I have been struggling a bit figuring out the real value of bots. Should I be looking into using bots at work for my co-workers to use? Why use a bot instead of an old fashioned UI, except for the coolness-factor?
Should I be looking into using bots at work for my co-workers to use?
I can't really say that there's a right or wrong use-case here, so I'll go with the common answer of "it depends".
The next post in this series covers extended it a bit to support things like SMS support, querying third-party APIs for recommendations, etc. and I can say that my friends have gotten a lot of value of being able to text a bot from their phone instead of pulling up an app or something.
With that being said, I could see it having some serious business value in an industry or arena that required lots of data look-up (e.g. "what is the IP for {insert-server-name}", "who implemented {x-feature}", "what's the password for {x}", "where is {person} right now?", etc.).
Why use a bot instead of an old fashioned UI, except for the coolness-factor?
Why not both? The real benefit of the Bot Framework that I'm mentioning in the article is the extensibility and integration points. Need to wire it up to Skype, fill out this simple form. Slack? Easy. A web client? No problem.
There's certainly a coolness factor, but you might just have to look at what some of the pain-points are and ask yourself "if I could ask a robot this (or tell it to do something) instead of looking it up myself or asking someone else, would that be helpful?".
Thanks, Rion. That did help and it gave me some ideas. My co-workers need to regularly fill out some long forms for starting heavy calculations. It's boring and error prone. Maybe a bot can help.
I am looking forward to the next post in your series.
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Very cool. Thanks for sharing.
I have been struggling a bit figuring out the real value of bots. Should I be looking into using bots at work for my co-workers to use? Why use a bot instead of an old fashioned UI, except for the coolness-factor?
Hey Jakob,
I can't really say that there's a right or wrong use-case here, so I'll go with the common answer of "it depends".
The next post in this series covers extended it a bit to support things like SMS support, querying third-party APIs for recommendations, etc. and I can say that my friends have gotten a lot of value of being able to text a bot from their phone instead of pulling up an app or something.
With that being said, I could see it having some serious business value in an industry or arena that required lots of data look-up (e.g. "what is the IP for {insert-server-name}", "who implemented {x-feature}", "what's the password for {x}", "where is {person} right now?", etc.).
Why not both? The real benefit of the Bot Framework that I'm mentioning in the article is the extensibility and integration points. Need to wire it up to Skype, fill out this simple form. Slack? Easy. A web client? No problem.
There's certainly a coolness factor, but you might just have to look at what some of the pain-points are and ask yourself "if I could ask a robot this (or tell it to do something) instead of looking it up myself or asking someone else, would that be helpful?".
I hope that helps.
Thanks, Rion. That did help and it gave me some ideas. My co-workers need to regularly fill out some long forms for starting heavy calculations. It's boring and error prone. Maybe a bot can help.
I am looking forward to the next post in your series.