Skype Bots Preview Comes To Consumers And Developers

Microsoft has rolled out new features for developers of its Skype Bot platform.

Courtesy the new features bots now become better suited to group conversations. “Make Skype Bots that are more productive—or just entertaining—for groups of users. Bots can now be a part of and respond to group conversations,” the company said in a blog post.

In addition, the update allows developers to create visual cards for users to facilitate bot-aided interactions with image cards, carousels, and receipts. In addition, Skype and Bing have joined hands to show a preview of Bing Entity and Intent detection “so that natural language understanding is built right into Skype Bots—an industry first.”

As for third-party authentication, developers can now connect users to their services by having them sign-in directly from the card itself without navigating away from the application.

The Redmond-based technology firm has also made it easier for developers to work on bots by clubbing the Skype Bot Platform and the Microsoft Bot Framework into one.

“Using the Microsoft Bot Framework you can publish your bot to Skype, and submit for promotion in the Skype and Microsoft bot directories, as well as get access to great bot building tools.”

In a related development, Microsoft also recently rolled out a new online tool for online meetings. Dubbed Skype Meetings, the web-based service is aimed towards small businesses. Users can access Skype Meetings from a range of devices using just the web browser, and it includes support for relevant hardware like cameras, speakers and microphones.