Article by Frank Nimphius, February 2018
As a bot designer, how do you deal with the problem of users providing a "Yes" where your data logic expects a "yes"? Or, how do you replace a null value with a default string? And do you know how to trim blank space from a user input? What about sorting arrays? Rounding numbers?
Well, as an Oracle Intelligent Bots expert, custom component certainly came to mind. However, there is another solution for this, one that doesn't require a HTTP roundtrip to a remote component service, and it is also easier to implement.
Oracle Intelligent Bots dialog flow uses Apache FreeMarker in BotML to access data values from variables. However, there is a lot more that bot designers can use Apache FreeMarker Template Language (FTL) (http://freemarker.org/docs/ref.html) for.
This article explains how to use ApacheFreeMarker in BotML and shows examples for selected built-in FTL expressions.
Update note:
Oracle Intelligent Bots has been rebranded Oracle Digital Assistant to better describe its capabilities beyond a standard chatbot. To learn more, visit cloud.oracle.com/digital-assistant
Using Apache Freemarker Expression Language in Oracle Intelligent Bots
