Anthony Chu

The big announcements from Microsoft haven't slowed down since the Build conference a few weeks ago. Last week, Azure Container Service reached General Availability.

Azure Container Service provides a really simple way to stand up a cluster to which we can deploy Docker images. Currently, it supports either Mesosphere DC/OS and Docker Swarm.

In this article we'll take a look at connecting to an Azure Container Service Docker Swarm cluster and deploying a simple ASP.NET Core application using the Docker CLI.

Update February 4, 2017 - Bot Framework Version 3 removed the auto translation capability.

In previous articles, we created a bot using the Microsoft Bot Framework and Azure Functions and then added natural language processing using Microsoft Cognitive Services' LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service).

Today, we'll look at how the translation capabilities automatically turn any bot into a multilingual bot. This is all built-in and we don't have to write any code at all!

Last time we created a bot using the Microsoft Bot Framework and Azure Functions. Today, we'll improve our bot by adding natural language processing using Microsoft Cognitive Services' LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service). It will be able to tell us about weather conditions from around the world.

Update: Note that this example is part of a proof-of-concept to get Bot Framework to run on Azure Functions. A typical implementation of Bot Framework and LUIS is much simpler. Check out this article for details.

LUIS

Microsoft Cognitive Services is currently free. To sign up for LUIS, we'll go to luis.ai and sign in with our Microsoft Account.

We can create and train complex natural language processing models using LUIS. That won't be necessary today... there's a pre-built model based on Microsoft's work on Cortana that we'll use to build our app.

Application Insights makes it easy to set up a ping test to monitor the availability of any web page. By default, it only supports creating a URL ping test for GET requests. In this article we'll look at how to create one for a POST request.

Update: The new Azure Bot Service uses Azure Functions to build a bot. Check out this video in which Shaun Luttin and I build a bot with it.

Microsoft announced an endless stream of awesome stuff during the Build conference this year. Two of my favorite are the new Microsoft Bot Framework and Azure Functions.

The Bot Framework makes it super easy to create a chat bot. The bots we create can be connected to platforms like Slack, Twilio, and Skype without writing additional code. We can also add machine learning to the mix by easily integrating Microsoft's LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) into any Bot Framework application.

The core logic of a bot is a REST endpoint. In the article, I'll walk through how to create a bot application and host it on Azure Functions. I'll assume a basic understanding of how to work with Azure Functions.