How to build and deploy a virtual assistant faster than ever

We will be creating a bot to take coffee orders.

Creating an IBM Cloud Account

1. Go to this link and create an account: https://cloud.ibm.com/registration?cm_mmc=web-chat
2. Or, go to https://cloud.ibm.com/ and login if you have an account already and login

Provisioning a Watson Assistant instance

1. Once logged in, click on Create resource in the upper right corner of the screen
2. On the left hand nav, click on AI
3. Click on the first option, Watson Assistant
4. Select your closest region.
5. Lite plan should be selected already. Use this for the free plan
6. Click Create
7. Click on Launch Watson Assistant

Creating an Assistant

1. If this is a new instance for you, then you'll be dropped into an existing assistant. Back out of the assistant so we can create our own using the Assistants link in the top left
2. Click Create assistant
3. Name it CoffeeBot - Dev and create the assistant

Creating a Dialog Skill

1. Now you are within an Assistant, and we need to add a Dialog Skill. Click on Add dialog skill
2. Navigate to Create skill
3. Name it something like CoffeeBot and select the desired language
4. Click on your new Dialog Skill tile to start editing the skill

Building Intents

1. Click Add intent
2. Name the new intent order-drink
3. Add a description of what the intent will do. For this, let's use "User wants to order a drink."
4. Hit Enter to create the intent
5. Start adding a few exaxmples of how a user would order a drink (at least 5 examples are recommended). Let's use the following:

• i would like to order a coffee please
• I need some caffeine
• order espresso
• a cappuccino would be lovely
• a latte please

6. Open the Try it Out panel by clicking on the speech bubble in the upper right corner. This allows you to test how your bot will respond
7. Wait for the bot to finish training, then type can I order a coffee. It should classify the intent as #order-drink. Even though you didn't train the intent on this exact sentence, Watson can still understand it.
8. Add a few more intents to make your bot more robust. Try creating the following intents and adding a few examples to each:

• #see-menu (User wants to see what's on the menu)
• #greetings (User greets the bot)
• #thanks (User thanks the bot)

Here are the finished intents:

Building Entities

1. Click on the Entities tab at the top of the page
2. Click Add entity and add the name drink
3. Add a value coffee with the synonym of cafe.
4. Add some additional values that you allow your users to order and any synonyms, for example:

• espresso
• cappuccino
• latte
• tea

5. Exit the page, and click on System entities underneath the Entities tab
6. Turn on @sys-number

Here is how your finished entity @drink should look:

Building Dialog

1. Click on the Dialog tab at the top of the page
2. Click Create
3. Click on the Welcome node if you would like to change the intro message
4. Click Add node, and name it Greetings
5. Add your #greetings intent as the field for If assistant recognizes
6. Fill in a response that says something like "Hi! How can I help you today?"
7. Create two more nodes for #thanks and #see-menu and add responses
8. Create another node and name it Order Drink
9. To the right of the name, click on Customize
10. Turn on Slots and hit Apply
11. Add the intent #order-drinkto If assistant recognizes
12. Under Check for, add the entity @drink
13. Under If not present, ask add a question like "What would you like to drink?"
14. Click Add slot, and add a condition and prompt for @sys-number: "How many cups of $drink would you like?" (Note: the syntax $variable is short hand for accessing Context variables. Context variables allow you to pass information between your application and Conversation.)
15. Add in the response, "Ok, I have $number $drink coming right up!"

Finished dialog tree with Order Drink open:

Upgrading to Plus Trial

To make Web Chat appear, we'll need a Plus Trial account. You don't need a credit card for this and won't be charged. Find the Try plus plan button anywhere in the tooling, and click to find the button to Start free trial. There is one inside your assistant where the Search tile appears near the bottom of the page.

Deploying Web Chat

Now that we have a functioning assistant, let's deploy it to a site to see how it will look for our coffee customers. If you have an existing page you'd like to embed, you can follow the steps below until we get to opening the sample HTML page.

1. Backout of the skill by selecting the Assistant breadcrumb in the top left. This should take you inside your CoffeeBot - Dev Assistant.
2. On the right side of the screen, click Add integration under the Integrations section.
3. Select Web Chat, and click Create.
4. We'll revisit the customization in a bit. For now, scroll down to the embed script titled Add the chat UI to your web page and leave this page open
5. On the homepage of this repo, open the file web-chat-example.html in a new tab.
6. Open the Raw format of the file
7. Save the page using .html
8. Open this file in your computer's text editor (Note: for Mac, you have to Open the TextEdit app, choose File > Open, then select the document. Click Options at the bottom of the TextEdit dialog, then select “Ignore rich text commands.” Click Open.)
9. Back inside Watson Assistant, copy the embed script on the Web Chat page and paste over the section that says INSERT EMBED SCRIPT HERE
10. Save the file
11. Find the file in your downloads / desktop, and open it in your browser
12. Start chatting with your bot!

Customizing Web Chat

Back in the Web Chat configuration page within Watson Assistant, you can customize how Web Chat appears on your page. Try changing the accent color, adding your own title, or messing with the font. Make sure you select Save changes at the bottom, and refresh your mock coffee website.

If you want more...

Did you finish the above and want to learn more? Try some of the following methods to bolster your CoffeeBot.

Resetting context

If your user orders a drink and completes the flow, and they try to make another order, the values found from the first flow will still be there so they will not be able to order something else. To fix this, we need to clear the context after a successful order so the values are not stored for the next order.

1. Create a node above the Slots node Order Drink called Order Drink - Clear Context
2. Set the condition to #order-drink
3. In the response section, click on the three button menu on the right and click on Open context editor
4. Fill in both of the variables (drink and number) and set the values to null
5. Click on the three dot menu on the right side of original Slots node Order Drink, and select Move. Then, click the new context clearing node and move to As Child Node (So, the parent node is the context clearing node, and the slots node is the child)
6. Go to the section called And finally at the bottom of the context clearing node. Select Jump to and click the slots node, then If bot recognizes condition
7. Change the condition of the slots node from #order-drink to true (Use this condition if you want the node to always fire)
8. Try it out! Without clearing the try it out panel, order a drink. Once finished, try ordering another drink and it should prompt you for the two needed variables again. Here's what the finished context clearing node will look like:

Help - Digressions

Sometimes, you will want an intent to be handled no matter where the user is in their flow. Think of Digressions as a global 'manage handlers': they allow you to respond to an intent even if a user is in the middle of a process flow, and then it allows them to return to their prior flow. If your user wants some help talking to the bot anywhere in your bot, this is a good intent to have digressions enabled.

1. Create a #help intent with examples like: "I need help"
2. Create a node below your Order Drink node
3. Add the condition of #help with a response like: "I can help you order a drink from my coffee shop. Just say order drink to get started!"
4. Go into the Customize portion of the node by clicking in the upper right
5. Click on the Digressions tab
6. Enable Return after digression (Digressions should be on by default, this setting allows you to handle the intent and then return back to the flow)
7. Now to test this out, we need to get in the middle of our order drink flow. But first, since it is a slot, we need to go into the Digressions tab in the Order Drink slots node
8. Turn on Allow digressions away while slot filling and click the button that only allows nodes with returns enabled. This will help you to control which nodes you want to allow to digress to
9. Try it out by saying "order drink", then when asked for what kind of drink you want, say "help". You should see a response from your help node with another follow up message for the next slot filling question