Tutorial: Create a QnA Bot with Azure Bot Service v4

  • 2 minutes to read
  • Contributors

Create a QnA chat bot from the Publish page for an existing knowledge base. This bot uses the Bot Framework SDK v4. You do not need to write any code to build the bot, all the code is provided for you.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

  • Create an Azure Bot Service from an existing knowledge base
  • Chat with the bot to verify the code is working

Prerequisites

You need to have a published knowledge base for this tutorial. If you do not have one, follow the steps in Create and answer from KB tutorial to create a QnA Maker knowledge base with questions and answers.

Create a QnA Bot

Create a bot as a client application for the knowledge base.

  1. In the QnA Maker portal, go to the Publish page, and publish your knowledge base. Select Create Bot.

    In the QnA Maker portal, go to the Publish page, and publish your knowledge base. Select Create Bot.

    The Azure portal opens with the bot creation configuration.

  2. Enter the settings to create the bot:

    Setting Value Purpose
    Bot name my-tutorial-kb-bot This is the Azure resource name for the bot.
    Subscription See purpose. Select the same subscription as you used to create the QnA Maker resources.
    Resource group my-tutorial-rg The resource group used for all the bot-related Azure resources.
    Location west us The bot's Azure resource location.
    Pricing tier F0 The free tier for the Azure bot service.
    App name my-tutorial-kb-bot-app This is a web app to support your bot only. This should not be the same app name as your QnA Maker service is already using. Sharing QnA Maker's web app with any other resource is not supported.
    SDK Language C# This is the underlying programming language used by the bot framework SDK. Your choices are C# or Node.js.
    QnA Auth Key Do not change This value is filled in for you.
    App service plan/Location Do not change For this tutorial, the location is not important.
    Azure Storage Do not change Conversation data is stored in Azure Storage tables.
    Application Insights Do not change Logging is sent to Application Insights.
    Microsoft App ID Do not change Active directory user and password is required.

    Create the knowledge base bot with these settings.

    Wait a couple of minutes until the bot creation process notification reports success.

Chat with the Bot

  1. In the Azure portal, open the new bot resource from the notification.

    In the Azure portal, open the new bot resource from the notification.

  2. From Bot management, select Test in Web Chat and enter: How large can my KB be?. The bot will respond with:

    The size of the knowledge base depends on the SKU of Azure search you choose when creating the QnA Maker service. Read [here](https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/cognitive-services/qnamaker/tutorials/choosing-capacity-qnamaker-deployment)for more details.

    Test the new knowledge base bot.

    For more information about Azure Bots, see Use QnA Maker to answer questions

Clean up resources

When you are done with this tutorial's bot, remove the bot in the Azure portal.

If you created a new resource group for the bot's resources, delete the resource group.

If you didn't create a new resource group, you need to find the resources associated with the bot. The easiest way is to search by the name of the bot and bot app. The bot resources include:

  • The App Service plan
  • The Search service
  • The Cognitive service
  • The App service
  • Optionally, it may also include the application insights service and storage for the application insights data

Next steps

Concept: knowledge base

See also