Page 34 - Informatics, April 2021

Technology Update
BYOB- Build Your Own Bot
BYOB + VANI = Single window destination for Bot lifecycle
Edited by MOHAN DAS VISWAM
As was mentioned by multiple
speakers in RAISE2020, BYOB
aims to ‘democratize AI’
beyond the realms of technical
personnel. BYOB aims to
empower change-makers in
the government domain like
Mr. Ranjitsinh Disale (Global
Teacher Award Winner 2020), a
simple school teacher, who used
technology to revolutionize
education in the village he was
posted to. With this platform
we’re making a paradigm
shift in NIC’s chatbot services
VANI (Virtual Assistance by
NIC) by automating the entire
integration & business logic
development through giving
the control in user’s hands.
Sharmistha
Dasgupta
Dy. Director General
& HoD
sharmi@nic.in
John Philip
Technical Director
johnphilip@nic.in
Nidhi Lohat
Scientist- B
nidhi.lohat@nic.in
34 informatics.nic.in April 2021
ith the aim of pushing AI beyond labs and Features
professional spheres, BYOB will act as a • A single point home dashboard to monitor the
Wbridge between creating an AI agent and progress of all the chatbots that the user has
making it functional with business logic and features created, as is shown in figure 2
(which is currently being done by VANI framework). • AI agent platform agnostic – Currently made for
It will automate the entire process of creating a bot Google’s Dialogflow, more platforms like NIC’s own
from scratch. Right from teaching how to build a bot,
upcoming NVIDIA Jarvis platform and others will
to coming up with a finished product. It will eliminate be integrated eventually.
the current dependency on humans to integrate • Connectivity with AI agent platform as shown in
their AI agent with VANI framework. This platform is
figure 3
effectively opening up VANI framework to the users • A rich array of features like ‘API reference’, ‘Display
now, instead of keeping it limited to the VANI Server. Web URL’, and others, to choose from shown in figure 4
• API Reference & OTP Authentication (Initial API)
BYOB provides an easy and a single point
destination for managing multiple bot lifecycles - To display a result like application status etc.
using your API
by each user. It also has an Orchestration layer to • Display Web URL- To display a web URL as a
automate the administration of all bots at all stages
and generating automated alerts etc. as and when response to the user
required. NIC has at present made 16 chatbots online • PDF Modal Window- To pop up a PDF modal
and many are in different stages of development.
window as a response to the user
This Orchestration layer is meant to smoothen this • Chat End - This feature will end the conversation
task of administering these bots. with a good bye message and disable the text
Technology Brief area of the chat window. You will be required to
select the intent name against which you wish
As shown in figure 1, BYOB service automates the to close the chat session
user side and a lot of integration work for each user. • Others - For a requirement which doesn’t fit in
Orchestration service will automate all the
any of the features provided. You may send in
backend management for administration activities your requirement with a proper justification to
byob.vani@nic.in
like UAT reviews, sending timely reminders to users, • More features in pipeline
creating/ updating bot entries, etc. This service
will be like a tracker which monitors the status of • Dashboard service available from testing stage to
every bot of every user, sending periodical email monitor and tune chatbot performance pre-and
post-deployment
notifications to the user regarding their bot status if
need be, archiving/ disabling a bot if not updated or • Zero coding experience for user
not put in production for a long time. • Other options like edit, review, and delete bots
Orchestration
Daemon Service
1 Parichay Login 2 Home Dashboard 3 Create New Bot
BYOB
2a Edit Bot
@
4 Creating AI Agent
(& Pre-requisites)
@
5 Connect Your Agent
VANI
@ Framework
6 Add Features
to your Agent
@
7 UAT Certificate
Invisible to the user. i.e., user won’t be in touch Logical ow that the user will directly be
Fig. 1 with these background processes directly. in touch with.