Ever had the problem of needing to handle countless types of small talk (e.g. "hello", "good afternoon", "goodbye", "you're terrible", "what's up")? This is an easy to use, plug-n-play small talk module, using QnA maker and combinable with LUIS.

Note: This is a port over from API.AI's small talk module. It uses the same intents and scripted replies.

I have used QnA maker because 1. It is cost effective, and 2. Creating an intent for each type of smalltalk is not scalable in the long run. I understand that QnA maker is traditionally used for knowledge base scenarios, but hey if it works then why not.

How it works: An excel containing the question and intent matches is uploaded to QnA maker. In the bot, the result from QnA maker is mapped to a list of possible responses (see smalltalk.js in the lib folder), which are selected at random.

Create a QnA maker service for free here.

Click on "Replace knowledge base". Upload the smalltalkkb.tsv file. Publish it as a web service.

Go into the .env file and replace with knowledge base id and subscription key which you can find in the settings page of the QnA maker portal.

Build using npm install then run it using npm start. You can now test it in the Bot Framework emulator.

var QnAClient = require('../lib/client');
...
var qnaClient = new QnAClient({
    knowledgeBaseId: process.env.KB_ID,
    subscriptionKey: process.env.QNA_KEY,
    scoreThreshold: 0.5 // OPTIONAL: Default value is 0.2
});
...
// Post user's question to QnA smalltalk kb
qnaClient.post({ question: session.message.text }, function (err, res) {
    if (err) {
        console.error('Error from callback:', err);
        session.send('Oops - something went wrong.');
        return;
    }

    if (res) {
        // Send reply from QnA back to user
        session.send(res);
    } else {
        // Confidence in top result is not high enough - discard result
        session.send('Hmm, I didn\'t quite understand you there. Care to rephrase?')
    }
});

The scoreThreshold field is modifiable. It is the confidence level required for the reply to be sent back to the user. A high value means that QnA maker has to be very sure of what the user has said before sending the reply back.

We are going to create an intent called "smalltalk" and upload all the smalltalk utterances into this intent through the LUIS API.

Go to the LUIS portal, create an intent called "smalltalk". Then cd into the luis folder, and run node uploadtoluis. Wait for all the utterances to be uploaded to LUIS (you'll see the batch request success message about ~10 times). You should see on your intents dashboard that there are 1400+ utterances in the smalltalk intent.

Retrain and publish your LUIS model - any smalltalk from the user will now be routed to the smalltalk intent, which you can pass to the QnA maker smalltalk module in your code. I have not yet tested the effectiveness of this - do let me know how it goes if you integrate smalltalk with your LUIS model.

Let's say you wanted your smalltalk module to handle when the user wants a joke. Add the following to the smalltalkkb.tsv file:

Replace your knowledge base in QnA maker with the updated one and publish.

Then, add the following to the smalltalk.js file.

[
    ...
    "smalltalk.agent.tell_joke": [
        "Standing in the park, I was wondering why a Frisbee gets larger the closer it gets. Then it hit me.",
        "I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.",
        "The early bird gets the worm but the late worm gets to live."
    ]
]

You may find that the current smalltalk module is still not accurate enough. Please note that even the smalltalk module on API.AI is not totally accurate - it will still require additional training and refinement on your part.

You can continue to train the smalltalk module to be more accurate or handle more types of smalltalk by adding or removing utterances in the smalltalkkb.tsv file (then reupload to QnA maker), or directly train it using the QnA maker portal.

To modify the responses by the smalltalk module, you can go into smalltalk.js to add/remove the responses for the various types of smalltalk.

Feel free to contribute to this project! Use the following guidelines:

1. Fork the repo on GitHub
2. Clone the project to your own machine
3. Commit changes to your own branch
4. Push your work back up to your fork
5. Submit a Pull Request on Github so that I can review your change

• BestMatchDialog (C#) to handle greetings by Gary Pretty
• 1000 must have utterances in LUIS by Benjamin Perkins