cmayomsft/promptly-dotnet

.NET conversation modelling library for building bots with Bot Builder SDK V4.

promptly-dotnet

Promptly is a personal/experimental SDK and is not a supported Microsoft product. Use at your own risk.

Promptly, like the Bot Builder SDK V4 it's based on, is in prerelease and subject to extensive change. Use at your own risk.

Overview

Promptly is a .NET library for building chat bots using the Bot Builder SDK V4 .NET.

Promptly provides an API for developing everything from complex, multi-turn topics of conversation to simple single-turn prompts in a simple and consistent way, so you can focus on your bot's conversational UI/UX (CUI) rather than the underlying details of conversation state and turn management.

Packages

You can install the Promptly-Bot package on nuget.

Getting Started

To get started clone/fork this repo, open the promptly-dotnet.sln, build the solution, and run/step through the AlarmBot sample starting at the MessagesController.

A more detailed README is coming soon.

promptly-dotnet's Issues

Promptly-Bot version 0.0.6.14 is not available on nuget.org

The sample project references the 0.0.6.14 version, but this is not available on nuget.org

Azure table storage for state

Hi,

I've been porting an old bot to the latest v4 SDK and have been trying out your project. The problem I'm having is with using AzureTableStorage. I've tried adding dictionary properties to my User and Conversation state models like this: https://github.com/Microsoft/botbuilder-dotnet/blob/master/samples-final/5.AspNetCore-MultiplePrompts-Bot/MultiplePromptsState.cs

Or just as a property within the state model, but to no avail.

I understand that AzureTableStorage will try to flatten objects, and as per some of the prompt examples I need to serialize the state models to a Dictionary<TK, TV>.

I've had a little play with the alarm bot example, but regardless of what I do I'm unable to get the state to serialize. There error you get is the same as this: Azure/azure-storage-net#426

I wonder if you have tried to get Azure table store working with Promptly and if you have any examples or pointers.

SubTopic can't maintain `HasActiveTopic` flag.

Hi, when I add async to SubTopic's OnReceiveActivity() and call await method, SubTopic can't maintain HasActiveTopic flag.

        public async override Task OnReceiveActivity(IBotContext context)
        {
            // HasActiveTopic is always false.
            if (HasActiveTopic)
            {
                await ActiveTopic.OnReceiveActivity(context);
            }

            // in this method, coll some async method.
            await this.SetActiveTopic(ADD_ALARM_TOPIC)
                    .OnReceiveActivity(context);
        }

Suggestion: provide default Validator implementation

(already discussed with @cmayomsft, adding an issue for visibility & tracking)

In the Prompt class, you can use Validator to specify which validator to use for that prompt.

generalPrompt.Set
    .OnPrompt((context, lastTurnReason) =>
    {
        context.Reply("You want an appointment?");
    })
    .Validator(new DummyValidator())
    .OnSuccess((context, value) =>
    {
        this.ClearActiveTopic();
...

If no Validator is specified, the prompt is not working anymore. It would be better to provide a default implemented Validator that validates everything to be accepted as input, so you can leave out the line that explicitly sets the Validator. Similar how MaxTurns is implemented.
Desired bot code:

generalPrompt.Set
    .OnPrompt((context, lastTurnReason) =>
    {
        context.Reply("You want an appointment?");
    })
    .OnSuccess((context, value) =>
    {
        this.ClearActiveTopic();
...