ExpertBox

ExpertBox.com is used by experts from different knowledge domains to create constructs of systematic conversations that converse unattended with consumers, for free or for a small fee. In other words everyone can build their own chatbot for free, and then charge people to talk to it.

Constructs are automated conversations and business process automation flows, created on ExpertBox.com using the construct designer. Users can have paid or free or subscribe to sessions with constructs and access these session via the Construct Viewer.

Video Examples

Construct Example 1 - Pages and Controls

Sessions

Once a construct is published by its handler, users can start creating sessions with that construct. Constructs can be published privately, publicly and within organisations.

To start a session with a construct the user must locate the construct on their stage, where it will appear if the construct was published to this user or their organisation or to the public. If the handler charges a fee for using the construct, the user will require a sufficient amount of credits to start the session.

In order to ensure that users always are using fresh knowledge, sessions expire automatically after a period of time determined by the handler. the expiration period is determined by the handler based on the nature of the knowledge, for example, day trading advice will expire before agricultural planning advice because day trading markets change fast and agricultural seasons changes slowly.

Once a session was started, the construct viewer will be shown for the construct in question. While a session has not expired, it can be found using the Sessions menu. Once expired, only reports of a session will be available, until archived or deleted by the user.

Construct Viewer

The construct viewer looks a lot like a software installation wizard, and was inspired by that design. It has 3 main areas, the current page of the session on the left for presentation of information and collection of information from the user, the timeline on the right to show what pages have been completed and which pages are expected next (this changes all the time due to new information provided by the user), and the navigation at the bottom of the page for the user to go forward and backward between pages.

For constructs following the mini-app pattern instead of a dialogue patter, it may be desired to remove the the timeline; to do this, on the main menu click on the (construct) design menu item, then find and click on edit action of the construct card. To disable the timeline ensure the switch is set (to the left) to "Do not show the timeline". Submit, and from now on there will be no more timeline displayed for new sessions of this construct.

Construct Designer

The construct designer includes an action button that, when touched or hovered over presents an icon menu (with tooltips) relevant to the current component that is selected in the model. The model is a serie component, the top level component of the construct, and the entry point to all other components in the construct.

Action Button

The action button shows the actions available to the currently selected component. Not all actions apply to all components, here is the complete list of available component actions:

Select Component

When hovering over a component, you will notice its shadow darken. To select that component, touch or click on it and the background colour of the component will darken. Once a component is selected, the the magic action button will show only actions relevant to the selected component.

Move Component

To move a component to another component, click or touch and drag the component, while dragging the component it will fit itself into other components until dropped, after which it will stay at the last position.

Anchor and Link

To link two components in order to make one component aware of the value of another component, select the component with the value that is being linked to, and use the purple anchor action button to create an anchor.

Once an anchor is created a notification will appear to show the currently anchored component. The anchor can be cancelled by swiping the notification to the right, which will remove the anchor notification. An anchor notification does not go away by itself, it will stay on the screen until either dismissed or until a component links to it.

After anchor is created and a different linkable component is selected, a link can be created to the anchor using the purple link action button. The anchor notification will go away, and a quick confirmation notification will be shown to confirm successful linking.

Components

Each component has a specific logical function to perform, many of these functions are inspired by software development and adapted specifically for use in knowledge automation, business process automation and automated conversations.

Values

Each component has a value at any given time. How the value for each component is calculated is different.

Containers

Container component can contain other components and thus can be deeply nested to facilitate deep and complex conversation flows.

Elements

Elements are components that cannot contain other components. In general elements represent data elements than can be assigned a literal value, such as 1 or hello, or an object such as {color: 'GREEN', width: 16}.

Expressions

Expression components contain JavaScript expressions that enable simple data evaluation, calculation and assignment, but also complex logic, algorithms, formulas and access to other data sources on the internet.

Expressions have special functions depending on which components they are added to, however all expressions can be linked to regardless of their special functions.

Expressions, when evaluated, that have a value that is a defined value or true is consider to be true. Expressions, when evaluated, that have a value that is undefined or empty or false is considered to be false.

In order to make constructs more manageable and easier to understand in the Construct Designer, it is advised to keep each expression as short and compact as possible and rather to break up large expressions into multiple linked expressions.

Expressions have direct access to the value of linked values as same named local variables in script, and have access to a set of utility libraries to simplify and speed up the writing of scrips.

Simple Example - always returns true:

  return true;

Typical Example - return ture if a linked component named colour has the value GREEN

  return colour === 'GREEN';

Advanced example - use the underscore library to group a linked list of colours by type

  var isPrimary = function(colour) {
    switch(colour) {
      case: 'RED';
      case: 'YELLOW';
      case: 'BLUE';
        return true;
      default: ;
        return false;
    }
  };
  var colourType = function(colour) {
    if(isPrimary(colour)) {
      return 'PRIMARY';
    }
    else {
      return 'SECONDARY';
    }
  };
  return api._.groupBy(colourList, function(colour){return colourType(colour)});

Execution options: An Expression component can be processed to determine the next page, but also in other contexts, such as predicting the contents of the timeline.

data.options.isFuture

Used to prevent processing while predicting the content of the timeline. E.g. from the AI Example, to avoid racking up high charges on Algorithmia, while still enabling future prediction to continue.

if (data.options.isFuture) {
  return ['fake'];
}
else {
  var result = api.algorithmia.htmlToStringList(targetUrl);
  return api._.filter(result,  function (str) {
    return !api._.isEmpty(str);
  })
}

Persistence API

tbd

Math API

tbd

Text API

Case

This part of the API is an facade (wrapping) for the wonderful set of text case conversion tools of to-case.

Case Conversion Example:

api.text.case.to.camel('what_the_heck')      // "whatTheHeck"
api.text.case.to.capital('what the heck')    // "What The Heck"
api.text.case.to.constant('whatTheHeck')     // "WHAT_THE_HECK"
api.text.case.to.dot('whatTheHeck')          // "what.the.heck"
api.text.case.to.inverse('whaT tHe HeCK')    // "WHAt ThE HeCK"
api.text.case.to.lower('whatTheHeck')        // "what the heck"
api.text.case.to.pascal('what.the.heck')     // "WhatTheHeck"
api.text.case.to.sentence('WHAT THE HECK.')  // "What the heck."
api.text.case.to.slug('whatTheHeck')         // "what-the-heck"
api.text.case.to.snake('whatTheHeck')        // "what_the_heck"
api.text.case.to.space('what.the.heck')      // "what the heck"
api.text.case.to.title('what the heck')      // "What the Heck"
api.text.case.to.upper('whatTheHeck')        // "WHAT THE HECK"

Case detection:

api.text.case.to('thisIsAString')      // "camel"
api.text.case.to('This Is A String')   // "capital"
api.text.case.to('THIS_IS_A_STRING')   // "constant"
api.text.case.to('this.is.a.string')   // "dot"
api.text.case.to('this is a string.')  // "lower"
api.text.case.to('ThisIsAString')      // "pascal"
api.text.case.to('This is a string.')  // "sentence"
api.text.case.to('this-is-a-string')   // "slug"
api.text.case.to('this_is_a_string')   // "snake"
api.text.case.to('this is a string')   // "space"
api.text.case.to('This Is a String')   // "title"
api.text.case.to('THIS IS A STRING')   // "upper"

Padding

Pads text to the left or right of other text up to a limit.

Right Pad Example:

api.text.pad.right("input", 5, "padblock")

Result: inputpadbl

Left Pad Example:

api.text.pad.left("input", 7, " _")

Result: _ _ _ input

Convert To

Utility functions that convert text to literals, objects and arrays.

####### Number Convert text to a number for use in calculations.

Example

api.text.to.number("5");

Result: 5

####### Paragraphs Convert text to an array of texts where each index in the array contains a paragraph, in order, without leading or trailing whitespace, from the input text.

Example:

api.text.to.paragraphs("  This is paragraph 1.  \n  This is paragraph2.");

Result: ["This is paragraph 1.", "This is paragraph 2."]

Convert From

api.text.from

Currency

api.text.currency

Underscore JS

UnderscoreJS is an JavaScript utility library that simplifies working with collections of data and objects; the Swiss army knife of JavaScript.

Example where stoogeNames equals ["moe", "larry", "curly"]

var stooges = [{name: 'moe', age: 40}, {name: 'larry', age: 50}, {name: 'curly', age: 60}];
var stoogeNames = api._.pluck(stooges, 'name');

Algorithmia.com

Algorithmia.com provides a wide range of Artificial Intelligence algorithms via our easy to use API.

You can use your own Algorithmia.com account. All content in expression scripts are safely stored encrypted in our secure private cloud database server and never leave our servers except to the owner of the construct, so your key is safe.

const result = api.algorithmia.algorithm(key, algorithm, input);

Or use a selection of built algorithms without needing an Algorithmia.com account.

const arrayOfStrings = api.alorithmia.htmlToStringList(urlString);
const twoLetterLanguageCode = api.alorithmia.languageIdentification(text);
const yandexTranslation = api.alorithmia.yandexTranslate(inputLanguage, outputLanguage, text);
const googleTranslationEnglish = api.alorithmia.googleTranslate(text);
const summary = api.algorithmia.summarize(text);
const tagArray = api.algorithmia.autoTag(text);
const entityArray = namedEntityRecognition(text);
const

Textgears

Textgears provide and English grammar correcting service, it is intended to be used as human guided tool for use in text editors.

We wrapped the Textgears NPM Library to instantly apply the best changes to a piece of text. Our wrap will synchronously fix English text according to the best guess of the Artificial Intelligence, whether that is desired is up to you...

const fixedText = api.textgears.fix('I is an engeneer.. I wihh i was here');

Results in: I am an engineer.. I with I was here.

Note that the best guess is not always the right guess. In this case I wihh i was here was fixed to I with I was here., where the intension was I wish I was there.. Ideal usage is to automatically clean-up rough text with bad formatting.

Interesting observation: Missing fullstops are fixed if other fullstops are present in the text, but double fullstops are not fixed...

Controls

Controls are GUI (Graphical User Interface) components used to present or collect information from the construct user in the viewer. Controls can only be added to pages and all controls on a page is shown to the user in the construct viewer at the same time.

Text

It can receive its value from another component by linking to an anchored component.

Markdown

Text can contain markdown and HTML. Some handy snippets:

Responsive Popout Boxed Image located at External URL

<img class="materialboxed responsive-img" src="https://dft1tcs2nbf7z.cloudfront.net/images/tutorials/quickstart/main_menu.gif">

Question

It can receive its value from another component by linking to an anchored component. Special characters include: _@$#±/\ |.,!?<>{}()[]'"`^#&+-*%="~

CRUD Schema

The schema field in the construct designer Insert and Update CRUD dialogs must be formatted as JSON; the objects are control component specifications, for example:

[
  {
     "name": "what",
     "type": "question",
     "prompt": "What are you doing?",
     "format": "ALPHA_NUMERIC_SPECIAL",
     "icon": "play_for_work",
     "show": true
   },
  {
     "name": "where",
     "type": "question",
     "prompt": "Where are you going?",
     "format": "ALPHA_NUMERIC_SPECIAL",
     "icon": "location_on",
     "show": false
   },
  {
    "name": "who",
     "type": "question",
     "prompt": "Who are you talking to?",
     "format": "ALPHA_NUMERIC_SPECIAL",
     "icon": "people",
     "show": false
  },
 {
    "name": "expectedOutcome",
     "type": "question",
     "prompt": "How will it go?",
     "format": "ALPHA_NUMERIC_SPECIAL",
     "icon": "announcement",
     "show": true
  }
]

When a control is not shown, it is still asked in the CRUD-Create and CRUD-Update forms, it just is not listed in the on page summary. If an Icon is not specified, the prompt will be used instead of the icon. When an icon is specified, the prompt will be used as tooltip for the icon.

For a full list of supported icons, see MaterializeCSS Icons.

Dynamic Controls

It is common for conversations to gather more information about data provided by the user; in order to accomplish this it mush be possible to create controls on the fly based on user data. All controls can be dynamically modified during a session by linking to a Expression that returns an object to override the parameters of the control that was specified for this control in the Construct Designer:

Example expression script for overriding a Choice control; the overridden control will show the user a prompt to 'Choose a colour' and offer a choice between 'Green' and 'Red', with 'Red' being preselected for the user when the page is initially shown:

return {
  prompt: 'Choose a colour',
  options: [
    {
      label: 'Green',
      value: 'GREEN'
    },
    {
      label: 'Red',
      value: 'RED'
    }
  ],
  value: 'RED'
};

tbd - Dices Example

tbd - CRUD Example