Share data from Virtual Assistant to Skill

For some weeks I have been working on a project based on Bot Framework. Things were going well until I found myself in the position of having to share information between a Virtual Assistant and a Skill … Given that it gave me problems and that my requests made on Stackoverflow did not produce answers, I share the solution here.

This post expects the user to be clear what Virtual Assistant and Skill are and has already installed the prerequisites as described here:
https://microsoft.github.io/botframework-solutions/tutorials/csharp/create-assistant/1_intro/

Create a Virtual Assistant using the Virtual Assistant Template and name it SampleVirtualAssistant

Add to the solution SampleVirtualAssistant a new project (the Skill) using the Skill Template and name it SampleSkill

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Rebuild the solution.

In the following example I’ll show the commands as execute on my system, where my sources path is C:\Users\emili\source\lab, be aware to replace it with your correct path!

Open PowerShell Core to execute the following commands.

Deploy to Azure the required resources.

cd c:\users\emili\source\lab\SampleVirtualAssistant\SampleVirtualAssistant\SampleVirtualAssistant
.\Deployment\Scripts\deploy.ps1
cd C:\Users\emili\source\lab\SampleVirtualAssistant\SampleSkill\SampleSkill
.\Deployment\Scripts\deploy.ps1

Now we go to work on the code.

In the project SampleSkill, edit the file manifestTemplate.json to add the required slot.

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cd C:\users\emili\source\lab\SampleVirtualAssistant\SampleVirtualAssistant\SampleVirtualAssistant
botskills connect --botName SampleVirtualAssistant --remoteManifest "http://<your resource>.azurewebsites.net/api/skill/manifest" --luisFolder C:\Users\emili\source\lab\SampleVirtualAssistant\SampleSkill\SampleSkill\Deployment\Resources\LU\en\ --cs

In the project SampleVirtualAssistant edit the file skills.json to add the required slot.

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In the project SampleVirtualAssistant edit the file MainDialog.cs to update the class Events

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In the same file, in the method OnEventAsync add the code that handle the event to set the UserEmail

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In the project SampleSkill, in the file MainDialog.cs in the RouteAsync method insert this code after the call to PopulateSateFromSemanticAcion

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Rebuild all.

Publish the skill and the VA.

Start the chat and test it 🙂

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