Updating your Bot Framework or Azure Bot Service Preview bot to Bot Service

Question

I received an email this morning from Azure Team with instructions on migrating bots to Bot Service. I'm developing a bot with Bot Framework for .NET and now I'm in the UAT.

In order to ask the right question, I want to explain my scenario:

• it's a bot that has a NLU in front from wit.ai
• it's a bot that uses dialog flows after the intent is recognized
• it's a bot that transfers the client to a real agent in specific scenarious
• My bot it's deployed on a server with endpoint configured in dev.botframework.com
• my chat client it's deployed on the corporate site, javascript application that uses direct line secret in order to connect to bot.
• I configured Redis bot state locally like this https://ankitbko.github.io/2016/10/Microsoft-Bot-Framework-Use-Redis-to-store-conversation-state/

With that being said:

1. how is this migration going to affect me?
2. I don't own an azure subscription so the migration button fails for me. Is there any other way to use my bot?
3. is there a price on azure for this service, giving the fact that I'm only using the direct line communication?

I worked very hard to reach this point, thanks in advance for every response.

Answer 1

Nice to see I am not the only one with that button failing.

With me it is even worse, as I do have an Azure subscription on that email address. However, as far as I know, when setting up that bot in the portal, nowhere was asked to link your subscription, neither is there a place where you can do so. So, I guess that may be a temporary issue.

As for the migration affecting you: the switch to the service probably won't affect you, except pressing the migrate button. However, you do need to change bot code. As most of us (including me), are using the standard built-in state service, which will be unavailable as of March 31st, 2018. Instructions: https://blog.botframework.com/2017/07/26/saving-state-sql-dotnet/