowledgebaseId")]
public class FAQDialogGP: QnAMakerDialog<object>
{
public override async Task NoMatchHandler(IDialogContext context, string originalQueryText)
{
await context.PostAsync($"Sorry, I couldn't find an answer for '{originalQueryText}'.");
context.Wait(MessageReceived);
}
}
Full sample here:
https://github.com/garypretty/botframework/tree/master/QnAMakerDialog/QnAMakerDialog.Sample
Interested in learning more about Microsoft Bot Framework
see
http://dev.botframework.com
See Jaime Dalton blog who will be updating the method above as the Bot Framework Matures.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jamiedalton/2017/03/28/building-a-faq-bot-with-the-qna-maker-c...
Learn More
Hands on Labs for Building a Microsoft Bot
https://github.com/MSFTImagine/computerscience/blob/master/Workshop/15.%20Bots/Microsoft%20Bot%...
