Oscova bot - dialog learning

[todor]

Hi guys,

Currently, the only way to define a dialog (a set of intents) is to do it through code-behind. With SIML bot, I've declared markup files which were used by the bot to build the dialog. I think the old mechanism to make a dialog was much more easier. I like a lot the new architecture (the whole new product IMO ), but the way the dialog should be build is a big pain.

So, my question is do you plan to introduce a new way to build a conversation?

Best,
Todor

[Leslie]

Yes, we actually do have plans and are already testing various approaches that are suitable for creating simple conversation dialogs that are primarily composed of textual responses. At the moment I can neither disclose nor elaborate on the approaches and mechanisms being tested.

Once the pros and cons of each approach is evaluated we may integrate the best candidate into Oscova.

[todor]

Hi Leslie,

Thank you for the response.

Actually, an important part of our project is the extensibility. Since the current way to define intents is very inconvenient for our clients to do it, we are searching for another way to achieve that goal. Is there another approach we can try with the current API to create the dialog? Just not to declare the intents as methods in a class.

[Leslie]

Majority of the Enterprise licenses acquired by our clients is due to that fact that Oscova is intelligent, standalone and doesn't compromise the privacy (companies do not like giving away their employee chat logs to third parties) of end-users.

I do agree with you on extensibility. Extensibility is imperative for any architecture to be widely accepted. The reason why unlike SIML we haven't added an extension interface for Oscova in Bot Studio yet (say for instance supporting SIML Models within Oscova) is that we want Oscova to be an isolated architecture.

The moment the StartTraining method is called every minute feature from a dialog gets extracted and an internal language model is generated.

If I was in your shoes (and time was a concern), assuming that this month we don't release an update to Oscova that addresses your case, I would implement a simple C# Script system that would create Dialog classes dynamically by using a scripting engine (CsScript for example) and load the generated assemblies at run-time.

Having said all that, I would like to add that an interface that may partially come in handy for you is on its way and I estimate that the feature will be available within the next 2 to 3 weeks.

[todor]

Hi Leslie,

Thanks a lot for your response.

I've already started to generate the dialogs dynamically as you pointed out. I'm expecting the new release

Best,
Todor