Last week, we noticed a lack of incoming data on our Waston IOT platform.
After some research, we found that the HTTP API of Watson has moved to a new url (only the part to publish messages).
The official documentation is effectively mentionning the new url and we found just one post on the web talking about this update (here). Moreover, this post does not provide precise dates.
We checked our mails for the last 5 months, we were never notified in advance of this update. It's really problematic for us since we provide business apps to customers based on this service.
So the question is : Did the watson team failed to notify us or is there another way than emails to take notice of the schedule of future updates?
Thank you
At this point we do not directly email customers. We have been exploring options of ways to do this and hope to have a procedure in place to notify customers of any changes to the Watson IoT platform in the very near future. We apologize for any inconvenience this change caused.
Related
I am currently working on Watson chat bot with the aim of creating a virtual assistant for customers which hopefully will be capable of handling the requests. Within a node I ask a question like "Can you provide me the serial number?" to the customer. What I want Watson to do is that save that serial number as a variable so that I can respond the customer like "Okay so the number you provided is "that number", do you confirm?" I would be very happy if someone can help me out with this. How am I going to integrate a variable capable of storing the customer´s input?
Thank you in advance!
I recommend starting with this tutorial on building a database-driven Slack chatbot. The source code is available on GitHub.
The tutorial shows how to gather event data. The typical way of getting data from an user is to save the relevant parts in so-called context variables. You can access those variables from within dialog nodes, print values in responses or pass them to other code for backend processing (like in a database system).
I want to build a Slack bot that can answer support queries. I've designed the conversation in Watson Conversation, but now I want to deploy it to Slack channels.
Ideally I don't want to have to develop and host an application to broker messages between the two systems.
Is there any platform or solution that I can use?
There are two possible solutions that I can think of.
Watson Conversation offers some basic integration with Slack through an application you can deploy yourself in a container. I believe they have a repo in their github (https://github.com/IBM/slack-watson-bot). You'll have to host this somewhere, though Bluemix offers some basic free hosting for a limited time. There are plenty of tutorials out there for spinning up containers in Bluemix.
An alternative solution (disclosure - this is my company) that wouldn't require hosting or development would be to use Bothaus (https://bothaus.io). Bothaus lets you configure integration between Slack and Watson Conversation without hosting or coding anything.
In Watson Conversation while in your conversation workspace, click on the Deploy icon.
After that, click deploy on the Slack card. Click "Deploy to Slack App", and follow the steps.
You should not need to code anything, just fill related fields with data.
Just be aware, if your URLs you are requested to enter into slack contain spaces, change them to %20 so that Slack will recognise the URL.
I need to develop a chatbot with these properties:
Platform - Skype for Business On-Premise
Function - Replies to user queries by looking in various knowledgebases (Multiple Platforms - Databases, Web APIs, etc.)
Basic textual conversation to begin with and will gradually evolve to send attachments
No calls/videos, just chat
Will be hosted on an external server with organisation VPN
A simple sip will be created for the chatbot which can be pinged by any user. I should be able to get this through to our IT dept.
Limited time for development
Scalability is an essential requirement but the organisation is fairly new to this, so they might be patient and allow me to make mistakes
My research has led me to these possible approaches:
SfB SDK - I have rejected this approach because it requires the client to be running at all times and doesn't seem to be scalable
UCMA with Application Endpoint - Haven't rejected this approach, but seems like I'll not go ahead with this because creation of Application Platforms seems tedious and requires me to make a lot of SfB server related IT requests
UCMA with User Endpoint - Great affinity towards this. I have experimented Tom Morgan's (thoughtstuff.co.uk) stuff and this seems like something I can start off right away
UCWA with Application Endpoint - Rejected this approach, because UCWA (from my research) appears unsuitable for On-premise and the setup also seems time consuming
UCWA with User Endpoint - Haven't rejected this approach, but I'm not sure if the Web API way is really a good approach for On-premise platform
I'd like to ask how am I doing so far, but that seems too vague
What would you suggest is a good way to achieve this?
Also, can someone be patient enough to reply the drawbacks and advantages of each approach for my use case. I'd like to make an informed decision and not reject any approach, just because of a misunderstood overhead
I have been asking around in my organisation and other circles.
And since I am not receiving any quick responses, I'll keep adding what I have learnt.
This way a person in the dev community will have a log of how I went with this.
UCWA is better suited for S4B online (compared to on premise) and is generally used by people who are comfortable with RESTful and have low familiarity with .NET development
UCMA is apparently THE WAY to go and for any on-premise bot requirements, preferably with an application endpoint.
So for our development, we are starting with UCMA user endpoint so that we can deliver a basic start as a version-one
And meanwhile we shall also get in touch with the IT department and Lync administrators for creation of Application Endpoints
Once we have this the same functionality that we had with the user endpoint will be copied over to the Application Endpoint version
Keep watching this space for further updates
I have just started to learn IBM Watson services. I need to use Question and answer API of bluemix in java using REST API. But I couldn't find any service like Question and answer. Please can anybody tell me is the name is changed or where can I find the documentation for this service. I have tried with existing answers in SO. But those links which are in answers are not working removed.
Regards
The QA service has been discontinued since the end of last year.
Instead what has happened is that the components that made up QA have been broken down into their own services.
NL Classifier
Dialog
Retrieve and Rank
Document Conversion
The reason for this change is that not all types of applications required all these services. Also it allows you to pull in other services to act on data, for example Sentiment Analysis of a question can impact the answer/action given. Which wasn't part of QA.
More details here:
https://developer.ibm.com/watson/blog/2015/11/11/watson-question-and-answer-service-to-be-withdrawn/
Business Model:
This business makes handmade specialty items from a large inventory of photo examples on the web site. The owner does not want to bill until the item is ready to ship.
I'm sure the business model itself can keep us debating for days, but please do not question his approach as that is not really the point here. It is simply how he wants to run his business.
Design:
I have developed a system for him which manages his transactions (no financial information) until he is ready, whereupon he selects the transactions by checking the ones he wants from a query-select-list of unprocessed orders. I can then convert each ordered item to an HTML stream, REST objects, or whatever. The customer should receive the invoice email and click on a button to take him to PayPal for payment.
I want to use the REST API object model to send all the required information to PayPal, describe the invoice and then send the email/invoice to the customer via the API. It is not uncommon to have multiple items ordered at once.
Q1 - The API looks like it supports this usage but can anyone experienced with its use tell me if there is a show stopper I have not discovered yet?
Q2 - I have already developed an HTML template for this purpose. Perhaps prematurely. Does REST API allow for the use of templates? I do not see how yet but hoping there is a way.
Many thanks.
2K
After some more research and a half hour with Integration Support:
A1: There are no show stoppers in the scenario described above. The REST API (and PayPal) supports the usage I have in mind. If anyone desires I will post back results in a few days after code complete and a bit of testing.
A2: I was informed that my own HTML templates are supported but I still do not see how. With the spirit of "Trust, but verify" I will continue with my efforts and ask for Integration Support at that point if I need it.
My cup and my Stack both overflow. I am fortunate.
2kTech