Skill CLI Tool

Botskills command line tool allows you to automate the connection between the Virtual Assistant and your Skills, which includes the process of updating your dispatch models and create authentication connections where needed. The CLI performs the following operations on your behalf:

1. Retrieve the Skill Manifest from the remote Skill through the /manifest/manifest-1.1.json endpoint. If it is a local Skill you should specify the path.
2. Identify which Language Models are used by the Skill and resolve the triggering utterances either through local LU file resolution.
3. Add a new dispatch target using the dispatch tool to trigger the utterances retrieved in the previous step.
4. 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.

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 the botskills CLI

    npm install -g botskills
  

Commands

For all of these commands, the tool assumes that you are running the CLI within the Virtual Assistant project directory and have created your Bot through the template.

Connect Skills

The connect command allows you to connect a Skill, be it local or remote, to your Virtual Assistant bot. The Skill and Virtual Assistant can be in different coding languages without problem, this is, you can connect a Skill coded in C# into a Virtual Assistant coded in TypeScript, but be sure to specify your Virtual Assistant’s coding language using --cs or --ts.

Here is an example:

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

Remember to re-publish your Assistant to Azure after you’ve added a Skill unless you plan on testing locally only

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>"

For further information, see the Connect command documentation.

Disconnect Skills

The disconnect command allows you to disconnect a Skill from your Virtual Assistant. You can always check the Skills already connected to your Virtual Assistant using the list command. Remember to specify the coding language of your Virtual Assistant using --cs or --ts.

Here is an example:

botskills disconnect --skillId <YOUR_SKILL_ID> --cs

Bear in mind that the skillId parameter is case sensitive

For further information, see the Disconnect command documentation.

Note: The id of the Skill can also be aquired using the botskills list command. You can check the List command documentation.

Update a connected Skill

The update command allows you to update a Skill, be it local or remote, to your Virtual Assistant bot. The Skill and Virtual Assistant can be in different coding languages without problem, this is, you can update a Skill coded in C# into a Virtual Assistant coded in TypeScript, but be sure to specify your Virtual Assistant’s coding language using --cs or --ts.

Here is an example:

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

For further information, see the Update command documentation.

Refresh connected Skills

The refresh command allows you to train and publish your existing dispatch model of your Virtual Assistant, specifying the Virtual Assistant’s coding language using --cs or --ts. This functionality is mainly useful after using the connect or disconnect command with the --noRefresh flag.

Here is an example:

botskills refresh --cs

For further information, see the Refresh command documentation.

List connected Skills

The list command allows you to acknowledge the Skills currently connected to your Virtual Assistant.

Here is an example:

botskills list

For further information, see the List command documentation.

Migrate Skills

The migrate command allows you to transfer all the skills currently connected to your assistant to the new schema configuration settings.

Here is an example:

botskills migrate --sourceFile "<YOUR-ASSISTANT_PATH>/skills.json" --destFile "<YOUR-ASSISTANT_PATH>/appsettings.json"

For further information, see the Migrate command documentation.