Microsoft Azure Bot type choices

1
votes

to create a new bot via Azure, you get 3 options:

  1. Web App Bot: An Azure Bot Service Bot deployed to an Azure App Service Web App. Build, connect, deploy and manage Bots to interact with your users wherever they are - from your app or website to Cortana, Skype, Messenger and many other services.
  2. Functions Bot: An Azure Bot Service Bot deployed to an Azure Functions App. Build, connect, deploy and manage Bots to interact with your users wherever they are - from your app or website to Cortana, Skype, Messenger and many other services.
  3. Bot Channels Registration: Your own Bot hosted where you want, registered with the Azure Bot Service. Build, connect, and manage Bots to interact with your users wherever they are - from your app or website to Cortana, Skype, Messenger and many other services.

Questions:

  1. What exactly is the meaning of the highlighted lines, any simple example will be very useful.

  2. How do these options matter for a developer?

1
azurebotschatbot

1 Answers

1
votes

Hopefully my answer can help you:

  • A Web App Bot : This is a standalone Azure web app where you purchase pre-defined capacity for your bot (more suited to an always on with predictable traffic)
    • Edit bot source code online using an advanced in-browser code editor.
    • Download, debug, and re-publish your C# bot using Visual Studio.
    • Set up continuous deployment easily for Visual Studio Online and Github.
    • Use sample code prepared for the Bot Builder SDK.
  • A functions bot: This is a bot hosted is Azure functions and uses Functions pay-per-run pricing, this is better suited for bots handling large traffic spikes as it can scale much quicker and efficiently.
  • Bot Channels Registration: think of this as a way of publishing a bot not hosted in Azure to the bot service and enable inputs to your bot like cortana and skype connectors.

For a good comparison on Web App (App Service Plan) and Functions (Consumption Plan) bots see this link https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-scale

and this one https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/bot-service-overview-readme?view=azure-bot-service-3.0