Second post on this blog, here we go! There are many ways to make chatbots, in this post I’ll explain how to set up a Facebook Page for Messenger chatbot integration, along with a 3rd party service called Amazon Lex.
What is Amazon Lex and Facebook Chatbot
A chatbot is a type of software that is designed to listen to and respond to users in a conversation. You often see chatbots applied to automated text messaging / phone call services, as well as on website and social media platforms. Chatbots are often paired Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), to create systems that can understand a users ‘intention’ behind their message – rather than just a specific phrase, allowing the chatbot’s conversational performance to appear more seamless.
Amazon Lex is a service from Amazon Web Services, that allows developers to create a conversational artificial intelligence. This technology is the performs the ‘intention’ recognition that I described above (as well as triggering programmatic responses via Lamda functions), it is used to power Amazon Alexa and can also be used as the brain to a chatbot.
A Facebook Chatbot is a special type of Facebook App, which is built into Messenger. It is an app that can be programmed to automatically respond to user messages.
When you put Amazon Lex and Facebook Messenger Bot together, you get a chatbot, which is hosted on and interacted with via Facebook’s platform – which has a ‘brain’ powered by the same technology that enables Alexa, via Amazon Lex.
For this example, I’ll be using a Facebook page called ‘Deathroy – the Lincoln Goose‘ (a Facebook Page that was created for a famous goose from the city where I went to university – its a long story).
Having explained the theory of the chatbot, there are a few things you need to have done prior to being able to follow along with this tutorial:
Assumptions of your technical knowledge
For this post, you will need to have
- Set up your own Facebook Page (not a Facebook Profile or Group)
- A fairly good understanding of how to use Facebook
- Activated your Facebook profile as a Developer account
Seems pretty simple, lets get go!
Step 1: Create a new Facebook App ID
Open a web browser and navigate to https://developers.facebook.com/apps/, then click on ‘Add a New App’ and enter in the name of your Facebook app, along with your email address (I’ve blurred mine in the below screenshot) – click the blue ‘Create App ID’ button once you’ve entered your details.
Step 2: Add Messenger functionality to your App
Add Messenger functionality to your app by clicking the ‘Set Up’ button within the Messenger option at the top left of the other options.
Step 3: Add Messaging privileges
Scroll down to where it says ‘App Review for Messenger’ and add ‘pages_messaging’ by clicking the ‘Add to Submission’ button on the right.
Step 4: Generate Page Access Tokens
Scroll back up the page and generate an access token for a facebook page you own by clicking on the blue ‘Add or Remove Pages’ button within the ‘Access Tokens’ section.
Step 5: Copy Page Access Tokens
Tick the ‘I Understand’ tick box and then copy the key access token that is displayed. Make note of it somewhere as you won’t be able to view it again for security reasons.
Step 6: Copy the App Secret key
In the left navigation bar, click ‘Settings’ and ‘Basic’ to view the app details. To the right of the screen you will see a hidden key under ‘App Secret’, click the ‘Show’ button and make a note of the revealed characters – this will be needed in a later step.
Step 7: Open a new web tab for AWS
Open a new tab in your web browser and navigate to aws.amazon.com and sign in to your Amazon Web Services account.
Step 8: Navigate to Amazon Lex
Navigate to Amazon Lex within the AWS interface and make sure you are in a region that supports Amazon Lex, in my case I’m from the England – so the closest supporting region is Ireland. Once done, click on the ‘Create’ button and enter the name of the bot you’re creating, in my case is it ‘Deathroy’.
Step 9: Create an Alias
To identify and version your not, create an Alias within the ‘Settings’ tab by clicking the blue plus icon – in my case I called the Alias ‘Dev’.
Step 10: Set up Facebook Channel information
Then open the ‘Channels’ tab click on the ‘Facebook’ channel to see form that needs to be filled. Fill out all the details on the form – apart from ‘Verify Token’, this will be provided in the next step. Ensure you remember to use the ‘Page Access Token’ that you generated from step 5 and the ‘App Secret Key’ that you copied from step 6.
Step 11: Create a Verify Token
Go back to your other tab in your web browser that contains your Facebook Messenger app. Find the area labelled ‘Edit Callback Url’ and write a phrase or set of characters into the area labelled ‘Verify Token’ – remember this set of characters for the next step because you’ll need to provide the same ‘Verification Token’ to Amazon Lex. Leave the ‘Callback URL’ blank for now, you will be provided this url in the next step.
Step 12: Generate callback URL
Go back to your AWS tab and enter the token you’ve just created into ‘Verify Token’, then click Activate. You will then be able to create and copy an Endpoint URL, which you then need to paste into the ‘Callback URL’ field in the Facebook app browser tab from the previous step and click the blue ‘Verify and Save’ button.
Step 13: Set up an intent
In the Amazon Lex browser tab, navigate to Editor and click on the small blue plus icon to create a new intent and give it a name. In this case I named mine ‘WeatherAtBrayford’.
Step 14: Enter intent details
Enter various phrases that you would like then trigger your intent, in my case I entered in several different phrases that asked you what the weather was like – e.g ‘What is the weather like?’. These will be triggers for an action that you’d like the bot to execute.
Then scroll down to the ‘Fulfilment’ section and create a message by ticking the ‘Message’ tick box, in my case I wrote ‘It is good lol’. This is what the bot will say in response when the intent has been recognised. Then click the ‘Safe Intent’ button.
Step 15: Build the bot
At the top right of the screen click the grey ‘Build’ button and then the blue ‘Build’ button – to compile the all the configurations you’ve set up into a bot that can be deployed.
Step 16: Publish the bot
Once the bot has been built, click on the blue ‘Publish’ button, select your Alias (in my case Dev) and click on the blue ‘Publish’ button.
Step 17: Test the bot
Once the bot has been published, open Facebook Messenger and try to message your bot with the key phrase you entered in as an ‘Intent’, in my case this is ‘What is the weather like?’.
Then if all worked correctly, the bot will respond, yay!!!! 😀
Please note that you have not yet gone through Facebooks Bot approval process, so this will only respond to you + others that you give special privileges!
Approving the bot for public use will have to be another blog post!!
Creative Technologist