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  1. Home
  2. Docs
  3. Bots
  4. Bot Building
  5. Action & Info Task
  6. Information Tasks

Information Tasks

Information tasks are used by chatbots to look up data or pull reports for users and return easy-to-consume results or a link to the results for extended data. Users can identify the specific parameters or filters for the information delivered – such as the quantity of results – for bots to deliver information in a way that’s simple for recipients to scan, process, and reuse.

For example, let’s say you have a Shopping Bot that provides search results to an end-user plus a link to view those results in detail with a means to add those items to a shopping cart list. You can define an information task to display the results of the search with a link to view the search results in detail, and then when the link is clicked, display a web page that shows items that end-user can add to the shopping cart.

In the following illustration, the Relay Bot has several tasks defined, one of which is an information task used to display the View Items link in the search results.

Information Task

When the user clicks View Items, an information report is displayed in a new tab with detailed product information and selectable results that can be added to a shopping cart as shown in the following illustration.

Information Task - View Results Report

In Bot Builder, you can define the following report types for the bot response:

    • Table Report – The report is displayed in a table format with variable-width columns.
    • Fixed-Column Table Report – The report is displayed in a table format with fixed-width columns.
    • Card Layout Report – The report is displayed as a list of cards, or text boxes with variable formatted data, including images.
    • Card Layout with Actions  Report – The report is displayed as a list of cards, or text boxes with variable formatted data, including images, plus an option to associate action tasks to the report, such as Add to Cart.
    • Card Layout with Group By Report – The report is displayed as a list of cards, or text boxes with variable formatted data that can be group by a parameter key, such as date, size, or location. The card report includes images, plus an option to associate action tasks to the report, such as Add to Cart.
    • Shopping Cart Layout with Actions – The report is displayed as a list of shopping cart options, or text boxes with variable formatted data, including images, plus an option to associate action tasks to the report, such as Add to Cart.
    • Weather Info Report – The report is specifically designed to show a serial data string of weather info by date, the day of the week, or forecast period.

Other Examples:

  • Provide account summaries
  • Show loyalty reward points
  • Look up a person’s information
  • Get a summary view of outstanding items
  • Pull a list of inventory
  • Fetch team status information
  • Update critical information

Process

The steps that you need to complete to define an information task consists of four basic steps.

Step 1:  General Settings

The first step is to define how the task is displayed to the end-user such as the task name, connection mode, descriptions, and other advanced settings for NLP ignore words, search keywords, error messages, task confirmation messages, mapping restrictions, and Kore.ai Bot Store settings.

Follow these steps to configure the general settings for an Information task:

  1. Open the bot in which you want to create the Information Task.
  2. Hover over the side navigation panel of the bot, and click Bot Tasks.
  3. On the Bot Tasks page, hover over the Information Task tab and click the plus icon.
  4. Enter a name for the task, which also doubles up as the display name. Bot Store uses the display name of the task. You can change the display name if needed. The Create Information Task dialog opens.
  5. Enter the following required details for the task, and then click Create & Proceed:

    Field Name Description
    Task Name The name of the task as displayed everywhere in the application and end-user channels.
    Display Name The name of the task as it gets displayed in the Kore.ai Bot Marketplace. It is the same as the task name unless you want to change it.
    Connection Type The connection type for Information Tasks is always web service. The web service sends data to Kore.ai when it polls using the end user credentials. This setting is read-only for information tasks.
    Connection Mode

    This is the communications protocol connection type for your task as a web service. The web service sends data to Kore.ai when polled by Kore.ai using the end-user account login credentials.

    • REST – The task uses a REST API connection that is protocol-independent to exchange messages and to handle CRUD operations for web services.
    • SOAP – The task uses a SOAP API connection based on XML protocols for message exchange.
    Long Description The long description of the information task.

Advanced Settings

To configure the advanced settings for the task, expand the section and enter the relevant details.

Field Name Description
Turn Off Confirmation Messages Select Yes to disable confirmation of the execution of a task when using NLP.
Mapped Only Action Task Select to only display this action task to an end-user if mapped from another task in a flow. When Yes is selected, the information task is not visible in an end-user search for information tasks.
Search Keywords Specify one or more search words an end-user can use to help locate this task in the Kore.ai Bot Store.
Task Demo Link Enter a www.youtube.com link to display a demo icon next to the task name in the Bot Store.
The following illustration shows a bot task defined with a Task Demo Link.
Authorization is required for Accessing the WSDL File
(Applies only to SOAP requests)
Select Yes to use authentication if web service authorization is required to access the WSDL for SOAP requests. When Yes is selected, the Authentication defined for the API request is used to access the WSDL. This setting is only available when the task Connection Mode is set to SOAP.
Get Optional Fields Select Yes to require the end-user to select and then enter at least one of the available optional parameters.
Ignore Words Enter one or more words to ignore for the task name, and then press enter after each word.
The list of words to ignore is processed by the Bots Platform before interpreting the user input. This means the Bot can respond faster to user input and provide the correct task by filtering out words that apply to many tasks but do not help to identify which task. For example, a user may input, I want to get the weather forecast for today. To return the correct action task to the user, the Bots Platform interpreter only needs to recognize three words, weather, forecast, and today. The rest of the words can be ignored.
The Kore.ai Bots interpreter is already defined with a set of generic ignore words, so words like I, you, want, get, etc., do not need to be defined as ignore words. If your Bot uses the same words for many or all tasks, for example, your company name, you might add your company name as an ignore word.
Error Messages Edit or add custom HTTP Status Codes and error messages for your Bot. For more information, see Customizing Error Messages.

Step 2: Authentication Settings

If required for your task, you will define the authentication, for example, basic authorization, OAuth, or API Key.

Depending on the Bot action task, you may need to define how a user must be authenticated to initiate the action task. For example, Twitter can have an action task using web services that require an end-user to authenticate, usually with a login username and password, to allow Kore.ai to access the end-user account for data before executing the action task.
You can define an Authorization profile or use an existing one. All authorization profiles, whether you create them at a task level or a bot level, can be used across all bot tasks.

  1. To get started with defining the Authorization for a task, from the API Request tab, click the Expand  icon in the Authorization section.
  2. If you have previously defined authentication for this task, you can select it in the Authorization Provider drop-down list.
  3. If your task does not require authentication, you can select None as the Authorization provider.
  4. To define a new authorization provider, click Create New to display the New Authorization Mechanism dialog.
  5. In the dialog, from the Authorization Type drop-down list, select the type of authorization used by your Bot. You can choose one of the following types of authorization:
    • Basic Auth – A standard protocol to collect username and password information. Kore.ai uses SSL encryption in combination with basic authentication to help secure end-user information. Click on the below link for the configuration details.
      Setting Up Authorization using Basic Auth
    • OAuth v2 password grant type – Define a custom authorization type for non-standard web service authorization types. Click on the link below for the configuration details.
      Setting Up Authorization using oAuth v2 password grant
    • OAuth v2 client credential
    • OAuth v1 – Enables web applications or web services to access protected resources using an API without end-users having to disclose their log on credentials to Kore.ai. Click on the link below for the configuration details.
      Setting Up Authorization using OAuth v1
    • OAuth v2 – The newest version of OAuth protocol focusing on specific authorization flows for web applications and web services. Click on the link below for the configuration details.
      Setting Up Authorization using OAuth v2
    • API Key – An identification and authorization token generated or provided by a web application or web service used to identify the incoming application request, and in some cases, also provide authentication for secure access. Click on the link below for the configuration details.
      Setting Up Authorization using an API Key

Step 3:  API Request

If required for your task, you can define a request object to, for example, provide a dynamic drop-down choice for the end-user to select from to complete the task. On the information task API Request tab, you can define API Parameters, optional API task Initializer, API Request pre- or post-processor, and the API Request. You will also need to add a Response Sample expected from your API Request payload.

You can also configure an information task request using SOAP in which case you need to configure the WSDL URL, and Connectors.

API Request - Rest
API Request - SOAP

Step 4:  Defining the Bot Response

The Bot response provides a message to the end-user to inform the end-user of the status or completion of the task. On the Bot Response tab for a task, you can define the message to display to the end-user from the API request payload. You can define a default response for all channels, and optionally define channel-specific messages.

After you describe your Bot alert task General tab settings and then configure the alert task API request chain, you are ready to define how the alert task results are displayed to the end-user. This section describes how to configure an alert task response.
To define the response object for an alert task, there are two sections:

  • Report Template Definition – For some tasks, you may want to display report data to the end-user as a link that can display the payload response using a template, such as a table, contact card, or formatted for a specific message type such as a weather report.

    Note: This section is not used for webhook alert tasks, action tasks, or RSS alert tasks.

    Configuring the Report Template Definition

  • Message Definition – In this section, you define the look and feel of the data presented to the end-user when the alert is displayed based on the payload delivered by the webhook.
    Defining the Message Definition
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