Consume AI services on IBM i with Node-RED

A short workshop to demonstrate how you might integrate a Watson Assistant skill with web-, mobile- or messenger-based user self-service IT support functions.

The chatbot application logic runs in the IBM i PASE environment, using native node.js and the Node-RED flow-based programming framework.

The chatbot exploits IBM i Services to query system information through the DB2 for i interface, as well as the PASE shell access to run native command-line functions.

Additional AI-based services - translation, tone analysis, speech<-->text conversion will be added to enhance the application.

let's go!

The chatbot you've just built has a web interface, in English.

To make the chatbot multi-lingual, all you'd need to do is translate input from the user's source language to English, and the chatbot response from English back to the user's language. All you need is a Watson Language Translator service instance, and a couple of Node-RED language translator nodes.

Want to give users access to documents, and frequently asked questions (FAQs) based on existing and dynamic content? That's what the Watson Discovery service is for; create collections from document repositories, folders, and websites, and Discovery will enable natural language queries to retrieve documents and passages.

If you enable the "Plus" trial on your Watson Assistant service, you can add in a Search skill; this will allow your chatbot to automatically initiate searches into your collections.

Sometimes, users can get frustrated or agitated while engaged with a chatbot; in some cases, knowing when this is happening can be helpful in adjusting continuing interactions, including redirecting to helpdesk staff. The Watson Tone Analyzer can help by detecting emotional mix in the way users express themselves, and providing indicators to the chatbot application. There's a Node-RED node for that!

And speaking of tone of voice, how about enabling speech capability on your chatbot? Adding in Speech to Text and Text to Speech is as simple as adding nodes to your Node-RED application.

Not finding what you like in the IBM catalog? You can find complementary services anywhere else on the internet -- services for integrating voice devices (like Siri, Alexa, Google assistant, for example) usually have a community-developed package for Node-RED.

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