Migrate SAP Conversational AI to IBM Watson Assistant

Introduction

SAP and IBM on May 2nd, 2023 has announced that IBM Watson® technology will be embedded into SAP® solutions to provide new AI-driven insights and automation to help accelerate innovation and create more efficient and effective user experiences across the SAP solution portfolio.

Announcement:

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2023-05-02-SAP-to-Embed-IBM-Watson-Artificial-Intelligence-into-SAP-R-Solutions

SAP Conversational AI is an end-to-end chatbot building program that lets you deploy conversational AI interfaces. IBM Waton Assistant uses natural language understanding (NLU) and an integrated large language model (LLM) to better understand context so that you can deliver fast, consistent, and accurate conversational interfaces into any application, device, or channel. This tutorial steps you through the process of using a converter to migrate SAP Conversational AI components to Watson Assistant.

The tutorial explains a converter that is basically a Python script that can convert an SAP Conversational AI project to a Watson Assistant project. Because writing an entire chatbot on a new system requires a lot of effort, this converter semi-automates the process, making it an easier process.

SAP CAI Project Components

Intents

Entities

Skills

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial you need:

• The latest version of Python installed. This tutorial uses Python 3.10.8.
• An IBM Cloud account.

Note: The steps shown in this tutorial is done using a Free(lite) plan of IBM cloud.

Please refer to the link below for Watson Assistant Pricing:

Watson Assistant Pricing

Steps

Step 1. Log in to SAP Conversational AI

Log in to SAP Conversational AI, and select the chatbot project that you want to migrate.

Step 2. Export and download project

1. Click Export, as shown in the following image, to export the SAP Conversational AI chatbot.

2. When the export process is complete, you can download the project to your system.

Step 3. Edit the converter script

1. Clone the project Converter

2. In the mainFun() command, replace inputFileLoc with the absolute path of the root directory for the SAP Conversational AI project that you downloaded previously.

For example:

inputFileLoc = “/users/Downloads/SAPCAI-project”

3.Mention the outputFileLoc with the absolute path where the converted Watson Assistant project is to be saved.

For example:

outputFileLoc = “/users/Downloads”

4. Execute the Python script on the terminal (or your preferred IDE).

$ python3 convertor.py

5. The output file for the Watson Assistant project is generated.

Step 4. Setting up Watson Assistant

1. Log in to IBM Cloud, and create a Watson Assistant instance.

2. Launch the Watson Assistant instance. Because this is an empty project, there won’t be any intents, entities, or dialogs available.

Intent:

Entity:

Dialog:

3. Click Upload/download, and select the file that was created as an output by the converter.

4. Click Upload, then click Upload and replace.

5. If your upload is successful, you see a status like the one shown in the following image.

Step 5. Check whether data is migrated successfully

Intents

Entities

Dialog

Webhook

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to use a converter script to migrate some SAP Conversational AI components directly to Watson Assistant.