This site is obsolete and should be used for reference only. The information in this documentation is not guaranteed to work for Bot Framework SDK versions past 4.9.1.

Add a Skill to a Virtual Assistant

Steps for adding a skill to an assistant

Prerequisites

Download and install Node Package manager.

Node version 10.14.1 or higher is required for the Bot Framework CLI

Install the Dispatch and botframework-cli

  npm install -g botdispatch @microsoft/botframework-cli

.NET Core runtime: ^2.1.0
Install Botskills CLI tool:
```
 npm install -g botskills@latest
```

Botskills operations

To add your new Skill to your Virtual Assistant we provide a botskills command line tool to automate the process of adding the Skill to your Virtual Assistant’s dispatch model.

The CLI performs the following operations on your behalf:

Retrieve the Skill Manifest from the remote Skill through the /manifest/manifest-1.1.json endpoint.
Identify which Language Models are used by the Skill and resolve the triggering utterances either through local LU file resolution or through inline trigger utterances if requested.
Add a new dispatch target using the dispatch tool using the trigger utterances retrieved in the previous step.
Refresh the dispatch LUIS model with the new utterances.

Your Virtual Assistant must have been deployed using the deployment tutorial before using the botskills CLI as it relies on the Dispatch models being available and a deployed Bot for authentication connection information.

Skill Deployment

See the Skills Overview section for details on the Skills provided as part of the Virtual Assistant Solution Accelerator. Follow the deployment instructions required for each skill you wish to use and then return to this section to add these skills to your Virtual Assistant.

Connect a Skill to your Virtual Assistant

Run the following command to add each Skill to your Virtual Assistant. This assumes you are running the CLI within the Virtual Assistant’s project directory and have created your bots through the template and therefore have a appsettings.json file present in the working folder.

botskills connect --remoteManifest "https://<YOUR_SKILL_NAME>.azurewebsites.net/manifest/manifest-1.1.json" --cs --luisFolder "<PATH_TO_LU_FOLDER>"

The --luisFolder parameter can be used to point the Botskills CLI at the source LU files for trigger utterances (defaults to Deployment/Resources/Skills/ inside your assistant folder). The CLI will automatically traverse locale folder hierarchies. Also, you have to specify the --cs (for C#) or --ts (for TypeScript) argument for determining the coding language of your assistant, since each language takes different folder structures that need to be taken into consideration.

Once the connect command finish successfully, you can see under the botFrameworkSkills property of your Virtual Assistant’s appsettings.json file that the following structure was added with the information provided in the Skill manifest.

"botFrameworkSkills": {
    "id": "<SKILL_ID>",
    "appId": "<SKILL_APPID>",
    "skillEndpoint": "<SKILL_ENDPOINT>",
    "name": "<SKILL_NAME>",
    "description": "<SKILL_DESCRIPTION>"
},
"skillHostEndpoint": "<VA_SKILL_ENDPOINT>"

Authentication Connection configuration

If a Skill requires Authentication connections to Office/Office 365 this is completed as part of the Skill deployment. No authentication configuration is now required at the Assistant layer.

Remove a Skill from your Virtual Assistant

To disconnect a Skill from your Virtual Assistant use the disconnect command, passing the id of the Skill as per the manifest (e.g. calendarSkill). Also, you have to specify the --cs (for C#) or --ts (for TypeScript) argument for determining the coding language of your assistant, since each language takes different folder structures that need to be taken into consideration. You can use the botskills list to view the registered skills.

botskills disconnect --skillId <YOUR_SKILL_ID> --cs

The skillId parameter is case sensitive and can also be aquired using the botskills list command.

Updating an existing Skill to reflect changes of the Skill Manifest

Run the following command to update a specific Skill already connected to your Virtual Assistant. This assumes you are running the CLI within the Virtual Assistant’s project directory and have created your bots through the template and therefore have a appsettings.json file present in the working folder.

botskills update --remoteManifest "https://<YOUR_SKILL_NAME>.azurewebsites.net/manifest/manifest-1.1.json" --cs --luisFolder "<PATH_TO_LU_FOLDER>"

The --luisFolder parameter can be used to point the Skill CLI at the source LU files for trigger utterances. For Skills provided within this repo these can be found in the Deployment/Resources/LU folder of each Skill. The CLI will automatically traverse locale folder hierarchies. Also, you have to specify the --cs (for C#) or --ts (for TypeScript) argument for determining the coding language of your assistant, since each language takes different folder structures that need to be taken into consideration.

Refresh connected Skills

To refresh the dispatch model with any changes made to connected skills use the following command, specifying the --cs (for C#) or --ts (for TypeScript) argument for determining the coding language of your assistant, since each language takes different folder structures that need to be taken into consideration.

botskills refresh --cs

See the following documents for further information: