This is a Rails app that allows a user to engage with the Root Insurance API via either a Slack bot or an Alexa skill.

1. Slack Bot
2. Alexa Bot (Alexa skill)

This is a basic slack bot with three commands:

1. Get a list of all phone brands
2. Get a list of all phones made by brand
3. Get the value of a specific phone

The first thing you have to do is to register a Slack bot and obtain the SLACK_API_TOKEN. You can create a new Bot Integration here services/new/bot.

The bot lives in lib/slack-insure-bot.

The part to pay attention to is how you structure the commands. For example creating a command to list all phone brands will be structure like this:

module SlackInsureBot
  module Commands
    class Default < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
      command 'list all phone brands' do |client, data, _match|
        brands = ["Samsung", "Apple", "Nokia"]

        client.say(channel: data.channel, text: brands.join("\n"))
      end
    end
  end
end

Check out slack-ruby-bot. This is the main lib where everything is copied from ;)

• slack-bot-on-rails: A bot running on Rails and using React to display Slack messages on a website.
• slack-mathbot: Slack integration with math.
• slack-google-bot: A Slack bot that searches Google, including CSE.
• slack-aws: Slack integration with Amazon Web Services.
• slack-deploy-bot: A Slack bot that helps you to deploy your apps.
• slack-gamebot: A game bot service for ping pong, chess, etc, hosted at playplay.io.
• slack-victorbot: A Slack bot to talk to the Victorops service.

An Alexa Skill is essentially an app that runs on an Amazon Echo.

You can ask Alexa to:

1. Get a list of all phone brands
2. Get a list of all phones made by brand

• Setup an Amazon Echo and register it using your personal Amazon account.
• Register for an Amazon developer account and setup the Alexa skill here.

Add "Insurance Helper" as both the Name and the Invocation Name.

The interaction model is by far the hardest part of creating an Alexa skill. I suggest reading this and watching this video in order to get a basic understanding of what is required to create an interaction model.

1. Add the JSON blob found in interaction_model/intent_schema.json in the Intent Schema field.
2. Create a new Custom Slot Type and the values found in interaction_model/custom_slots/LIST_OF_BRANDS.
3. Add the Sample Utterances found in interaction_model/sample_utterances.txt in the Sample Utterances field.

1. Select HTTPS as the Service Endpoint Type.
2. Once you've started the app, you need to use ngrok to expose your local server to the internet. Once your app is running, you need to run ngrok http 3000 to do this. You'll then get an url which you can add in the Default field. It will looks something like this https://056d1d30.ngrok.io/alexa.

Select the option My development endpoint is a sub-domain of a domain that has a wildcard certificate from a certificate authority.

The Alexa skill posts data to the WebhooksController. Here we then call the AlexaService which figures out the intent of the request and generates a response. This gets send back to the Alexa Skill and is verbalized by the Echo.

• Building Alexa Skills
• Alexa skill videos

The first step is to add the necessary secrets in config/settings.yml.

Install the gems

bundle install

Run migrations

rails db:migrate

Start the server

rails s

Setup ngrok to expose the endpoint

ngrok http 3000