transforming oracle enterprise mobility using intelligent chatbot & ai - a whitepaper by...

Transforming Oracle Enterprise Mobility using Intelligent Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A WHITEPAPER ON ORACLE MOBILE CLOUD ENTERPRISE

Transforming Oracle Enterprise Mobility using Intelligent Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) index

01 Executive Summary

03 Why Enterprises are lookingtowards a Conversational Bot?

12 Enterprise Use Case: Chatbot for Oracle EBS Approvals

16 Oracle Bot Builder Portal in OMCe

25 References

25 Author

26 About RapidValue

25 Conclusion

06 Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise (OMCe): Cloud DevelopmentFramework for Oracle Enterprise

©RapidValue Solutions


Human behavior tends to improve productivity

with continuous efforts. This leads to innovation

in technology and people have witnessed the

revolution in technologies like cloud, virtual

platforms, mobile applications, smart devices and

Artificial Intelligence (AI). If you talk about enterprise

mobility, the mobile apps have revolutionized the

way users interact with big enterprise systems like

Oracle EBS, JD Edwards, Siebel, Fusion cloud ERP

etc. and how they pull data from back - end forms

and databases. Mobile application development

has become both challenging and convenient with

Cloud and MBaaS (Mobile Backend as a Service)

systems. You would have seen the rise of Oracle

Mobile Cloud Service (MCS) and Integration Cloud

Service (ICS), which in fact, has made the mobile

application development more ‘declarative’ and

configuration can be done with minimal coding.

Now users are looking to install minimal mobile

apps on their smart phones and are trying to

explore more convenient ways to transact. With

the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine

learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing

(NLP) into cloud, enterprise mobility is becoming

more “conversational”, thus enhancing customer

experience. This has led to the evolution of Chatbots

ExecutiveSummary

which are considered to be the most recent

and powerful tool for engaging employees and

consumers in the B2E and B2C space. Change and

evolution is evident, but what matters is identifying

the right solution for adapting to the change

and the pace at which the adoption translates to

productivity.

This whitepaper explains, developing Intelligent Chatbot

for Oracle Enterprise Applications using Oracle Mobile

Cloud Enterprise. It discusses in detail the evolution of

Artificial Intelligence, NLP and Machine Learning on top

of Oracle Mobile Cloud Service, in order to bot-enable

Oracle Enterprise Systems. It helps you to understand,

how to develop an Oracle Approvals and Time-entry bot,

using Oracle mobile cloud enterprise by programming &

training the bot in NLP and Machine Learning.

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TRANSFORMINGORACLEENTERPRISE MOBILITYUSINGINTELLIGENT CHATBOTS ANDARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

1



Chatbots are computer generated automatic

programs which can run on messaging apps

and provide human - like conversation in simple

language. Chatbot works using Artificial Intelligence

and is enhanced using Machine Language and

NLP. It can eliminate the process of numerous

navigations when you do online shopping or the

tedious task of reading up the ‘FAQs’ section while

searching for the answer to your queries online.

Instead of navigating through several web pages,

chatbots can provide answers to your questions

through simple conversations.

For example, you can ask Bot, “What is the cheapest

flight ticket from San Francisco to Seattle?” or

“Provide me the list of Purchase Requisitions above

$10,000.”

What are Chatbots?

HELLO

HELLO

2




Why Enterprises are looking towards a Conversational Bot?If you check your phone’s applications manager,

you will find that 80% of the mobile apps are

rarely used. The most commonly used apps are

the messaging apps like Facebook Messenger,

WhatsApp, Skype, WeChat etc. Hence, enterprise

users would prefer to transact business using

conversational messenger applications as much

as possible. Almost 4 billion users are using instant

messenger applications for business transactions.

The past decade has seen rapid transition of users

from desktop to mobile, and most of the users

prefer mobile now. CXOs tend to carry out most

of the business transactions through mobile phone

and mobile apps. The typical evolution of Chatbots

is represented below.

Transition from Desktop to Bots

Top Reasons for Chatbots Evolution in EnterpriseTechnology transformation is prevalent everywhere

and chatbots are rapidly replacing mobile apps to

a great extent for numerous business scenarios.

Some of the major reasons why the world is

gradually, moving from mobile applications to

chatbots are:

Desktop PC Web/browser App Chatbots

Hard Client App Mobile App

3




Rise of Messaging Apps

The users are more conversant with the

chat and messaging apps and feel that

messaging apps are convenient to use.

About 75% of smartphone users use, some

sort of messaging apps. As per analysis, there

are one billion active users for Facebook

Messenger and Whatsapp++ (Source:

Statista, Nielsen surveys), which means

users are more into the messaging apps.

Also, mobile apps usage per smartphone

has saturated and most users use on an

average of 26-28 apps per month.

Popular Messaging Apps as of Jan 2017 (Source: Statista)

WhatsApp 1000

LINE

BlackBerry Messenger(BBM)

Telegram

Kakaotalk

217

100

100

49

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200

Viber 249

Skype 300

WeChat 846

QQ Mobile 877

Facebook Messenger 1000

Snapchat 300

4




Development Cost and Time Reduction for Bots

With more evolvement of AI, NLP and

ML, it is more convenient to reduce the

cost and development cycle of chatbots.

There has been a constant support for

bot development frameworks. Facebook,

Microsoft, Google etc. started supporting

bot. There is a rise in bot development

framework, as it is being used by various

global companies, which has led to the

reduction of time and cost.

Problem of App Fatigue for Enterprise Users

This can be one of the most important

reasons driving the chatbots trend. If you

take an average user, almost 80% of his

apps are rarely used (2 out of 10 apps are

used only once and 5 out of 10 apps are

used less than ten times). When you add

enterprise apps on top of the general

consumer apps, some issues may arise.

Also, enterprise apps have got their own

constraints. For instance, if you install a

mobile app for performing a requisition, it

might instruct you to change the way you

login to your mobile phone. The overall

productivity increases as users still need

to maintain, manage and upgrade all the

“rarely” used apps periodically, and get

notifications from most of them. This results

in app fatigue and there is a problem in

managing the apps. Organizations are

Convenience

Chatbots need less training since users are

already conversant with chat apps, whereas

enterprise mobile apps need certain

amount of visual navigation and workflow

training for users which results in some

adaption challenges.

With chatbots, the users are provided with

a more human - like interaction which

makes them easier and convenient to use.

looking for ways to reduce app fatigue and

therefore seem to develop more chatbots

for specific scenarios and use cases.

5




Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise (OMCe):Cloud Development Framework for Oracle Enterprise

Evolution of Oracle Mobile Cloud

The most time-consuming and challenging

task for a mobile app developer is to look into

the complex backend functionalities like push

notifications, Single Sign - On (SSO) configurations,

managing user security etc. Almost 50-60% time

of a mobile developer is dedicated to developing

back - end code and he/she needs to write several

lines of code to make something like a SSO /

push notification / offline synchronization or user

management to work. This is when companies

started to develop “MBaaS” (Mobile Backend as

a Service). Oracle’s offering to MBaaS was Oracle

Mobile Cloud Service (MCS). Oracle also, developed

the Cloud Integration platform known as

Integration Cloud Service (ICS), which has

pre - built connectors for all the major ERP

systems, databases etc. and on - premise

agents for database connectivity. This

makes the whole mobile app development

infrastructure 100% on cloud and zero on -

premise. Continuous innovations on Oracle

Mobile Cloud platform resulted in adding

the bot flavor to Oracle MCS.

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Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise provides a web

portal based framework for chatbot development.

It enables developers to develop, program and

train bots to respond to human conversations. It

has an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine at its core

which uses NLP and ML algorithms to decode the

human conversations, sense the emotions and

provide responses which are accurate. The latest

version includes “Bot Analytics” called Customer

Experience Analytics or CXA, which provides good

analytics on bot adoption, match cases etc.

Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise: The New Oracle Mobile Cloud Service Platform

Chatbots do not use or depend on an app to

be installed on iOS or Android phones. They

are compatible with other popular messaging

platforms like Facebook Messenger, Skype,

WhatsApp etc. It needs to be instant chat and

prompt response, and has to perform better than

normal conversation mode in plain text. By adding

Artificial Intelligence, NLP and Machine Learning

algorithms, Oracle has developed a complete bot

development framework on cloud called Oracle

Mobile Cloud Enterprise or OMCe. (Oracle Bot

Platform was initially called Intelligent Bot Cloud

service or IBCS).

Recently, Oracle has added an Intelligent Bot

Builder platform and Analytics to create Oracle

Mobile Cloud Enterprise or simply OMCe.

Oracle’s all - in - one Mobile Cloud framework for

developing mobile backend services. Bots and

enhanced analytics is the new Oracle Mobile

Cloud Enterprise.

MobileCloudService(MCS)

IntelligentBots

CustomerExperienceAnalytics

(CxA)

OracleMobile Cloud

Enterprise(OMCe)

7




Major Components:Intents, Entities, Utterances and BotML

The major building blocks of Oracle chatbot

consists of Intents, Utterances, Entities and

Dialogue Flow. The heart of the design is the

Oracle Bot AI Engine. Oracle has leveraged several

open source platforms and tools for developing

the AI engine, NLP and for handling chatbot

conversational queue. Apache Kafka is used to

handle the volume of conversational messages

in chatbot and Sakura AI is used for building AI

engine.

The below figure shows the major components for

building an intelligent chatbot as listed below:

• Oracle Chatbot AI engine.

• Components for developing custom

logic & connectors for Oracle ERP

backend.

• Channels configurator for hooking to

messaging applications.

• Security for entire bot application.

NLP Engine: Intents, Utterances and Entities

Chatbots use NLP and ML algorithms to

establish a smooth conversational flow. The

whole NLP engine is built by configuring

and training, using the Intents, Utterances

and Entities to generate maximum

information from the conversation in

order to perform a sequence of actions.

Oracle Approval Bot Components

Oracle Bot AI Engine

Custom MCS Components

Channels Configuration

Security

• Intents • Utterance • Entity • Dialogue Flow/YAML

• Component Services for MCS • Custom Components for EBS and • other back ends • Push Notification services

• Facebook Messenger Integration • Webhook Configuration • Security

• Basic Auth • Oauth using Facebook SDK*

8




Intent and Utterance

Intent can be explained as a user intention

or what the user wants from a query. For

example, Check Flight, Get List of Pending

Approvals, Enter Time Card – these are all

specific Intents. Intent can have multiple

ways of asking or decoding the information

from it. This is called Utterances. Utterances

are the various phrases or sentences by

which a user can ask a query. Utterance is

“Oracle Approval List” - Intent and Utterance

View

App

rova

l List

“All approvals with me”

“My approvals queue”

“Show pending approvalworklist”

“Approval needing attention”

used to decode and map a specific Intent

to generate the next action. This is where

the power of NLP engine comes into play.

Sample Utterances for “Check Flight” Intent

can be phrases like ‘Book Flight from San

Francisco to Seattle.’ or ‘I want to check

flights to Seattle.’ or ’What are the flights to

Seattle now?’

9




Entities

A bot needs to extract the information from

the Intents and Utterances and initiate the

next sequence of action. Entities are used for

this and they are the variables parsed from

an Intent or the parameters associated with

an Intent. For example, the intent “Book

flight” will have a parameter to describe

more on the “Class of flight” to lead to the

next action. So the Entity here is “Flight

Class” and bot will ask question to check

whether the Flight class is Coach, First or

Business. If we consider an Intent “Approval

List”, then it will extract a parameter (Entity)

“Approval List type” which may have values

like Purchase Approvals, Invoice Approvals,

Expense Approvals. Entities are then, used

in the Dialogue flow engine (YAML) and

passed to backend (Oracle ERP) as part of

MCS integration component to fetch the

actual parameter value list by querying the

backend system database.

Possibly maps to domain object

Adds relevance to intent

Important word in an input

Variable/parameter for intent

View Approval List Entity: Approval Types

Purchase Request

Expense Report

Leave Request

Entity

Synonyms

“Oracle Approval List”- Entity and Parameter List (Synonyms)

10




Dialogue Flow Builder

After the Intents, Utterances and Entities

are defined in OMCe, the next step is to

program the dialogue flow or sequence of

steps that the bot needs to pass through

the process and respond to a conversation.

The steps to execute are based on the

inputs from the Intent and Entity, and

programmed using ‘Bot Markup Language’

or BotML. In simple terms, BotML is used

for defining the process flow or state flow

or workflow as a set of rules. This is called

Dialogue Flow and is developed using

BotML, which is written in YAML.

11




Enterprise Use Case: Chatbot for Oracle EBS ApprovalsLet us consider a customer who got multiple

cloud and on-premise enterprise systems in place.

Say they use primarily, Oracle EBS as their ERP

system and use Salesforce for Leads & Opportunity

management, Taleo for Hiring management and

Microsoft On-premise Outlook for email & calendar

activities; and they want to go mobile. A single

mashup mobile application built on Oracle Mobile

Cloud enterprise (OMCe) can solve the issue of

managing multiple apps for disparate systems, and

can develop a chatbot approvals application for

quick approvals. Mobile Cloud Service (MCS) layer of

OMCe can be used to build the backend integration

services from various systems like EBS, Salesforce,

Outlook etc. and Intelligent Bot builder can be

used for building the Approvals app. Approvals

need instant and quick responses. Especially, the

approval apps will be used by managers, who may

not even look at transactional enterprise apps and

need quick ways of checking pending worklist

and approving transactions. A conversational

chatbot build on a popular messaging channel

like Facebook Messenger can solve this issue. It

is simple to use and there is no training needed.

Managers will be using messaging apps which are

considered to be the best way to reach them. The

below screens show a typical Purchase Requisition

Approval Chatbot application built for Oracle EBS.

Oracle EBS Purchase Requisition Approvals: Chatbots using FB Messenger

12




Other Typical Use Cases for BotsChatbots have made innovative inroads to most

enterprise systems and simplified the ways in

which transactions are done. Chatbots have good

use cases related to HR and Sales.

HR Self - Service BotThe chatbot can revolutionize the way HR

employee self-service is managed and can avoid

lot of surfing through the Oracle forms and

navigating through multiple pages in the mobile

app. The self-trained intelligent Human Resource

Bot can answer typical questions such as,

• What is the latest travel policy for

sales managers?

• How many leaves are available in my

absence /PTO balance?

• When is my corporate insurance

expiring?

• What is the change in premium for

my dependent’s insurance?

• I want to apply PTO for next week,

how do I do that?

13




Time Card Creation BotEmployees can create time entry details using

the time entry bot. They can ask the bot to simply

enter timecards by following simple conversations.

• I want to log time for today.

• Can you copy and create time from

last week?

• Can you show the total time entered

for last month?

• Is there any day pending for entering

time?

Oracle Time-entry Bot using FB Messenger

14




Sales and CRM BotImagine a sales manager who is on the field

chatting with customers and team members. He

would like to have a bot in his Facebook messenger

or WhatsApp or Skype. There is no need for him to

log in from a desktop to see his list of opportunities

or click through mobile app UI to find the top 5

products. He can just ask the Sales & CRM bot to

answer the question.

• Do I have a meeting with Mr. Charles

scheduled next week?

• What are the top 5 performing

products?

• Show the latest opportunity waiting

for negotiation.

• What was the best price with which

I closed the sale of the device last

week?

• Can you fix a meeting with Mr. Charles

next Monday at 10 am?

15




Start the mobile backend development

& bot development from MCS portal.

Oracle Bot Builder Portal in OMCeTo develop the Oracle EBS approvals bot, we can

leverage the full extent of Oracle Intelligent bot

builder portal. The bot builder is a web based

portal which helps chatbot developers to configure

the bot using less code by easy to configure Intents,

Entities and dialogue flow. It also has a mechanism

to test the Intents and Entities to see how much

matching of results exists. The various steps to

configure the Approvals Bot using OMCe bot

builder portal is shown below,

The various steps are listed below,

• Create a new mobile backend for

Approval Chat Bots.

Oracle MCS Application Development Dashboard – New MBE for Chatbot

16




• Define MCS Mobile backend ID and

anonymous key in bot builder.

• Integrate the MCS and bot using the

MCS URL.

MCS and Bot Authentication and Integrate using MBE id, Anonymous key and MCS URL

17




Create a new intelligent bot

• Create a new intelligent bot from the

Bot Builder UI.

Oracle Intelligent Bot - Create New Bot

18




• Define Intents and Utterances as

shown below.

Defining Intents and Utterances in Bot Builder

19




• Define Entities for listing the

parameters to be mapped to the

Intent.

Defining Entities and Values

20




Training and testing the bot using the bot builder

Validating, Testing and Training Bot Accuracy

The screen below shows the in-built real

-time testing and training of the bot, using

the “training” feature of NLP. The bot can be

tested to understand the confidence level

or matching percentage of the conversation

to the Intent and Entities.

21




Dialogue flow builder using YAML

The Oracle Intelligent Bot builder provides

facility to design the way the bot should

interact with custom components using

the Dialogue Flow builder which is written

in language YAML.

BotML Dialogue Flow YAML

22




Channels configurator in bot builder

The below screen shows Oracle Intelligent

Bot builder’s OOTB (Out of the Box) feature

to configure messaging platform channels.

It shows configuring Facebook Messenger

in the bot builder portal. It is as simple

as taking the page access token and app

secret from Facebook page and mapping

in the channels configurator page. Similarly,

the verify token and web hook URL from

bot builder UI is configured in the Facebook

page for mapping them.

To Facebook Page 1. Webhook url 2. Verify Token

From Facebook Page 1. Page Aceess Token 2. App Secret

Channels Configurator in Bot Builder

23




Oracle Chatbot custom components

Custom components are built in Oracle

MCS portion of OMCe and linked to Oracle

Intelligent Bot service. Node.js based

scaffolding is used to write custom logic

and build APIs to link to backend Oracle

ERP systems.

Defining Custom Bot Components in Bot Builder and MCS

1. Define Custom Components

in BOT

2. Configure names in

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Transforming Oracle Enterprise Mobility using Intelligent Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence (AI)Conclusion – OMCe, Future Powered by Analytics

References

Chatbots market is growing annually at 36% and will reach 3 billion USD globally by 2021 (Source: MarketsandMarkets). The evolution started early last year and will continue strong with the advent of AI, ML and NLP. Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise (OMCe) will be one of the end - to - end bot providers with capability of enterprise back - end integration, mobile cloud service features and analytics. OMCe will have more easy to use “Visual Dialogue flow editor” and enhanced “Analytics” in a single platform. The Analytics portion (CxA) can provide valuable insights into the bot usage and will help to take strategic decisions. The bots will become easy to configure and extend by any user with minimal coding skills. Definitely chatbots are here to stay and revolutionize the way

humans transact with enterprise systems.

1. Gartner Newsroom - http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3018618

2. The Statistics Portal - https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-global-

mobile-messenger-apps/

3. TechCrunch - https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/18/app-abandoment-is-on-the-rise-as-

consumers-stick-to-the-apps-they-know/

Author

If you’d like to know more about enabling

Oracle enterprise apps through mobile and

chatbots, please reach out to us at

[email protected]

Abhijit Ramachandran

Practice Manager –Oracle Mobility Solutions,RapidValue

[email protected]

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©RapidValue Solutions November, 2017