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Create a Chatbot that Lets Customers Track Packages

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Create a Chatbot that Lets Customers Track Packages
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Create a Chatbot that Lets Customers Track Packages

Daniel Wroblewski
Daniel Wroblewski
January 7, 2021
Created by
Daniel Wroblewski
April 26, 2020
Beginner
20 min.
SAP Conversational AI, Tutorial, Artificial Intelligence, Beginner, Machine Learning
With SAP Conversational AI, create a chatbot that calls an API, in this case to let customers track their packages, and see how to make use of the memory, using SAP Conversational AI.

You will learn

  • How to create intents
  • How to create entities
  • How to fork intents and entities
  • How to trigger skills and define required data for those skills
  • How to access data in the memory
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Prerequisites

What you will build

You will build a bot so customers can:

  • Track a package
  • Price a package

To track a package:

  • The customer will indicate that they want to track a parcel
  • The customer will provide the package number
  • The customer will confirm they want to track the package
  • The bot will call an API to retrieve package info and display it

To price package:

  • The customer will indicate they want to price a package
  • The customer will provide the address (France only) and the size of the package
  • The bot will check that the address is in France, and then call an API to retrieve a map of the location
  • The bot will display the map, and provide a price for the package, based on its size

In this tutorial

In this tutorial, you will start by creating a bot that understands the customer’s intent to track a package, and understands when the user has provided a valid tracking number.

Step 1: Create skeleton bot

  1. Go to SAP Conversational AI and log in.

  2. Click New Bot and select the following:

    Field Name Value
    1. What do you want your chatbot to do? Perform Actions
    2. Predefined Skills Greetings
    3. Create your bot
    • Name: ShippingBot
    • Description: A bot to help shipping customers track and price packages
    • Language: English
    4. Data Policy
    • Non-personal
    • Store
    • Non-vulnerable
    5. Bot Visibility Public
    Create bot

  3. Click Create a Bot.

Done
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Step 2: Create entity for parcel number
View Full Instructions

Our bot must be able to extract the parcel number from within the conversation. Such data extracted from a conversation is defined as entities.

The tracking number is based on one of UPS’s standards: 18 characters with constraints, as described in Tracking Number.

  1. Under the Train tab, go the subtab Entities.

    Go to Train

  2. Click Create an Entity.

  3. Call the entity PARCEL-NUMBER, specify it as a Regex entity, and click Create.

    Create entity

    Free entities: You specify the type of data it is, and you teach the bot how to identity a value for that entity. You specify the form of the data but not the actual acceptable values.

    Restricted entity: You specify a limited list of acceptable values.

  4. Click PARCEL-NUMBER.

    Edit entity

  5. Enter the following regular expression:

    \b(1Z[0-9A-Z]{6}[\d]{10})\b

    This defines only one kind of UPS tracking number, and is a simple regex that does not distinguish between the parts of the tracking number.

    You can test some of your parcel numbers to make sure they match, for example, enter 1ZISDE016694068891 and click Test:

    Test Regex

Built-in Entities

SAP Conversational AI comes with built-in entities (called gold entities) for common data, like location, dates, and money values. For more information, see List of Gold Entities.

Done
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Step 3: Add intents for yes and no

Customers will have to indicate whether they accept or reject certain requests from the bot, so the bot needs to be able to recognize when a customer means “Yes” and when they mean “No”.

You do not have to create these yourself. Instead, you can fork them from others who have already created them.

Forking is simply copying, and does not create a relationship between your bot and the source of what you forked. You can fork intents, entities, skills or an entire bot. For more information, see Forking Bots, Skills, Intents, and Entities.

  1. In a different browser tab, go to cai-adoption / ups-bot / intents / @yes.

    Fork @yes

  2. Just above the list of values – NOT at the top of the page (that button is to fork the entire project) – click Fork.

    Select your project, and click Fork.

    Fork select

  3. Go back to your project and click the Train tab (refresh the page if necessary), and you now see the @yes intent.

    @Yes intent

    Click into it, and see all its expressions, that is, all the ways someone could say “Yes”.

  4. Test the intent by clicking the Test flap on the right of the screen, and entering expressions at the bottom.

    Enter Sure and I think so and OK to see that the bot understands the intent. Feel free to add additional expressions.

    Test @Yes

    You can see that the bot detected the intent.

  5. Repeat the above steps for the @No intent, located at cai-adoption / ups-bot / intents / @no .

Done
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Step 4: Add intent for tracking parcel

Customers will be indicating that they want information on a parcel, so you need to create an intent for that.

Again, you do not have to create this intent yourself, but you can fork an existing intent.

  1. In a different browser tab, go to cai-adoption / ups-bot / intents / @track-parcel.

  2. Just above the list of values – NOT at the top of the page (that button is to fork the entire project) – click Fork.

    Fork track parcel

    Select your project, and click Fork.

  3. Go back to your project and click the Train tab (refresh the page if necessary), and you now see the @track-parcel intent.

    Click into it, and see all its expressions, that is, all the ways someone could indicate they want to track a package.

    Notice that some of the expressions contain a tracking number and some don’t.

  4. Test the intent by clicking the Test flap on the right of the screen, and entering expressions at the bottom.

    Try the following:

    • Where is my package
    • Track 1ZISDE016694068891
    Test track parcel

    In the second phrase, you can see that the bot not only detected the intent, but also detected the parcel number.

    Feel free to add additional expressions.

Done
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Step 5: Create skill for tracking parcel

After you’ve determined that the user wants to track a package, you have to build a skill so the bot knows what to do in response to this intent.

  1. On the Build tab, click Add skill.

    Call the skill track-parcel, and specify that it is a Business skill, then click Add.

    Create track parcel skill

  2. Open the skill for editing by clicking on its name.

  3. Add a trigger so that this skill is triggered when the @track-parcel intent is detected.

    • In the Triggers tab, click in the field next to If.
    • Select @track-parcel.
    • Click Save.
    Trigger for @track-parcel
Done
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Step 6: Add requirement to skill (parcel-number)
View Full Instructions

The requirements for the track-parcel skill indicate the data the bot needs to extract from the conversation before executing the skill’s action.

You will have several requirements. In this step, you will add the requirement for the parcel number.

  1. In the track-parcel skill, go to the Requirements tab.

  2. In the first field under Required Information, click and then select #parcel-number.

    Add requirements

    In the second field (after as), enter parcel-number, and press Enter. This is the name in the memory for storing the data for this entity.

  3. Click the Expand arrow.

    Open requirement

  4. Next to If #parcel-number is missing, click New Replies, and then do the following:

    Parcel number requirement
    • Click Send Message.
    • Click Text.
    • For the message, enter Could you give me your tracking number?
    • Click Save, then click Back.

  5. Next to If #parcel-number is complete, click New Replies, and then do the following:

    • Click Update Conversation | Edit Memory.
    • In the Set Memory Field, enter parcel-number.
    • For the field value, click in the field and replace the contents with the following: 
      {
"raw": "{{uppercase memory.parcel-number.raw}}",
"value": "{{uppercase memory.parcel-number.raw}}"
}

    • Click Save, then click Back.

    The API to get tracking information requires the parcel number in upper case, so this step automatically converts any input to upper case.

    Here, we use Handlebars scripting to access the memory and execute the uppercase function. For more information on how to use scripting to access the memory and other conversation data, see Scripting with Variables.

    Scripting is also used to manipulate data returned by API calls, as described in the tutorial Use Scripting to Design a Chatbot Message from an API Response.

Done
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Step 7: Add requirement to skill (yes/no)
View Full Instructions

Now you’ll add a second set of requirements – the user’s confirmation that they want to track the package.

  1. Add a second requirement by clicking the plus sign ( + ) – the second one that when you hover it says Add a new list of requirements.

    Requirements confirm

  2. In the first field, click and select @yes.

    In the second field (after as), enter yes (the name in the memory for this value), and press Enter.

    Immediately under @yes, click the plus sign ( + ) and add the @no intent and store its value in the no variable. Press Enter.

    Click the And between @yes and @no and change it to Or.

  3. Click New Replies next to If @yes or @no are missing.

    Missing yes or non

    Then do the following:

    • Click Send Message.
    • Click Quick Replies.
    • For the message, enter: 
      Do you want to track the parcel {{memory.parcel-number.raw}} ?

      Above you added code to retrieve the parcel number from the memory – which stores all requirements, and any information you manually store there. For more information on the memory and syntax, see Memory Management.

      • Click Add Quick Reply twice, and:

        • For the first, add Yes for both the title and value.
        • For the second, add No for both the title and value.

      • Click Save, then click Back.

Done
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Step 8: Add action to skill

Add the action if the user says No.

  1. Go to the Actions tab.

  2. Click Add New Message Group.

    Message group

  3. Click Add Condition, and then in the field next to If, select @no, and click Save.

  4. Click Send Message, and then:

    • Select Text.
    • Enter No problem. Let me know anytime if you want to track a package. as the message.
    • Click Save.

  5. Click Update Conversation | Edit Memory.

    Update conversation

    In the Unset memory field, enter no (the value is case-sensitive), and then click Save.

    Unset No

    Why unset No ?

    This will make it so the skill no longer fulfilled the requirement of having a Yes or No answer. So now if the user changes their mind, they can enter track package and the conversation will already have the tracking number stored and will only ask for confirmation.

If the customer says Yes, then you will make an API call and retrieve the information to display. You will code this in the next tutorial.

Done
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Step 9: Test the bot

If the Test panel is open, close it.

Click Chat Preview (bottom right) and start a conversation with your bottom. Use this tracking number: 1Z12345E6205277936.

In the example below, notice the bot detects the intent to track a package, but notices the tracking number is missing, and asks for it. Finally, it asks for confirmation, using the tracking number by retrieving it from memory.

Link text e.g., Destination screen

After the customer says No, this reply is unset in memory, so if the user again says track package, the bot simply asks for confirmation because the latest tracking number is still in memory.

Link text e.g., Destination screen

If the customer says Yes instead, for now the bot shows No Reply because you have not defined an action in this case.

Link text e.g., Destination screen

No Reply vs. Fallback Actions

When a bot has detected an intent and that intent triggers a skill, but that skill does not have an action that returns a message, then No Reply is shown.

If a bot cannot figure out the intent of the user, or no skill has been triggered by the detected intent, then the fallback skill is triggered. When you created your bot, a fallback skill was created automatically for you with a default message.

Fallback
Click into the @track-parcel intent, and type in the first expression.
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