Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 2)

Welcome back! Hopefully you had the chance to follow along in part 1 where we started creating our Lex chatbot. In part 2, we attempt to make the conversation more human-like and begin integrating data validation on our slots to ensure we’re getting the correct input.

Creating the Lambda initialisation and validation function

As data validation requires compute, we’ll need to start by creating an AWS Lambda function. Head over to the AWS console, then navigate to the AWS Lambda page.… [Keep reading] “Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 2)”

Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 1)

“What! Is this guy for real? Does he really think he can replace the front line of IT with pre-canned conversations?” I must admit, it’s a bold statement. The IT Service Desk has been around for years and has been the foot in the door for most of us in the IT industry. It’s the face of IT operations and plays an important role in ensuring an organisation’s staff can perform to the best of their abilities.… [Keep reading] “Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 1)”

Using a Bot Framework to build LUIS enabled Bots

History

In this post, we are going to build a bot using Microsoft Bot framework and add intelligence to it to extract meanings from the conversation with users utilising Microsoft cognitive service named LUIS. The last post discussed details about LUIS, give it a read before you continue on reading. This post assumes you have a basic understanding of Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) and Bot Framework, further details can be read about them at LUIS and Bot Framework.… [Keep reading] “Using a Bot Framework to build LUIS enabled Bots”

Implementing Gradient Descent Algorithm in Hadoop for large scale data

In this post I will be exploring how can we use MapReduce to implement Gradient Descent algorithm in Hadoop for large scale data. As we know Hadoop is capable of handling peta-byte scale/size of the data.

Before starting, first we need to understand what is Gradient Descent and where can we use it. Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Gradient descent is a first-order iterative optimization algorithm. To find a local minimum of a function using gradient descent, one takes steps proportional to the negative of the gradient (or of the approximate gradient) of the function at the current point.… [Keep reading] “Implementing Gradient Descent Algorithm in Hadoop for large scale data”

Using Microsoft Azure Table Service REST API to collect data samples

Sometimes we need a simple solution that requires collecting data from multiple sources. The sources of data can be IoT devices or systems working on different platforms and in different places. Traditionally, integrators start thinking about implementation of a custom centralised REST API with some database repository. This solution can take days to implement and test, it is very expensive and requires hosting, maintenance, and support. However, in many cases, it is not needed at all.… [Keep reading] “Using Microsoft Azure Table Service REST API to collect data samples”