Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Updated tutorial: Database-driven chatbot

If you want to build a chatbot that gets its content from a database, there is a good news. The existing tutorial “Build a database-driven Slackbot” was just updated to adapt to latest features of IBM Watson Assistant. First, define a skill that reaches out to a database service like Db2. Thereafter, use the built-in integrations to easily tie in the assistant with Slack, Facebook Messenger, embed the chatbot into your own application or use the WordPress plugin.

Architecture of database-driven chatbot


Database-driven chatbot

With the acceptance of chatbots to supports business tasks and assist in enterprise workflows, it is critical to access systems of record from within a dialog. The tutorial shows how to build a database-driven chatbot and integrate it with Slack as user interface. Instead of Slack, you can also use the Assistant-provided preview, Facebook Messenger integration or WordPress plugin as alternative user interfaces. Dialog actions, realized as IBM Cloud Functions, query a Db2 or PostgreSQL database or insert new records. Therefore, a messenger application can serve dynamic, user-specific content from a database.

Conclusions

It is easy to build a database-driven chatbot. Reach out to systems of record from within a dialog, so that Slack or other messenging systems can support enterprise workflows. The updated tutorial all information to get started.
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