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Create your first Bot using Visual Studio 2017: Step by step guide


By looking at how fast the companies adopting the Bots, it is really the best time for you to start learning Bot framework and start adopting Bots for your business.

 Some pain in the real world without the Bots:
  • You have to read the whole FAQ to find some specific information for any website or any company
  • You have to wait for next business day to start to get answers to your queries

  • You have to send emails to get some information to send some information
  • You have to do manual work to answer some repetitive questions
  • More manpower would require if the number of questions increases suddenly:

This would eventually affect your business. Time to try the Bots.


Build bots with the Bot Framework

The Bot Framework provides services, libraries, samples, and tools to help you build and debug bots. The Azure Bot Service is the best way to get started with building bots. With the Azure Bot Service, you can create and deploy a bot in just a few minutes. You can use the Bot Builder SDK to create a bot from scratch using C# or Node.js. And if you want to create a bot using any programming language you want, you can use the REST API.

Azure Bot Service

Azure Bot Service provides an integrated environment that is purpose-built for bot development, enabling you to build, connect, test, deploy, and manage intelligent bots, all from one place. You can write your bot in C# or Node.js directly in the browser using the Azure editor. Your bot is automatically deployed to Azure.

The Azure Bot Service Quickstart will guide you through creating a bot with the Azure Bot Service.

Bot Builder 

The Bot Framework includes Bot Builder to help you develop bots. Bot Builder is an open-source SDK with support for .NET and Node.js. Using Bot Builder, you can get started and have a working bot in just a few minutes.


Let us see how to create simple Bot application using Visual Studio 2017.


Prerequisites

Get started by completing the following prerequisite tasks:

  1. Install Visual Studio 2017 for Windows.
  2. In Visual Studio, update all extensions to their latest versions.
  3. Download the Bot Application, Bot Controller, and Bot Dialog .zip files. Install the project template by copying Bot Application.zip to your Visual Studio 2017 project templates directory. Install the item templates by copying Bot Controller.zip and Bot Dialog.zip to your Visual Studio 2017 item templates directory.

Create your bot

Next, open Visual Studio and create a new C# project. Choose the Bot Application template for your new project.


By using the Bot Application template, you're creating a project that already contains all of the components that are required to build a simple bot, including a reference to the Bot Builder SDK for .NET, Microsoft.Bot.Builder. Verify that your project references the latest version of the SDK:

  1. Right-click on the project and select Manage NuGet Packages.
  2. In the Browse tab, type "Microsoft.Bot.Builder".
  3. Locate the Microsoft.Bot.Builder package in the list of search results, and click the Update button for that package.
  4. Follow the prompts to accept the changes and update the package.

Thanks to the Bot Application template, your project contains all of the code that's necessary to create the bot in this tutorial. You won't actually need to write any additional code. However, before we move on to testing your bot, take a quick look at some of the code that the Bot Application template provided.

Explore the code 

First, the Post method within Controllers\MessagesController.cs receives the message from the user and invokes the root dialog.



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