DialogAccelerator

Dialog Accelerator

This accelerator shows how to use the Dialog Accelerator template to create moderate to complex conversational bot dialogs. This template lays out a working roadmap of how to code the most common interaction (conversation) scenarios:

• Simple prompts
• Built-in validation
• Custom validation
• How to skip asking users questions that already have answers
• How branch conversations and call independent dialog (Good for dialog reuse or modularizing a conversation)
• How to localize prompts for multilingual bots

For more advanced conversational flows, browse to:

• Looping
• Handling interruptions
• Overview of dialogs

To Use

Leveraging the Dialog Accelerator is not an exact science, but rather it's more of what you might call a "muddle" technique that's a mix of prescribed and improvised steps. In the end though, this process is a lot faster than having to start from first principles.

Incorporating this template into your solution involves two phases:

• Phase 1 - Get template sample code running (this becomes your working roadmap)
• Phase 2 - Repurpose template sample code for your particular scenario To make incorporating the template easier, Visual Studio ToDo Tasks have been added to the code to provide step-by-step instructions for accomplishing phase 1.

Phase 1 - Get Template Code Running

1. In Visual Studio, open your Skills bot project, right-click the Dialogs folder and choose Add | Class... and name the class after the LUIS Intent you're targeting with this dialog and then choose Add

2. Copy the entire source code of GetLibraryCard.cs found here into your paste buffer by clicking the Raw button and then Control-A and then Control-C

3. Switch back Visual Studio and delete the entire contents of the file you created in Step 1 and replace it with the current contents of your paste buffer (Control-V)

4. To expedite "muddling", Visual Studio ToDo tasks have been added to the code which you can see in list form if you choose View | Task List (or Control-W,T). Double-clicking a task will take you right were you need to be to carry out the task.

   When you've finished all the tasks the code should compile without errors and you'll be ready to integrate it into the MainDialog.

5. Dependency-inject the dialog into MainDialog by adding YourIntentDialog yourIntentCard, to the constructor of the MainDialog class in MainDialog.cs

6. Locate the "Register dialogs" comment in the constructor and add youIntentDialog

	// Register dialogs
	AddDialog(sampleDialog);
	AddDialog(yourIntentDialog);

7. While still in MainDialog.cs, navigate to the RouteAsync() method and add the following code to the switch(intent) statement:

	case <YourSkillNameHere>.Intent.YourIntentName:
	{
		turnResult = await dc.BeginDialogAsync(nameof(YourIntentDialog));

		break;
	}

If you don't have a LUIS Intent that corresponds to this new dialog yet, you can go with "Plan B" and make the case YourSkillName.Intent.Sample: statement look like the following:

8. Finally, register the dialog for dependency injection by opening Startup.cs and choosing Edit | Find and Replace | Quick Find (or Ctrl-F) and typing Register dialogs in the search field and hit Return. Now add services.AddTransient<YourIntentDialog>(); and it should look like the following:

9. Now your ready to test out Phase 1. Set your Skill to be the StartUp Project and start the the degugger. Now open your bot in the Bot Emulator and invoke your LUIS Intent. If you didn't have a LUIS Intent and instead used Plan "B" then type sample dialog to kick it off.

   Study the code to learn how to test out all the varios scenarios the template supports. For example, try and give it a non-integer for age to see built-in validation or an email without the '@' to see custom validation. Branching is invoked if you type "already@member" or "county@employee" (which launches the SampleDialog).

Phase 2 - Muddle through to Repurpose Template for Your Particular Scenario

Now that you've got the template running and you've explored all the scenarios, your ready accelerate the development of your dialog by repurposing the various steps to suit your conversational flow. But before you do that there are a few things you should do to customize the new dialog to fit your scenario

• Modify the conversation state model class so it has the proper conversation state properties
• (Add other customizations)

The last task of phase 2 is to repurpose the steps to support the conversation flow you have modeled out for this dialog. Once you've done that it should be mission complete and you're ready to repeat this same process for the rest of the dialogs for your solution.