Beta Release 0.6

What’s Changed

Documentation

We've moved our docs to GitHub Pages, where you can find overviews, tutorials, how-to's and reference points. If you find any issues, scroll to the bottom of a page to submit feedback!

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Virtual Assistant Client (Android)

Using Direct Line Speech, you can connect to your Virtual Assistant with a sample Android app. This is used to demonstrate speech scenarios on a native OS with multiple views (chat bubbles, native widgets). Using events you can integrate a Virtual Assistant and Skills with the default apps on a user's device, like the dialer, maps, music, etc. Going one step further with integration, companion apps can connect to the service through an AIDL interface to make requests back to a Virtual Assistant. In conjunction with an Event Companion app, you can create custom widgets on the home screen to quickly light up IOT scenarios.

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Hospitality Assistant

A sample Virtual Assistant based on hospitality scenarios is available to help conceptualize and demonstrate how one might be integrated in this industry. This assistant would be integrated in a hotel room device that can provide guests with resources they would typically reach out to a concierge for.

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Experimental Skills

• The Event Skill sample demonstrates demonstrates local event knowledge using Eventbrite.
• The Hospitality Skill sample demonstrates experiences that would be common in a hospitality-focused scenario, like ordering room service and requesting amenities.
• The IT Service Management Skill sample demonstrates basic IT ticket and knowledge base capabilities using ServiceNow.
• The Music Skill sample demonstrates basic music search functionality using Spotify.

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Libraries

Whitelist authentication

Since Skills can be added onto multiple Virtual Assistants, a Skill bot needs to verify that incoming requests come from a valid caller. Developers need to implement a whitelist mechanism that provides Skills with knowledge of their callers and give permissions to that bot explicitly.
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Skill switching in a Virtual Assistant

The Skills library is updated with a mechanism to allow for Virtual Assistants to switch between Skills as a user utterances require it so.
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Collect feedback from users

A middleware sample is available to demonstrate one method of capturing a user's feedback during a conversation with their Virtual Assistant.
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For a comprehensive list of changes, refer to the weekly preview releases prior