Chat BOT Design Concept – Fiori Launchpad Integrated

Preamble

This blog describes and end to end design concept of an information BOT which shall be integrated to Fiori  Launchpad. Like most of the BOT does , it enable the users to communicate with the Business Suite using interactive inputs.

Architecture

Let me breakdown the whole design in to an MVC architecture. The view part here, is a chat window. The model here, is a logic block which manages the query passed by the user and responds to the query with either a question or with an information. Lets talk about the Model first before going into the UI side.

BOT Logic block .

All processes requires a trigger point to make the BOT understand what the user is trying to do. The keywords entered by the users shall be identified as the trigger point.

Example : “Leave request” , “Leave balance” , “Approval status” etc. may trigger corresponding services.

Designing a BOT engine.

Lets take Leave request creation as an assisted transaction. When a user wants to create a leave request, he shall open the BOT Chat window and enter “Leave request” . Identifying the token entered, the control has been passed to the Leave request BOT.

To create a leave request , the system requires the below parameters.

•       Leave type
•       Date(s) in which the leave to be applied
•       Message handler ( in case of errors )
•       Reason for leave.

To read inputs from the user , we can use the UI5 controls with respect to the type of Input .

To enable the user to choose from the list , we shall send a Select List with leave types .

Once user choose from the list, the next required input is , the date range in which the leave is to be applied. The BOT shall send  a date range selector / Calendar to read the data from user.

Based on the inputs so far provided , the user shall enter the reason for leave or any additional information required based on the leave type.

Commonly used input types for transactions are

1.       Choose from a list

2.       Date range / Single date

3.       Numeric Value ( currency ,quantity , Employee Number , Request ID etc. )

4.       String Input

5.       Confirmation buttons

So, configuring a BOT scenario is tightly bound with the types of inputs user shall enter. In this case(of leave request ) , we shall configure BOT as ,

User Interface

I enhanced the Fiori Launchpad to add additional button in the header bar , to trigger the Chat BOT.

A custom control is created an open as a Dialog . This Chat control can render any sub controls and display on the screen. So , based on the Input / Output types to be passed to the user, control identifier shall be sent to the UI and display the same.

Next Steps :

Scenario Designer : – A UI where a developer can configure a scenario. Here , we can configure the complete process as we did for Leave request.

Chat control : Enhance Chat control to manage messages from back end and from the user.

Disclaimer : The images / Diagrams in this post are conceptual figures and edited. Design is incomplete and under development.

Sreehari V Pillai