
Show HN: BotEngine – Easy tool for creating chatbots - ajaskiewicz
https://botengine.ai/
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zerop
I have lots of text about a particular topic (50K Articles crawled from
internet about travel experiences). Now I want to create a chat bot whose
chats/answers are from this given text. Basically I want to feed my text to
this bot service and creates a chat bot for this given text. Is anyone aware
of how do I do this.. Not sure If I made it clear..

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bottombutton
I saw a demo recently where someone used Microsoft Bot Framework for what you
described. Can't find the video at the moment, but might be worth looking
into. [[https://dev.botframework.com/](https://dev.botframework.com/)]

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konradkpl
Imho the most intuitive user interface for bot creation software:
[http://wstaw.org/m/2017/07/11/Screen_Shot_2017-07-11_at_16.2...](http://wstaw.org/m/2017/07/11/Screen_Shot_2017-07-11_at_16.22.25.png)

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mbel
That UI looks much more usable than the chatbot itself. As a user I would
probably prefer to traverse the tree and see multiple options at the same time
than to pretend I'm having a chat.

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konradkpl
Sounds like a normal FAQ list with nested items, I think bots will achieve
better customer service ;)

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anotheryou
A bit off-topic, but I want custom bots per person via facebook or mail for
something like:

››You still owe me back book XY. Type "snooze" to be reminded again in 7 days.
Or be reminded again tomorrow. Type "done" if you got this reminder despite
having done it (same as "snooze", but I'll manually review if I should remove
the reminder)‹‹

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ajaskiewicz
Nice idea! We'll think about it :)

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matthoiland
Props for a fresh, clean design. The docs are fantastic, easy to read, and
doesn't contain verbose technical bloat. Overall excellent design and UX
execution.

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ajaskiewicz
Thanks a lot!

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igammarays
I second that. Who did your design? I'm looking for a great designer, can I
get a referral for yours? isa at flutesystems.com

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ajaskiewicz
Actually our developers who created also the whole tool ;)

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wiradikusuma
how does it different than other (seemingly similar) offerings? e.g. api.ai,
wit.ai, chatfuel, manychat. i've used wit.ai, it's buggy (randomly missing
stuff after you save them) and api.ai (so far ok).

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ajaskiewicz
The first thing - it's very intuitive and simple, second - BotEngine will be
the only tool integrated with LiveChat and third - we'll focus on machine
learning.

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chinathrow
> BotEngine will be the only tool integrated with LiveChat

How come?

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ajaskiewicz
We're building the integration and it will be available soon.

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phatbyte
Honest question: Are chatbots really used or is just a nice-thing to have?
When I visit website and the chatbot pops up it really feels like it disrupts
MY browsing, I immediately turn it off. I really wanted to if chatbots can
translate into new sales.

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dmgawel
I'm happy that I'm not the only one who closes tab when something uninvited
pops up. At the same time I wouldn't agree it's a chatbot-related issue. It's
rather poor UX design.

I'm realist and IMO chatbots are not ready for handling pre-sales or
sophisticated support cases. However I see a huge potential in dealing with
conversations that follow known scheme. Let it be cinema reservation or flight
change - they look very similar in most cases. That's where chatbots might
come in.

For example in my company (LiveChat) we're experimenting with handling app
onboarding by chatbot. Results are very promising :-)

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adventured
You guys _desperately_ (I'd like to type that 37 times in a row for emphasis)
need a serious, one-click to start, interactive product demonstration (without
requiring my email first). I should be able to instantly step into serious
business use examples catering to multiple industries (eg whatever industries
you guys might choose to target first), so you can show me what it can
actually do.

I clicked on product tour, entered a name, and then got this ridiculousness:

Me: Johnny Cash

Bot: That's interesting

Bot: Ready for an adventure?

Me: No

Bot: Oh no, why? It will be fun!

Bot: Are you sure? :(

Me: (pre-scripted) ok, I can try

Bot: Great, so let's try again.

Bot: Do you want to do something relaxing or should we go crazy?

\---

That's where I quit. Unintentionally creepy bot is slightly creepy. Am I
talking to a serious product bot, or is this get trashed and sleep on my couch
party bot? Wild and crazy times ahead.

Potential customers should be able to dive right into a conversation with your
bot tech. You should be extremely eager to show me what it can do in a live
conversation and you should have stellar pre-built examples for that purpose
all available from one click on the home page. My take away from my
experience, is your bot tech can't do much so you're not immediately getting
into showing off its capabilities (I don't know if that's the case or not, but
if this were any other site, that _would_ be my take away from it, and I'd
never return).

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ajaskiewicz
Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback! This is the early beta version of our
product and we really appreciate our users' opinion. We'll work on that
product demonstration.

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water42
>BotEngine allows you to create a chatbot for any service.

except for the ones that are not implemented. would be interested to try this
out once it has telegram support.

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ajaskiewicz
We'll have integrations with LiveChat and Slack very soon. I'm adding
telegrams and post pigeons to our to-do.

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jachee
You should probably add Discord, as well.

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cgrs
Is it free 100%? Or has it some premium paid features?

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konradkpl
> For now it's free ;)
> [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/botengine#comment-490613](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/botengine#comment-490613)

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protomyth
Is anyone using Inform (or some other interactive fiction programming
language) for bot programming? This project reminds me of some of the old
tools for adventure games, so I’m wonder if anyone went to one of the
interactive fiction tools.

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yenoham
OT but I really like the website - do you mind if I ask who created it?

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ajaskiewicz
Thanks! Actually our dev team created also a website

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victormustar
No pricing? imo you lose users /w pricing page

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mod
Off-topic: is /w short for without? I've never seen that before.

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tintor
/w - with, /wo - without

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tomc1985
isn't it w/ and wo/ ?

I read /w as short for /whisper

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banderman
Isn't it w/ and w/o?

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tomc1985
yeah actually

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option_greek
Is there a way to just get the user response and forward it to a webhook ?
(and of course send a reply received from the webservice)

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ajaskiewicz
Yup -> [https://docs.botengine.ai/key-
concepts/interactions?id=webho...](https://docs.botengine.ai/key-
concepts/interactions?id=webhook)

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jedisct1
As a user, why would I want a chatbot instead of up-to-date documentation with
a search engine that works?

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konradkpl
Many users prefer LiveChat, rather than browsing the documentation or using
the search engine. Additionally, documentation and search engine don't provide
private information, e.g. the status of your order.

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pantulis
Really cool. Is it possible to publish the bot to a website as a JS widget?

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aPoCoMiLogin
On page "product tour": [https://botengine.ai/product-
tour/](https://botengine.ai/product-tour/) there is an example how you can use
it as javascript widget.

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Everula
nice! any integration with Intercom in plans? Also, found a small typo here
[http://prntscr.com/fuckqw](http://prntscr.com/fuckqw)

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chinshaw
Hey Everula, I'm going to be launching something similar with Intercom support
soon, and would love to talk to you about your use case and how I can help
you. You can email me at calhinshaw@gmail.com!
[https://www.responseautomator.com/](https://www.responseautomator.com/)

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frgtpsswrdlame
Why SaaS?

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ajaskiewicz
Why not?

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frgtpsswrdlame
Let me rephrase. Why not on-prem?

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ajaskiewicz
It’s because in SaaS it is easier to test it, to develop it, to gain new users
etc. + we know this model very well :)

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bpicolo
Not to mention on-prem means support becomes much more difficult

