Rank 1
I am checking out this control and was wondering do I have to have a backend service like Bot Framework or would it be possible just to do it locally in the WinForms application? What I would want to do is test this out and make a prototype locally with out having to register a bot.
Thanks,
Tim
4 Answers, 1 is accepted
Thank you for writing.
The Conversation UI examples in the demo application are working with Google's and Microsoft's bot frameworks. They are just examples of how a client-server application can be implemented utilizing the bot services. We also have a blog post discussing this in details: https://www.telerik.com/blogs/building-a-winforms-chatbot-key-features-of-the-radchat-control.
The RadChat control is also generic and independent of the current bot providers. It is possible to create a fully functional application by handling the conversation manually and feed messages to the control created by different authors. The following documentation articles provide detailed information on how this can be achieved:
- https://docs.telerik.com/devtools/winforms/chat/getting-started
- https://docs.telerik.com/devtools/winforms/chat/chat-items/messages
The control also supports suggested actions which can be presented to the end user. The API is pretty straightforward as the suggested actions basically represent a message which can be added to the chat control: https://docs.telerik.com/devtools/winforms/chat/chat-items/suggested-actions. I am sending you attached an example project and a short video demonstrating the suggested approaches.
On a side note, can you please give us some more information on your scenario and the final product you want to develop. As this is a brand new control we are gathering valuable feedback from the people that actually use it so we can develop the control to best address their needs and scenarios. Your input in this will be much appreciated.Regards,
Hristo
Progress TelerikRadChat for Winforms
Rank 1
Hristo,
Thank you for the reply. That help a bunch.
I am not really thinking of a whole product to develop right now but I can think of lots of uses for this type of control. My first prototype would be a revision process for existing internal orders for shipments to customers. What happens is there are changes in the Ship from, Ship to, Carrier, Customer or Price. Each of these could be changed by the originator if it hasn't been shipped or invoiced yet after that it would need to go in as a revision to accounting to make the change and send the revised information to the customer. Each type of change would require a different set of responses. Each would ask for an order number or a set of order numbers and in the case of a Carrier change it would then ask for the new Carrier and confirm that they wanted to make the change.
This is something I don't think should require any interaction with a framework but would present the user with a friendly interface like a conversation and depending on the status would apply the change of send it to the other group to approve and apply the change from there.
Thanks,
Tim
Rank 1
Also after playing with the control a bit yesterday I think there should be a generic card that you could pass anything like html or text questions. I think that the messages should have some kind of ID so you can track what message was being responded to.
Actions should be able to wrap and way more rows to show on the screen with out having to scroll all the time. I would think being able to put it in a flow layout panel would be good.
hen you hit the bottom of the first chat screen it jumps a bit and hides the text below it. It seems to fix it self once you scroll but will be an annoyance to the end user.
Thanks,
Tim
Thank you for your replies and the additional information your actual scenario.
The data items which are used with the cards have a UserData property which you can set and use it in your project according to your local setup. The ChatMediaMessage media message also has the UserData property, however, the other messages are not having it so I have logged it on our feedback portal, here: ADD. RadChat - expose a UserData property in all of the message types. I have also updated your Telerik points for the report.
About the actions and the layout, your feedback is also appreciated. When implementing the control we followed the suggestions of our UX designers which considered the current implementation to be the most user-friendly and also consistent with the behavior of other chat clients.
As for the layout issue, we are not aware of such at the moment. You can open a support ticket and send us your project so that we can investigate it on our end.
Once again thank you for your feedback. Let me know if you have other questions.
Regards,
Hristo
Progress TelerikRadChat for Winforms