ll
e r b o t A ssi
st
a n t b o tVirtual assistants usually understand natural language,
so a user can ask questions of bots as they would ask
humans (for example, “@Merakibot, how many wifi
devices are currently on floor 2?”)Bot Frameworks and Tools
There are several bot frameworks that can greatly
simplify the bot development process by abstracting
away the low-level communications with the Webex
REST API, such as creating and sending API requests
and configuring webhooks. You can focus on building the
interaction and business logic of a bot. These are two
popular bot frameworks:
Flint: Flint is an open-source bot framework with support for regex
pattern matching for messages and more.
Botkit: Botkit is a popular open-source bot framework with advanced
conversational support as well as integrations with a comprehensive
array of natural language processing and storage providers.One of the greatest starting points for learning about and
creating your own bots for Webex Teams is the DevNet
Code Exchange, at
https://developer.cisco.com/codeexchange/github/repo
/howdyai/botkit, which is shown in Figure 10-8.