BOT Using MS Bot Framework in Internal On-Premise Environment

3
votes

Can someone please clarify if we can create and run a BOT Service using the Microsoft BOT Framework on a completely Non-Azure/Non-Cloud/Non-Azurestack purely ON-Premise traditional Private environment ( that sits behind a very strict corporate proxy with no access to Azure/AWS/Internet at runtime ) using a Internal On-Prem Skype For Business channel ? If so ... is there a link that I can use to achieve the same ( deploy to IIS? ) .

I looked at this thread : Bot Framework without Azure possible?

That appears to still require an internet connection and register the bot on MS site. If that is a one time activity thats ok but will my BOT Service require a connection to that registration to keep it working ?

So Far I have created a Hello World Bot that works fine using VS2017 and the Bot emulator (Steps: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bot-framework/dotnet/bot-builder-dotnet-quickstart ). How ever I would like to deploy this to our internal Skype for Business channel and this is where it is not clear if it can run independently of any Azure/Cloud service.

Thanks much in advance

2
c#botsbotframework
Not possible - Bot Framework requires an Internet connection to communicate with the Bot Connector. That said, you can host your chatbot anywhere that has Internet connectivity. – Joe Mayo

2 Answers

1
votes

There is no full-fledged Microsoft solution to achieve this.

But, you can make few manipulations to get it done. Nevertheless, I would suggest to have a look at ChatterBot. It's exactly what you need.

Note: To access Bot on internet, you will need to expose Local Web Server via DNS.

Steps:

  1. Get LUIS, Azure Bot registered. https://www.luis.ai/home and https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/features/azure-portal/

  2. Build Microsoft Bot - Visual Studio. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/dotnet/bot-builder-dotnet-quickstart?view=azure-bot-service-3.0

  3. Offline Directline - https://www.npmjs.com/package/offline-directline.

  4. Chat Widget - https://github.com/Microsoft/BotFramework-WebChat

Cheers,

Ratnakar.

0
votes

The short answer is no.

Longer answer:

The Microsoft Bot Framework connectors are what map different channel's messages to the Bot Framework Activity schema before sending them to your bot's code. The bot's responses are also translated back from the activity schema into the messaging platform's native messaging format. (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bot-framework/rest-api/bot-framework-rest-connector-api-reference ). The Skype for Business connector is not open source and there is no self-hosting plan available.