Conversational AI updates from MSBuild 2020

Microsoft Bot Framework

In this section you’ll find the list of all updates related to the Microsoft Bot Framework (check out the official blog post on all the updates from here ):

Bot Framework Composer

• Bot Framework Composer is GA
  • You can either download the desktop app from here for Windows , here for MacOS or here for Linux
  • If you want to run Composer locally as a web-based component, you can download and build Composer from Github following this link
• Bot Framework Composer Docs are here
• Bot Framework Composer allows to build and export Bot Framework Skills or you can also export the Bot Framework Composer assets (lg, lu, settings and dialog files) which you can then plug into other bots:

Bot Framework SDK

• Bot Framework SDK v4.9 released - Release notes can be found here with a ton of updates:
  • Adaptive Dialogs are GA
  • Skills support Adaptive Dialogs and have improved support for SSO and OAuth
  • Improvements around Microsoft Teams specific funtionality including previews for the Java SDK as well as the developer preview of SSO capabilities in Microsoft Teams
  • Bot Telemtry improvments including the ability to map dialogs into Azure Application Insights Page View Events
  • Health Check APIs available to see if a bot is still running
  • CLI tools for Adaptive Dialogs available here
  • Language Generation is now GA in C# and JS SDKs
  • Adaptive Expressions is now GA in C# and JS SDKs
  • Authentication improvments for bots and skills are now available to be used like support for certificate based authentication
  • Generated Dialogs is in early preview stage
  • [Bot Framework Adaptive Tool](Bot Framework Adaptive Tool) is in preview

Azure Bot Service

• Direct Line App Service Extension is now GA
• Human Handoff capabilities have been improved
• Alexa channel has been added natively into the Azure Bot Service (Kudos to Gary Pretty for doing that👍)

Virtual Assistant

• Virtual Assistant is now GA
• Bot Framework Composer can now be used to build Bot Framework Skills to be used in virtual assistant

Azure Cognitive Services

Language Understanding

• New update to the LUIS portal with improvements to the labelling expirience
• Container support for LUIS apps
• Upgraded machine learned entities which are replacing composite and simple entities
• DevOps support for language models
• Bot Framework Orchestrator enters private preview

Read the full blog of LUIS announcements here .

QnA Maker

• New rich text editor support to streamline KB editing process
• RBAC support for knowledge bases

Speech Services

• Speech Services has now improved the accuracy of Speech to Text and Text to Speech
• Custom commands and pronunciation assessment features have been added to create advanced speech capabilities

Conversational AI sessions from Build

• Conversational AI powered Customer and Employee Virtual Assistants
• Accelerate bot development in Power Virtual Agents

On demand content

• Bot Framework Composer: Bot Framework’s new collaborative Conversational AI development environment
• Use the Efficiency of Low-Code with the Extensibility to Azure to Design World-Class Chatbots
• Conversational AI and human agents working together
• Author rich content in QnA Maker knowledge base and enable role based sharing