Beta Release 0.2

Beta Release 0.2

The beta 0.2 release of Virtual Assistant contains following features:

1. Fully functioning Virtual Assistant working with productivity skills as well as QnA app with the support from Dispatch
2. Productivity skills with core functionalities such as

• Email Skill (check, send, forward, reply, delete)
• Calendar Skill (create, update, join, update)
• Todo Skill (todo, grocery, shopping)
• POI Skill (search, navigate)

3. Experimental skill such as Automotive Skill
4. Custom telemetry support for VA with the new BotBuilder SDK 4.2 support for dialog telemetry and a new Conversational Analytics Power BI dashboard providing deep analytics into usage, dialog quality, etc.
5. Simplified deployment process for bot code and language models as well as multi-language support in one deployed VA service
6. Updated Enterprise Template including features like:

• Improved Analytics and PowerBI dashboard
• Updated language models from the prebuilt models team.
• QnA Maker Professional chit-chat model to handle basic queries
• Improvements to localization support
• Alignment with latest msbot release

6. Test harness improvements:
   Sample Android application highlighting Speech Devices SDK integration with Cognitive Services TTS/STT and the Virtual Assistant bot.
   Web Test application showcases both linked accounts and web chat functionality, demonstrating how an authenticated user can have their data persistently linked to the Virtual Assistant without needing to reauthorize.
7. Retail Customer Support focused template which provides further LUIS models for this scenario and example dialogs for Order Management, Stock Availability and Store Location.
8. Skill Template enabling developer to implement customized skill that can be easily plugged into the VA architecture.
9. Basic support for implementing proactive messaging scenarios