Workshop for Node.js Bots in Azure at MinneWebCon 2018

You know when you accidentally reach a goal sooner than you expect? That's exactly what happened when I originally submitted a session to MinneWebCon 2018 on building bots with Azure and Node.js. Instead of just giving a talk, I'll be teaching a half-day workshop! That was one of my 2018 goals!

About the workshop

This'll be a fun one. I've developed bots before on Azure using Microsoft Bot Framework and I've used Azure Functions but I haven't yet married the two.

In this workshop, we'll build a chat bot on Azure Functions that will respond to input and hold state. I don't know the details of what we'll build but I'll be scoping it to a 3 hour exercise.

My plan so far is for people to learn:

• How to use the Azure Functions portal
• How to use the Microsoft Bot Framework
• How to publish a bot to a provider (e.g. Twilio)
• How to make the bot in JavaScript
• How to make the bot remember information about the conversation
• (Maybe) How to connect Azure Functions to GitHub

I'm pretty sure we can build that in 3 hours even for folks who have little to no experience with Azure. It's really simple!

So what are you waiting for? Register now!