Enterprise Calendar Bot template for Composer

APPLIES TO: Composer v2.x

The Enterprise Calendar Bot helps to manage user's schedule by displaying, creating, and rescheduling calendar events.

Conversational experience

The following are the applicable core scenarios:

Showcase

• "Set up a meeting with Anna for tomorrow at 9 AM"
• "When do I have breaks today"
• "What is scheduled for tomorrow", and much more!

Developer experience

The Enterprise Calendar Bot template highlights the recommended best practices for complex conversational experiences. The bot demonstrates this through the following features:

• Adaptive Dialogs with Interruptions
• Language Understanding with LUIS
• Language Generation and Adaptive Cards
• Custom actions for Microsoft Graph

Adaptive dialogs with interruptions

Adaptive Dialogs enable more flexibility and sophistication in dialog flows. Learn more about Adaptive Dialogs. The Enterprise Calendar Bot uses these features to build flows that can be interrupted by configuring different rules that allow prompt responses to be evaluated against the full stack of language recognizers to find the best flow for the user's utterance. Each intent handled in the Enterprise Calendar Bot implements the following design pattern:

1. Recognize intent at Root Dialog level
2. Emit SetOptions custom event
   1. Extract all entities and save them in bot state
   2. Authenticate user
   3. Get user profile from Microsoft Graph
3. Begin the child dialog and pass in entities as dialog options
4. Execute dialog logic in OnBeginDialog trigger of child dialog
5. For any activities received by during the execution of the child dialog, recognize intent and evaluate interruption rules

The Enterprise Calendar Bot contains the following dialogs:

Each dialog follows these patterns:

• Each dialog contains a series of OnEvent trigger steps that are called from the OnBeginDialog trigger. This makes the flow easier to follow and allows the steps to be executed in a different order without duplication.

  

• OnIntent triggers have been added for each dialog where interruptions are allowed. Each Input action uses the allowInterruptions property to configure the rules that should apply to that specific prompt.

  

  

• Reusable flows have been factored out into separate dialogs so that the logic is consistent throughout. Some examples in this project are GetEventsDialog, GetContactsDialog ListDialog, and ResolveDateTimeDialog.

Language Understanding (LUIS)

LUIS lets you recognize intents and extract entities from user utterances. In this project, each dialog that includes language understanding has its own LUIS model containing the specific intents that should be recognized in the context of that dialog flow. If the dialog is configured to allow interruptions, but doesn't recognize an intent, the utterance may be evaluated against the other recognizers in the dialog stack. Learn more about language understanding.

The language model included in this project recognizes the following intents:

Language generation with Adaptive Cards

Language generation is the tool for writing bot responses in Composer. The Enterprise Calendar Bot uses many LG templates, including Adaptive Cards. To enable the easy reuse of assets and cards, the templates are broken down into the following files that are imported throughout the project:

• Actions.lg contains all the actions used in cards throughout the project. This helps keep all the actions consistent.
• Icons.lg contains all the icons used throughout the project. This simplifies any card templates and makes updating the icons simpler.
• Functions.lg contains any common functions used throughout the project.
• Cards.lg contains standard Adaptive Card templates and structure. This reduces the time required to create cards and ensures consistency in layout.

Custom actions for Microsoft Graph

The Enterprise Calendar Bot uses the Microsoft Graph API to access and manage the user's calendar. To simplify the visual flows in Composer, the Microsoft Graph API calls are made in code and exposed as custom actions in Composer. This enables the reuse of the Microsoft Graph actions in multiple dialogs and projects, and a more friendly experience in Composer. Learn more about custom actions.

Here's what the custom Create Event action looks like in Composer:

Data usage and storage

The Enterprise Calendar Bot requires access to users' Microsoft Graph data. The following tables outline what data is accessed, where it's stored, and the default data retention policy for each service. We recommend reviewing this information and adjusting the default configuration of your services to meet your organization's compliance standards.

Storage locations

This section outlines the different data stores used in a typical bot lifecycle, their purpose, and our recommendations for configuring them.

Azure Cosmos DB (Required)

Cosmos DB is the default and recommended provider for storing Bot State. Bot State is split into four different scopes with different default lifetimes over the course of a conversation. The default scopes are as follows:

• Conversation State: For storing values that should persist over the lifetime of a conversation with a user on a given channel. In a channel with persistent conversations such as Microsoft Teams or Facebook Messenger, this could be stored indefinitely.
• User State: For storing values that should persist over the lifetime of a user on a given channel. In a channel with persistent conversations such as Microsoft Teams or Facebook Messenger, this could be stored indefinitely.
• Dialog State: For storing values that should persist for the length of a dialog. If a dialog is left in a waiting state in a channel with persistent conversations such as Microsoft Teams or Facebook Messenger, this could be stored indefinitely.
• Turn State: For storing values that persist only for the current turn. A turn indicates the time between the user's response. Every time a new activity from a user is received, Turn State is reset. Turn State properties are never written to a persistent storage location.

Due to the potentially sensitive data stored by the skills in Bot State, we recommend the following configuration for your Cosmos DB resource:

• Configure a default Time to Live (TTL) for your Cosmos DB container. This value should be adjusted according to your organization's standards. Learn more.

Application Insights (Recommended)

If you have Application Insights provisioned and configured in your Project Settings, each incoming and outgoing activity will be logged including varying properties depending on your settings. You can configure your telemetry settings in your Project Settings in Composer by toggling the following properties:

"runtimeSettings": {
    "telemetry": {
      "logActivities": true,
      "logPersonalInformation": false
    }
}

The logActivities property controls whether activity will be logged in Application Insights, and the logPersonalInformation property controls whether the logged activities will include the Activity.Text, Activity.Speak, and Activity.From.Name properties. By default, any telemetry stored in Application Insights will follow the default retention duration. You may want to change this behavior depending on your organization's standards. Learn more.

Azure Blob Storage (Optional)

If you have transcript storage configured in your Project Settings, each incoming and outgoing activity will be logged in Azure Blob Storage. This is useful for analysis of your bot's conversations but should be evaluated against your organization's compliance standards. You can configure transcript storage in your Project Settings in Composer by toggling the following property:

 "runtimeSettings": {
    "features": {
      "traceTranscript": false
    }
}

Next steps

To get started using the Enterprise Calendar Bot template in Bot Framework Composer, follow the steps in