IBM Watson

IBM Watson is an NLP API for matching strings to intents. Intents are created on your assistant intent page.

Configuring opsdroid

To enable Watson skills, you must specify an token, an assistant-id and a gateway for your bot in the parsers section of the opsdroid configuration file. You can find this information inside your Assistant Settings under the API Details. Note that depending on where your bot is located the gateway will be different, just use this. For example: gateway-fra.

You can also set a min-score option to tell opsdroid to ignore any matches which score less than a given number between 0 and 1. The default for this is 0 which will match all messages.

parsers:
  watson:
    gateway: 'gateway-fra' # Required
    token: XJF475SKGITJ98KHFO # Required
    assistant-id: '74yhfhis9-kfirj1e-jfir34-kfdir345' # Required
    min-score: 0.6

Localization

If you want to use Watson in a different language you will have to create different intents and entities to handle the languages that you wish to support.

Using the parser with a skill

In this example we have a Watson assistant set up with the default Customer Care Sample Skill - this will show you how you can get entities and replies from the assistant and include them with opsdroid.

… py:function:: match_watson(intent)

module:

opsdroid.matchers

Return IBM Watson intent match decorator.

Decorator that calls a function on specific IBM Watson intents.

type intent:

param intent:

IBM Watson intent name

type intent:

str

returns:

Decorated Function

[Example 1]

from opsdroid.skill import Skill
from opsdroid.matchers import match_watson
import logging

_LOGGER = logging.getLogger(__name__)

class MySkill(Skill):
    @match_watson('Customer_Care_Appointments')
    async def book_slot(self, message):
        """Book an appointment"""
        booking_date = message.entities['sys-date']['value'][0]
        booking_time = message.entities['sys-time']['value'][0]

        await message.respond("Done! Booked you for {} at {}".format(booking_date, booking_time))

The above skill would be called on any intent which has a name of 'Customer_Care_Appointment'.

Usage example

user: Book me an appointment for tomorrow at 11am

opsdroid: Done! Booked you for 2019-10-12 at 11:00:00

This is the JSON response that opsdroid will get from this text:

{
  "output": {
    "generic": [
      {
        "response_type": "text",
        "text": "Let me confirm: You want an appointment for Saturday at 11 AM. Is this correct?"
      }
    ],
    "intents": [
      {
        "intent": "Customer_Care_Appointments",
        "confidence": 0.9975103855133056
      }
    ],
    "entities": [
      {
        "entity": "sys-date",
        "location": [24, 40],
        "value": "2019-10-12",
        "confidence": 1,
        "metadata": {"calendar_type": "GREGORIAN", "timezone": "GMT"}
      },
      {
        "entity": "sys-time",
        "location": [24, 40],
        "value": "11:00:00",
        "confidence": 1,
        "metadata": {"calendar_type": "GREGORIAN", "timezone": "GMT"}}]}}

[Example 2]

from opsdroid.skill import Skill
from opsdroid.matchers import match_watson


class MySkill(Skill):
    @match_watson('Customer_Care_Appointments')
    async def book_slot(self, message):
        """Book an appointment"""
        reply = message.watson['output']['generic'][0]['text']


        await message.respond(reply)

Note: This example uses the default intent Customer_Care_Store_Hours from the Customer Care Sample Skill pack to get opening hours of a store.

Usage example

user: What time do you open?

opsdroid: Our hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 8pm and Friday and Saturday 11am to 6pm.

This is the JSON response that opsdroid will get from this text:

{
  "output": {
    "generic": [
      {
        "response_type": "text",
        "text": "Our hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 8pm and Friday and Saturday 11am to 6pm."
      }
    ],
    "intents": [
      {
        "intent": "Customer_Care_Store_Hours",
        "confidence": 0.972700834274292
      }
    ],
    "entities": []}}

Creating a Watson App

You need to register on IBM Watson website, head over to the IBM Watson Assistant and create an assistant - you can call it whatever you like.

You can find a guide to get started with the IBM Watson on the Getting Started With Watson Assistant guide.

Message object additional parameters

message.watson

An http response object which has been returned by the Watson API. This allows you to access any information from the matched intent including other entities, intents, values, etc.

Example Skill

from opsdroid.skill import Skill
from opsdroid.matchers import match_watson

import json

class MySkill(Skill):
    @match_watson('hello')
    async def dumpResponse(self, message):
        print(json.dumps(message.watson))

Return Value on “Hi”

The example skill will print the following on the message “Hi”.

{
   "output":{
      "generic":[
         {
            "response_type":"text",
            "text":"Hey hows it going?"
         }
      ],
      "intents":[
         {
            "intent":"hello",
            "confidence":1
         }
      ],
      "entities":[
         {
            "entity":"greetings",
            "location":[
               0,
               2
            ],
            "value":"hello",
            "confidence":1
         },
         {
            "entity":"greetings",
            "location":[
               0,
               2
            ],
            "value":"hi",
            "confidence":1
         }
      ]
   }
}