Creating a chatbot with Azure QnA Maker

Posted on by Panther

Chatbots have become a popular way for businesses to interact with their customers and offer support services. With the advancement of AI and natural language processing (NLP) technology, the ability to create intelligent chatbots has become much easier. Microsoft Azure QnA Maker is one such tool that allows users to create chatbots that can answer frequently asked questions.

In this tutorial, we will walk you through the process of creating a chatbot using Azure QnA Maker. We will cover the following steps:
– Setting up Azure QnA Maker
– Creating a knowledge base
– Testing and refining your chatbot
– Deploying your chatbot to a website or messaging platform

Setting up Azure QnA Maker

To get started with Azure QnA Maker, you will need an Azure account. If you don’t already have one, you can sign up for a free trial or a paid subscription. Once you have an account, you can access the Azure portal.

  1. Navigate to the Azure portal and click on “Create a resource” in the top left corner.
  2. Search for “QnA Maker” in the search bar and click on the QnA Maker resource from the results.
  3. Click on “Create” to begin setting up your QnA Maker resource.
  4. Fill in the required information for your resource, including the subscription, resource group, and name. You will also need to choose a pricing tier, which will determine the number of transactions your chatbot can perform. (Note that there is a free tier available for testing and development purposes.)
  5. After filling in all the required information, click on “Review + Create” and then “Create” to finalize your resource.

Once your resource is created, you can access the QnA Maker portal by clicking on the resource from your Azure dashboard.

Creating a knowledge base

The next step in creating your chatbot is to create a knowledge base. A knowledge base is where you store the questions and answers that your chatbot will be able to respond to.

  1. In the QnA Maker portal, click on “Create a knowledge base”.
  2. Choose a name and language for your knowledge base, and then click on the “Create” button.
  3. Once your knowledge base is created, you will be taken to the QnA Maker editor. This is where you can add your questions and answers.
  4. To add a question and answer, click on “Add QnA pair” and then fill out the form with your question and answer. You can also add follow-up prompts for your answer to help guide the user.
  5. Repeat this process for all the questions and answers you want your chatbot to be able to respond to.
  6. You can also import questions and answers from an existing file or URL. To do this, click on “Settings” in the left-hand menu and then click on “Import data”.

Once you have added all your questions and answers to your knowledge base, you can train your chatbot. Training helps the chatbot understand the intent behind the questions and answers, which will improve its accuracy in responding to user queries.

Testing and refining your chatbot

After you have trained your chatbot, it’s time to test it out. In the QnA Maker portal, you can test your chatbot using the “Test” tab. Here, you can enter a question and see how your chatbot responds. You can also view the chat history to see how well your chatbot is performing.

If you find that your chatbot is not performing as well as you’d like, you can refine it by adding more questions and answers, adjusting the confidence threshold, or adding custom prompts. Custom prompts allow you to provide more detailed responses for specific queries. To create a custom prompt, click on the “Add a custom prompt” button on the QnA Maker editor.

Deploying your chatbot

Once you are satisfied with your chatbot’s performance, you can deploy it to a website or messaging platform. To deploy your chatbot, you will need to create a Bot Service in Azure. A Bot Service is a platform for creating and hosting bots.

  1. In the Azure portal, click on “Create a resource” and search for “Bot Service”.
  2. Choose a name and subscription for your Bot Service, and then select the “Web App bot” template.
  3. Fill in the required information for your bot, including the language, pricing tier, and Azure QnA Maker subscription.
  4. After filling in the required information, click on “Create” to create your Bot Service.

Once your Bot Service is created, you can configure it to use your QnA Maker knowledge base. To do this:
1. In the Azure portal, navigate to the Bot Service you just created.
2. Go to the “Settings” tab and then click on “Application settings”.
3. Scroll down until you see the “QnAKnowledgebaseId” and “QnASubscriptionKey” settings.
4. Copy and paste the values for these settings from your QnA Maker resource into your Bot Service.

After you have configured your Bot Service, you can test your chatbot by clicking on the “Test in Web Chat” button on the Bot Service dashboard. You can also host your chatbot on other messaging services by following the instructions in the Bot Service documentation.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have walked you through the process of creating a chatbot using Azure QnA Maker. You have learned how to set up Azure QnA Maker, create a knowledge base, test and refine your chatbot, and deploy it to a website or messaging platform. With the help of Azure QnA Maker, you can create intelligent chatbots that can handle frequently asked questions and provide support to your customers.

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