BotTalk New Release - Code Name SU-21

by Andrey Esaulov

It's been three weeks since our last release, but the BotTalk Devs are restless. And we're excited to share the fresh batch of updates.

Hear Your Tests

Bottalk has always been proud of its Random Walker Test feature. People everywhere are loving this unique way to take the scenario for a quick test spin: BotTalk would try to emulate the user dialogue with an assistant by walking the random flow, choosing the intents and filling in the slots.

Today we're super excited to give this feature a VOICE. This makes the world of a difference - when you can hear your scenario - it's just something magical about it. Take a listen...

Test-Driven Development

The vision of BotTalk is not to be the most shiny voice-building platform out there, but rather stay a professional tool that implements programming best practices but at the same time makes them approachable and eradicates the steep learning curve.

A great example of this approach is the new tab that we introduce to our editor - Tests. Here every BotTalk user can embrace TDD methodology with the simple and concise syntax everyone will fall in love with:

---
tests:

  # Name of the Test
  Happy Path:
  
    # What does the user says? / Intent name
    - say: start
      # What are we waiting for the assisant to say?
      wait: Welcome to our Enrollment process. Which course do you want to enroll to? 
      
    - say: enroll_for_course
      # The slots will fill in automatically
      wait: Great, you wish to be enrolled to the course {{course_name}}. In what language you prefer the course to be?
      
    - say: language_preference
      wait: Great, your course {{course_name}} will be in {{language}}. And when do you want to start?
      
    - say: starting_date
      # Twig syntax is supported as well
      wait: Perfect, your {{language}} course {{course_name}} is starting {{start_date | date("m.d.Y") }}.

You can write as many tests as you like. Write the whole batteries of tests, making sure the most critical dialog flows of your scenario will not break - when you introduce the new features. This works like a charm! Just take a look...

Built-In Slot Types

Although some of those worked under the covers from the day one, we're now officially supporting following built-slot types for both Amazon Alexa and Google Actions:

  • Color
  • Country
  • Date
  • Duration
  • Language
  • Phone number
  • Time
  • Number
  • Name

As you might imagine, there are more types to come. We'll be packing the new set of types in every future release. 📓 Learn more how to use the built-in slots in our documentation.

Conditional Steps

Last, but not least - BotTalk has made the decision making much easier for you! Well, not in general, sorry. But when it comes to scenario steps - we're introducing a new addition to our DSL: when and else conditions inside of the steps.

What might you want the conditional steps for?

A good example is greeting a complete new user of your Alexa Skill / Google Action. You may want to on-board a new user a little bit, explain how your skill or action works.

📓 Learn more about how conditional steps work in our quick tutorial.

Your Feedback

This release would not be possible without the insightful and detailed feedback from our users.

Do you want to request a feature or leave your feedback?

Join our Private Facebook Group
Join our Slack Channel

Thanks

The biggest thanks goes to the team of our programmers who made it happen! You guys rock, and we definetly need more couches in our office =)

We 💛 you all =)