Multi-Channel Bot Integration

This document describes how to set up a sample Express app on Bluemix which connects the IBM Watson Conversation Service API to Slack, Facebook, and Twilio. This is a fork of the multi-channel example app from the more comprehensive botkit-middleware repo.

##Deploying the application: Press this button to deploy a clone of this repo to Bluemix

##Configuration

After successful deployment click the EDIT CODE button to configure the applciation and highlight the .env file to configure the application and add service credentials.

In the section #UNCOMMENT SERVICES TO CONNECT TO Uncomment (by removing the # at the start of the line) for the services you want to connect your Conversation workspace to. eg: If you would like to use Slack and Facebook Messenger, you must add the following lines in your .env file:

USE_SLACK=any_value
USE_FACEBOOK=any_value

The value of these variables doesn't matter, as long as they're present. The middleware knows it needs to connect to these channels.

To finish configuration add credentials for Bluemix/Conversation service and the services you wish to connect to.

Getting credentials

Watson Conversation

Follow the steps outlined in this document and paste your Conversation bot's credentials in the sample .env file in the project directory.

If you don't have a Conversation service instance, follow these steps to get started.

Slack

Follow the Getting Started section of this document from Botkit. Once you obtain the Slack token, paste the token in the .env file.

SLACK_TOKEN=<your token>

Facebook Messenger

Follow the Getting Started section of this document from Botkit.

Some helpful hints for Facebook Messenger:

• Log into the Facebook App settings page. You need to add two Products- Messenger and Webhooks.
• When setting up Messenger, make sure you have subscribed your page with your app, otherwise your app won't send back responses to your page. This step is also important cause Facebook will provide you with the FB_ACCESS_TOKEN your bot will need to communicate via Messenger.
• When setting up the webhook,
  • You'll have to first set up localtunnel locally and start it on the same port where you plan to run your Express app. Let's say you run your app on port 5000, then in one terminal window run the following command: lt --port 5000 lt will provide you with a url, part of which will be the webhook url.
  • Add (https://<your localtunnel url>/facebook/receive) as Facebook Messenger's webhook. The webhook url must contain https://. eg: If your localtunnel url is http://litjqjglwn.localtunnel.me your webhook url will be https://litjqjglwn.localtunnel.me/facebook/receive, otherwise Facebook will show an error.
  • You need to only subscribe to Messages event under Webhooks.

Once you obtain the access token (provided by Facebook), the verify token (created by you) and the app secret key for your Facebook app (provided by Facebook), paste them in the .env file of your project.

FB_ACCESS_TOKEN=<your access token>
FB_VERIFY_TOKEN=<your verify token>
FB_APP_SECRET=<your apps secret key>

When you're ready to test your bot, go to your Facebook homepage and find the page you created. Click on Message to start chatting with your Watson Conversation bot!

Twilio IPM

Follow the Getting Started section of this document from Botkit. Copy and paste all the authentication details in the .env file.

TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=<your account sid>
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=<your auth token>
TWILIO_IPM_SERVICE_SID=<your service sid>
TWILIO_API_KEY=<your twilio API key>
TWILIO_API_SECRET=<your twilio API secret>

You'll need to set up localtunnel and have it running on the same port as your app server. The webhook url for Twilio will then be (https://<your localtunnel url>/twilio/receive).

To test the bot, use this simple Twilio IPM server.

Privacy Notice

This web application includes code to track deployments to IBM Bluemix and other Cloud Foundry platforms. The following information is sent to a Deployment Tracker service on each deployment:

• Application Name (application_name)
• Space ID (space_id)
• Application Version (application_version)
• Application URIs (application_uris)
• Labels of bound services
• Number of instances for each bound service

This data is collected from the VCAP_APPLICATION and VCAP_SERVICES environment variables in IBM Bluemix and other Cloud Foundry platforms. This data is used by IBM to track metrics around deployments of sample applications to IBM Bluemix to measure the usefulness of our examples, so that we can continuously improve the content we offer to you. Only deployments of sample applications that include code to ping the Deployment Tracker service will be tracked.

Disabling Deployment Tracking

Deployment tracking can be disabled by removing require('cf-deployment-tracker-client').track(); from the beginning of the server.js file at the root of this repository.