In this How-To, we will explore a scenario in a Banking Bot, where the account-related data for a customer is stored in a Data Table. We will see how the required information gathered from the user can be stored.

For details on what Data Tables are and how it is implemented in the Kore.ai Bots platform, refer here.

Problem Statement

Consider a Banking Bot, for a given customer, the following data needs to be stored:

1. Id;
2. Name;
3. Email id;
4. Address; and
5. Type

Pre-requisites

• Bot building knowledge;
• A Banking Bot.

Configurations

Let us consider each of the following scenarios one by one:

1. Define Data Table with the above requirements;
2. Dialog Task to:
   1. gather required information; and
   2. invoke a service to update the customer information.

Data Table Configuration

Create a Data Table to hold the following information:

• CustId – A unique identifier for a customer;
• CustName – Name of the customer;
• CustEmail – Email id of the customer;
• CustType – Type of customer – Regular, Preferred, etc.
• Address – Customer Address;

Table Creation

1. Log in to the Kore.ai Bot Builder platform.
2. Select the Data tab.
   
3. Click the New Table button.
4. In the New Table page enter the following:
   1. Name, say customertable;
   2. Description, say Table containing customer details;
5. Under the Column section add the following details:
   

   Column Name	Type	Required	Additional Settings
   CustId	number	Yes	Encrypted & Max Length of 5
   CustName	string	Yes	–
   Address	string	No	–
   CustType	string	No	Default Value as Preferred
   CustEmail	string	No	–

   

6. Under the Indexes section add an index for CustId to be unique.
   
7. Click Create and your table is ready.
8. Under the Bot Assignments add the bot which would be using this table, say Banking Bot, and give Read, Write and Delete permissions. Deletepermission is optional since we would not be deleting data.
   

Dialog Task Configuration

We will be creating a dialog task to gather the required information, and use a Service node to update the data table with the values thus gathered.

Create Dialog Task

1. From the left navigation menu, select Bot Tasks -> Dialog Tasks.
2. Click the + against the Dialog Tasks to create a new Task
   • Enter IntentName, say, AddCustomer
   • Create & Proceed to open the dialog builder page.
3. Retain the Intent Node default settings, and close the Intent Node.
4. Click the + next to the intent node and add four Entities as follows:
   

   Entity Name	Type	User Prompts
   CustName	String	Enter your name
   CustEmail	Email	Enter your email id
   CustAddress	City	Enter your address city
   CustType	List of items (enumerated)	Select your income range

   CustType can be Basic, Preferred, or Premium based on the income level of the customer. For this purpose, we have used a static list to populate the CustType value as follows:

   

5. For generating the CustID, we need to get the last customer id in the table and add one to it. For this, we will first fetch data from the table and then use a Script node to process the id.

Fetch Data

You can use a Service call to fetch data from the table:

1. Click the + against the last entity node.
2. Select Service -> New Service Node option.
3. From the General Settings section configure the following:
   • Name say GetLastCustId
   • Display Name say Get Customer Data
   • Service Type select Data Service
   • Type select Table
4. Under Request Definition click Add Request to define a request to fetch data from the table.
5. In the Data Service Request Definition page, enter the following:
   • • Choose Table Name as customertable
     • Actions as Get Data
       
6. Test and Save the definition and close the service node.
7. Add a Script node to process the values fetched from the data service to obtain the value for the next customer id using the following script:

   var resultSet = context.GetLastCustId.response.body.queryResult;
   var id = 0;
   
   if (!resultSet.length) {
       id=1;
   } else {
       for (var i=0; i<resultSet.length; i++) {
           if (id < resultSet[i].CustId) {
               id = resultSet[i].CustId;
            }
           }
       id++;    
       }
   context.lastID = id;

8. Now we have all the required data to add to the table.

Add Data

We will be using a Service call to add data to the table:

1. Click the + against the last Entity node added above.
2. Select Service -> New Service Node option.
3. From the General Settings section configure the following:
   • Name say AddCustData
   • Display Name say Add Customer Data
   • Service Type select Data Service
   • Type select Table
4. Under Request Definition click Add Request to define a request to add data to the table.
5. In the Data Service Request Definition page, enter the following:
   • Choose Table Name as customertable defined earlier
   • Actions as Add Data
   • Assign Values from the entities defined as follows:
     

     Column	Entity context
     CustName	{{context.entities.CustName}}
     CustEmail	{{context.entities.CustEmail}}
     Address	{{context.entities.CustAddress}}
     CustType	{{context.entities.CustType}}
     CustId	{{context.lastID}}

     

6. Add a Message node to display the values added using the following response format:
   'Customer account created for: {{context.GetCustData.response.body.queryResult[0].CustName}}, {{context.GetCustData.response.body.queryResult[0].CustEmail}}, {{context.GetCustData.response.body.queryResult[0].CustAddress}}, {{context.GetCustData.response.body.queryResult[0].CustType}}'
7. Using Talk to bot option, enter the values when prompted and see the message being displayed.

Conclusion

In this post, we have seen:

• How to create a Data Table;
• Add columns to the Table;
• How to fetch the data from the table using a service node and use it for further processing;
• How to add data to the table from the Dialog task using a service node;

Next Steps

• Click here for steps on how to update the data table.
• Click here for steps on how to add data obtained from the Digital forms.