Deploying A Bot To Azure Using Visual Studio 2017

Introduction

The Bot Framework enables you to build bots that support different types of interactions with users. You can design conversations in your bot to be freeform. Your bot can also have more guided interactions where it provides the user choices or actions. The conversation can use simple text strings or more complex rich cards that contain text, images, and action buttons. And you can add natural language interactions, which let your users interact with your bots in a natural and expressive way.

In this article, we can deploy a bot to Azure using visual studio 2017, register app with bot portal and test it with the Bot Framework Emulator.

Setup and Create New Bot Application.

You can read my previous article for Getting Started with Bots Using Visual Studio 2017 from here.

You need an Azure account for deploying bot applications to Azure so if you do not have an Azure account, you can click the following url for a free trial Azure subscription. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/

Register Bot Application

Step 1

Navigate to Bot Framework Portal from https://dev.botframework.com/

Step 2

Click on Sign in button and login with credential

Step 3

Click on Create a Bot or Skill

Step 4

Click on Create a Bot and click on Register

Step 5

Upload relevant app png icon and max size should be 30k

Step 6

Provide your bot's Display Name.

Step 6

Provide a Description of your bot.

Step 7

Provide your bot's Https endpoint in configuration section.

• We have not yet deployed our bot to the cloud so leave the endpoint blank for now. We will return to the Bot Framework Portal later and specify the endpoint after we have deployed our bot.

Step 8

On the next page, click Generate an app password to continue.

Step 9

Copy and securely store the password that is shown, and then click Ok.

Step 10

Click Finish and go back to Bot Framework.

Step 11

Back in the Bot Framework Portal, the App ID field is now populated.

Click 12

Click on Register to complete the registration process.

Update Web Configuration file

Open your project in Visual Studio and update the Microsoft App Id and Microsoft App Password values in your web configuration settings to specify the app ID and password values that were generated for your bot during the above registration process.