Building AI Powered Chatbots Without Programming

IBM via Coursera

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Details

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

11 hours 59 minutes
Sessions

On-Demand
Level

Beginner
Subtitles

Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Kazakh, Hindi, Swedish, Greek, Chinese, Ukrainian, Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Hungarian, Bengali, Pashto, Urdu, Azerbaijani, Farsi

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Overview

In today’s fast-paced business environment, seamless operations and maximum productivity are essential. AI-powered chatbots are now a cornerstone for managing routine customer queries efficiently, freeing human teams to focus on strategic, high-level tasks. This course is designed to equip you with the skills and techniques to create AI-powered chatbots, even if you have no programming skills. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or an expert looking to make your mark in the field, this course has something for you. You’ll start by exploring what chatbots are and their benefits in the digital landscape. You’ll learn about action workflows and the key features of the chatbot you will build during the course. The course also delves into the high-level differences between decision-tree chatbots and generative AI chatbots. You’ll be introduced to the concept of actions within chatbots and learn to build them using IBM watsonx Assistant. Hands-on experience is a key part of this course. Through interactive labs, instructional videos, and quizzes, you’ll apply what you’ve learned to real-world scenarios, such as creating a customer care chatbot for a fictitious flower shop. By the end of the course, you’ll be well on your way to building and deploying your own AI-powered chatbots.

Syllabus

Module 1: Introduction to Chatbots

Welcome to Module 1 where you’ll quickly gain insights into the world of chatbots. First, you’ll learn to define what chatbots are. You’ll explore the intriguing history of messengers and learn about the AI-enabled rise of chatbots. You’ll be able to explain who chatbots are for and why chatbots matter. You’ll begin creating the chatbot you will build in this course and create an instance of IBM Watson Assistant to use with your chatbot build.

Module 2: Working with Intents

In Module 2, you’ll become acquainted with how chatbots work and learn how to identify three primary components of a chatbot: intents, entities, and dialogs. You discover the purpose and use of intents, the first essential component of a dialog skill. You’ll gain skills learning how to create your intents and how to add and import intents using the IBM Watson Assistant Content Catalog and CSV files. You’ll learn how to train your intents and use the “Try it Out” panel to test your intents.

Module 3: Entities

In Module 3, you’ll focus on entities, the second key component of a chatbot dialog skill. You’ll gain hands-on skills learning how to create, modify, and delete entities. You'll discover how to use the IBM Watson Assistant Content Catalog and CSV files to add and import entities. Next, learn how chatbots use entity value synonyms and patterns. Then, discover the unique features available when you use system entities, and gain additional, practical skills by using the “Try it Out” panel capabilities to test your entities.

Module 4: Dialog

In Module 4, you’ll unify your prior learning with the third component of dialogue skills, the dialogue itself. You’ll learn how to define domain-specific intents, how to create a parent node and a child node and discover how chatbots use child nodes to engage in domain-specific conversation. Then explore how chatbots handle conditional actions, in this case, how to respond to location address requests.

Module 5: Deployment

In Module 5, you’ll explore the process of deploying a chatbot. First, you’ll create an Assistant and link that Assistant to your dialog skill. Then, you’ll learn how to preview and share your chatbot and obtain a WordPress site and use this site for chatbot testing purposes. Round out your learning by exploring additional features offered by the Watson Assistant WordPress plugin.

Module 6: Context Variables & Slots

In Module 6, you’ll learn about and gain hands-on experience using advanced chatbot features, including training your chatbot to work with context variables, collecting user input, and using slots to set context variables.

Module 7: Digressions

In Module 7, explore additional advanced chatbot features, such as handling digressions or unexpected questions, so the chatbot can respond more gracefully. You’ll also explore the Analyze tab inside of Watson Assistant to learn how your chatbot is being used, observe the conversations people are having with the chatbot, and determine how you can improve the chatbot. In some instances, your chatbot prompts and responses might call might need to stay on premises. Explore how you can maintain your data privacy and use IBM Watson Assistant and other IBM Cloud services on premises.

Summary

Welcome to Module 8, your summary module. where it's time to review what you've learned about building chatbots.

(Optional) Watson Actions

In optional Module 9, explore Watson Assistant and learn how to migrate dialog skills to actions. Then further your experience with Watson Assistant by gaining hands-on experience with creating Watson actions, activating dialogs, migrating dialog skills, migrating intents and entities, and calling an action from a dialog.