# Tech Trantor > AI, LLMs, Agents, Cloud & Integration ## Posts - [Learn how to use the OCI AI Language Service from the Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/learn-how-to-use-the-oci-ai-language-service-from-the-oracle-digital-assistant/): The OCI AI Language is one of the many available OCI AI Services. They are a fantastic complement to many other services. This modular approach [...] - [OCI AI Speech Service - Learn how to transcribe voice](https://techtrantor.com/oci-ai-speech-service-learn-how-to-transcribe-voice/): Another OCI AI Service is freshly out of the oven – This time OCI Speech, which allows us “to easily convert audio files containing human [...] - [Next-Gen Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Conversational AI](https://techtrantor.com/next-gen-natural-language-processing-nlp-for-conversational-ai/): This video by the ODA PM team is a must see for everyone interested in the NLP engine that powers Oracle Digital Assistant. - [An Introduction to Oracle Digital Assistant Entities](https://techtrantor.com/an-introduction-to-oracle-digital-assistant-entities/): This post is a back to basics intro on Entities and their relevance in the context of a conversational interface. Why are Entities so important? [...] - [Happy New Year 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳](https://techtrantor.com/happy-new-year-%f0%9f%a5%b3%f0%9f%a5%b3%f0%9f%a5%b3%f0%9f%a5%b3%f0%9f%a5%b3%f0%9f%a5%b3/): I wish everyone a Happy New Year 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 This site is live for a little over 1 year, and I appreciate all the feedback so [...] - [ODA - Web SDK Widget Tips #2 - a different icon for every day of the week](https://techtrantor.com/oda-web-sdk-widget-tips-3-a-different-icon-for-every-day-of-the-week/): One of my customers asked about the possibility of displaying different Chatbot Icon’s depending on the day of the week (only for Monday and Friday). [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant- Feedback Form (New in 21.10)](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-feedback-form-new-in-21-10/): The latest Oracle Digital Assistant release (from November) gave us a new system component that allows to capture user rating and feedback. The below code [...] - [Oracle Cloud Infrastructure SDK for TypeScript and JavaScript - Authentication Methods](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-cloud-infrastructure-sdk-for-typescript-and-javascript-authentication-methods/): I had to use different authentication methods for the OCI SDK and this post is a way of recording it so that I wont spend [...] - [Speed up your Accounting Closing Cycle with automated loading of Payable Invoices into Oracle ERP Cloud, using Oracle Integration Cloud - By Juan Carlos](https://techtrantor.com/speed-up-your-accounting-closing-cycle-with-automated-loading-of-payable-invoices-into-oracle-erp-cloud-using-oracle-integration-cloud-by-juan-carlos/): My colleague Juan Carlos has a great series of videos that cover end to end use cases with OIC and Oracle Apps (CX/ERP/ServiceCloud). In this [...] - [Verify Email Service with Node.JS for Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/verify-email-service-with-node-js-for-oracle-digital-assistant/): Some weeks ago I got a customer requirement for an extended email validation. We should confirm that the email was valid and existed. Within ODA [...] - [Learn how to host an Oracle Digital Assistant Web Channel in the OCI Object Storage](https://techtrantor.com/learn-how-to-host-an-oracle-digital-assistant-web-channel-in-the-oci-object-storage/): Sharing chatbots with others during development or even before (demo stage) is always a challenge as we don’t have any channel setup for it, nor [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud - Gmail Adapter](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-gmail-adapter/): As part of a wider use case involving OIC, ODA and OCI AI Services, I need to be able to get emails. For that I [...] - [Guide to configure Microsoft Teams with the Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/guide-to-configure-microsoft-teams-with-the-oracle-digital-assistant/): There is an updated guide to installing MS Teams for ODA Microsoft Teams (MS) is one of the most widely used communication channels and very [...] - [How to call the OCI AI Language Service from the Oracle Integration Cloud](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-call-the-oci-ai-language-service-from-the-oracle-integration-cloud/): The OCI AI Language service is one of the new set of AI Services and it can provide valuable capabilities in the context of the [...] - [Setup Email Notifications with the Oracle Integration Cloud](https://techtrantor.com/setup-email-notifications-with-the-oracle-integration-cloud/): The Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) has an embedded Notification activity that allows to send emails. Very useful for error notifications or any other type of [...] - [Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Artificial Intelligence Service (Language)](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-cloud-infrastructure-language-artificial-intelligence-service/): The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has a set of AI services which include: Language (GA) Anomaly Detection (GA) Speech (LA) Vision (LA) Language and Anomaly [...] - [Postman Public Workspace for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure](https://techtrantor.com/postman-public-workspace-for-the-oracle-cloud-infrastructure/): Thanks to my colleague Valeria C. for bringing to my attention that Postman now has a public Workspace with Oracle OCI API’s. You can find [...] - [WordPress on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in 5 minutes!](https://techtrantor.com/wordpress-on-oci/): As a WordPress user this caught my attention – We can deploy a new WordPress environment in just a couple of minutes. the title is [...] - [Send emails with the OCI Email Service and Node.js](https://techtrantor.com/send-emails-with-the-oci-email-service-and-node-js/): The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has an Email Service and like any other OCI service it can be accessed via the OCI CLI , REST [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud - Twilio Adapter for SMS and WhatsApp](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-twilio-adapter-for-sms-and-whatsapp/): The Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) has an Adapter for Twilio which allows to communicated easily via SMS or with WhatsApp. The Twilio Adapter provides the following benefits: [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - Web SDK Widget Tips #1](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-web-sdk-widget-tips-1/): Some weeks ago I got a request from a customer on how to customize the chatbot widget icon and It pushed me to put together [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud - An Assistant for Developers](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-digital-assistant-for-developers/): August brought a new release for the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), and with it, a new developer assistant powered by the Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA). [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - Hidden Skills, new 21.06 Feature](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-hidden-skills-new-21-06-feature/): Release 21.06 brought a very useful feature called: Hidden Skills: In digital assistants, you can now designate skills to not be exposed in menus or [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - Add a delay between messages with a Custom Component](https://techtrantor.com/oda-add-a-delay-between-messages-with-a-custom-component/): From a chatbot design point of view, best practices say that the response messages should not all go at the same time like a machine-gun. [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - Better Data Quality with Data Manufacturing](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-better-data-quality-with-data-manufacturing/): One of the biggest challenges in creating a Chatbot is to train the model with good data. That means having a good set of utterances [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - The must know component for a developer](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-the-must-know-component-for-a-developer/): The most versatile component in the ODA dialog flow is without any doubt the System.CommonResponse. “The System.CommonResponse component enables you to build a specialized user interface that [...] - [Embeding Oracle Digital Assistant into Oracle Content & Experience](https://techtrantor.com/embeding-oracle-digital-assistant-into-oracle-content-experience/): The Oracle Content and Experience offers a great platform to quicly create and manage content. There are many available templates for personal and business sites, [...] - [How to automatically STOP OCI resources with Python SDK to control budget](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-automatically-stop-oci-resources-with-python-sdk-to-control-budget/): Previously I wrote a post about automating the START/STOP of compute instances using Python SDK for OCI. That approach assumed we could create a cron [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - WhatsApp Integration with Twilio](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-whatsapp-integration-with-twilio/): WhatsApp is one of the most interesting platforms for customers when it comes to delivering a conversational interface. WhatsApp typically works with partners and 3rd [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant for All Oracle Fusion Apps](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-for-all-oracle-fusion-apps/): All of the Oracle Fusion Apps come with Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA), so any customer can very easily enable the service and make use of [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - Backend Integration with the Oracle Integration Cloud](https://techtrantor.com/oda-custom-component-invoking-an-oic-integration/): With the Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) custom components (powered by Bot Node SDK) we can establish connectivity to anything that has a REST endpoint. What [...] - [Embed the Oracle Digital Assistant in a WordPress Site](https://techtrantor.com/embed-the-oracle-digital-assistant-in-a-wordpress-site/): WordPress is meant to facilitate the life of anyone trying to manage a website, that means that it’s advisable to stick with Themes and not [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant - Multilingual the easy way](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-multilingual-the-easy-way/): The Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) provides out of the box Native support for several Languages. In this post I will cover the necessary steps to [...] - [The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) plugin for Eclipse](https://techtrantor.com/the-oracle-cloud-infrastructure-oci-plugin-for-eclipse/): One of the many ways to connect to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is by using an Eclipse toolkit. This is not an extensive plugin [...] - [Configure Slack as a Channel for the Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/configure-slack-as-a-channel-for-the-oracle-digital-assistant/): In this post I will create a Slack Channel to expose an Oracle Digital Assistant Skill. It’s not always the case but, for this task, [...] - [APEX App with FIFA 21 Players dataset in 15 minutes!](https://techtrantor.com/apex-app-with-fifa-21-players-dataset-in-15-minutes/): Low Code Development solutions provide a development environment that can be used to create applications via a  a graphical user interface instead of manually coding [...] - [Oracle HCM Cloud - Payroll Sync with the Oracle Integration Cloud](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-hcm-cloud-payroll-sync-with-the-oracle-integration-cloud/): The most common use case I come across with Oracle HCM Cloud is Payroll Integration. Most organizations use 3rd party Payroll providers. Many of those [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud - Kafka Adapter with Apache AVRO](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-kafka-adapter-with-apache-avro/): The Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) May 2021 release brought Apache AVRO support to Kafka. This is something a lot of customers asked and it’s widely [...] - [A Java Client to produce messages in the WLS JMS Server running on OCI](https://techtrantor.com/a-java-client-to-produce-messages-in-the-wls-jms-server-running-on-oci/): In the previous post I setup a JMS server on WLS running on OCI. In this one the goal is to use a Java Client [...] - [Process Automation with Process Cloud Service (PCS) - Part 5 - (Publish & Activate)](https://techtrantor.com/process-automation-with-process-cloud-service-pcs-part-5-publish-activate/): This is the final post in the process of creating an automated process workflow using the Process Cloud Service. Here I will Publish & Activate [...] - [Integration Insight - Business Analytics for the Oracle Integration Cloud](https://techtrantor.com/integration-insight-business-analytics-for-the-oracle-integration-cloud/): Integration Insight brings a unique take on Integration Monitoring. The Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) has monitoring and audit capabilities out of the box, but those [...] - [Configure JMS with Weblogic Server on OCI](https://techtrantor.com/configure-jms-with-weblogic-server-on-oci/): In this post I will show how to configure JMS in the Weblogic Server (WLS). This is not an area with lack of information as [...] - [Process Automation with Process Cloud Service (PCS) – Part 4 (Testing)](https://techtrantor.com/process-automation-with-process-cloud-service-pcs-part-4-testing/): Testing is without doubts the ugly duckling of application development, but it is really a necessary evil 🙂 Testing in itself is a whole separate [...] - [Tired of manually updating OIC Connection details? Learn how to automate with REST and Python](https://techtrantor.com/tired-of-manually-updating-oic-connection-details-learn-how-to-automate-with-rest-and-python/): All of the Oracle Fusion environments I use have a weekly password refresh. That results in a tedious task of updating all the OIC Connections [...] - [Automate STOP/START of your Compute Instances with Python SDK for OCI](https://techtrantor.com/automate-stop-start-of-your-compute-instances-with-python-sdk-for-oci/): In this post I will show how easy it is to create a script that automates the STOP of all of instances within one compartment. [...] - [Process Automation with Process Cloud Service – Part 3 (Workflow)](https://techtrantor.com/process-automation-with-process-cloud-service-part-3-workflow/): In this blog series (part1, part2) I am covering step-by-step how to build and deploy an automated business process using the process cloud service. At [...] - [Build a FAQ Chatbot with Oracle Digital Assistant in 15 minutes](https://techtrantor.com/build-a-faq-chatbot-with-oracle-digital-assistant-in-15-minutes/): Update: There is a new approach for building FAQ’s by using answer intents instead of the QnA module. This approach is deprecated. I will write [...] - [Updated Backend Integration with Node.js Bot SDK for the Football Chatbot](https://techtrantor.com/updated-backend-integration-with-node-js-bot-sdk-for-the-football-chatbot/): In the Football Chatbot Series I used the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) to implement the Football API backend integration, and Node.js SDK to call the [...] - [Build a Football Chatbot with the Oracle Digital Assistant - Part 3 (Channels)](https://techtrantor.com/build-a-football-chatbot-with-the-oracle-digital-assistant-part-3-channels/): This is the last part of the Football Chatbot series. In part1 the project started with the Chatbot definitions and design while part 2 focused [...] - [Golden Gate OCI Native is Available](https://techtrantor.com/golden-gate-oci-native-is-available/): The Golden Gate (GG) Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Native Service is now GA. It’s a big milestone in the consolidation of Oracle’s Golden Gate offerings. [...] - [Build a Football Chatbot with the Oracle Digital Assistant - Part 2 (Backend Integration)](https://techtrantor.com/build-a-football-chatbot-with-the-oracle-digital-assistant-part-2-backend-integration/): In the previous post I created a Chatbot with a Dialog Flow that allows users to ask for results, fixtures, league standings and scorers for [...] - [Build a Football Chatbot with the Oracle Digital Assistant - Part 1](https://techtrantor.com/build-a-football-chatbot-with-the-oracle-digital-assistant-part-1/): In this post series I will show how to build a Chatbot to provide self-service for football information. You will be able to ask the [...] - [Process Automation with Process Cloud Service (PCS) - Part 2 (Forms)](https://techtrantor.com/process-automation-with-process-cloud-service-pcs-part-2-forms/): In the previous post I created a simple business process, but with no real implementation details. It was just a framework. Now, I will show [...] - [Guide on how to protect OIC endpoints with OCI API Gateway](https://techtrantor.com/protect-your-oic-api-endpoints-with-api-gateway/): The February release for the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) is out and with it several new features and enhancements. One of the most interesting new [...] - [Process Automation with Process Cloud Service (PCS) - Part 1](https://techtrantor.com/process-automation-with-process-cloud-service-pcs-part-1/): Earlier in my career I worked extensively with a Business Process Management (BPM) software called Cordys (meanwhile acquired by OpenText). Had a couple of trainings [...] - [The Python SDK for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)](https://techtrantor.com/the-python-sdk-for-oracle-cloud-infrastructure-oci/): The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Command Line Interface (CLI) is easy to use, specially when using it directly from the Cloud Shell as it requires [...] - [An easy way to handle the Oracle ERP Callback when importing data](https://techtrantor.com/an-easy-way-to-handle-the-oracle-erp-callback-when-importing-data/): One of the main benefits of using the Oracle ERP Adapter is the capability to easily receive the Callbacks of a previously triggered FBDI job. [...] - [Fibonacci Sequence with Python](https://techtrantor.com/fibonacci-sequence-with-python/): This is my solution for the Fibonacci problem! This is the result of my first attempt. I see ample room for improvement, as this can [...] - [Quick Install of Grafana for OCI Metrics](https://techtrantor.com/grafana-for-oci-metrics/): The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers several monitoring metrics for each service. Its UI is efficient but not the most fancy display one can have. [...] - [Import files into Oracle ERP Cloud the easy way](https://techtrantor.com/import-files-into-oracle-erp-cloud-the-easy-way/): Most of my application integration discussions with customers revolve around their ERP business. It is a core unit within any organisation, and more times than [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud - Integration Patterns and Best Practices](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-anti-patterns-and-best-practices/): Oracle has some great learning videos for Oracle Integration Cloud on youtube. I post here three of those videos (from Antony Reynolds) that focus on [...] - [How to use the CLI for OCI Streaming Service (OSS)](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-use-the-cli-for-oci-streaming-service-oss/): The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Streaming Service is a Kafka-compatible event streaming platform for developers and data scientists.  In this post I will show how to [...] - [Easy cloning of your Oracle Integration Cloud content with Import/Export](https://techtrantor.com/easy-cloning-of-your-oracle-integration-cloud-content-with-import-export/): The new Oracle Integration Cloud feature to Import/Export brings additional capabilities when it comes to quickly setting up a new environment. This is not meant [...] - [The road to real time Integration with HCM Atom Feeds](https://techtrantor.com/the-road-to-real-time-integration-with-hcm-atom-feeds/): The HCM Atom Feeds offer a real time mechanism to subscribe to changes in the application. The Oracle Integration Cloud HCM Adapter has this capability [...] - [Guide on the Oracle Integration Cloud SalesForce Adapter - Invoke](https://techtrantor.com/guide-on-the-oracle-integration-cloud-salesforce-adapter-invoke/): Up until recently we would need to generate a Salesforce (SF) Enterprise WSDL in order to create a connection in OIC. That is no longer [...] - [How to Invoke an OCI Function from the Oracle Integration Cloud](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-invoke-an-oci-function-from-the-oracle-integration-cloud/): How to call an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Function ,using the REST Adapter from the Oracle Integration Cloud. - [How can OCI Events help OIC Automation?](https://techtrantor.com/how-can-oci-events-help-oic-automation/): Having OIC Gen2 running on OCI brings plenty of added benefits. In this post I am going to look at OCI Events. What are OCI [...] - [OIC Troubleshooting: 401: Unable to create integration instance](https://techtrantor.com/oic-troubleshooting-401-unable-to/): Yesterday I was helping a customer in provisioning OIC, just after he activated his user account in a new OCI tenancy. I have done this [...] - [How to Provision Weblogic in 15 minutes](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-provision-weblogic-in-15-minutes/): image from oracle blog Back in 2014 when I was still a Consultant, at one of my customers (a Telco company in Finland) it took [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) - Kafka Trigger](https://techtrantor.com/oic-kafka-adapter-trigger/): The November release for the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) delivered the Trigger capability for the Kafka Adapter. Up until now we could only use Scheduled [...] - [OIC - SalesForce Adapter - Trigger](https://techtrantor.com/oic-salesforce-adapter-trigger/): Up until recently we would need to generate a Salesforce (SF) Enterprise WSDL in order to create a connection in OIC. That is no longer [...] - [How to use the OCI Object Storage from the Oracle Integration Cloud](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-use-oci-object-storage-from/):  Article originally posted in the Oracle Integration Blog. The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a great set of services that can be very useful in combination [...] - [OIC - Custom Libraries](https://techtrantor.com/oic-custom-libraries/): In the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) we can add custom libraries that give the option to implement requirements not covered with the out of the [...] - [OIC - Evernote Adapter](https://techtrantor.com/oic-evernote-adapter/): Update November 2020: Well, it seems that right after this article, the Evernote Adapter reached its end-of-life:  You cannot create new connections of the Evernote [...] - [OIC - Parallel Processing](https://techtrantor.com/oic-parallel-processing/): The other day I stumbled upon a check box that enables Parallel Processing. This is part of the for-each action. According to the documentation , [...] - [OIC Connectivity Agent](https://techtrantor.com/oic-connectivity-agent/): The OIC connectivity agent is the answer for a secure hybrid deployment, where you have a mix of cloud and on-premise applications and need to [...] - [OIC - Update Strategy](https://techtrantor.com/oic-update-strategy/): From August onward, the update strategy changed, from monthly to a quarterly based delivery. On top of that Oracle now gives it’s OIC customers to [...] - [Twitter Adapter for OIC - Bot for Chuck Norris Tweets](https://techtrantor.com/twitter-adapter-for-oic-bot-for-chuck/): When we think about Enterprise Applications, the automation of Tweets containing Chuck Norris jokes is not the first thought that comes to mind…..But that’s exactly what [...] - [ERP Adapter - Business Events](https://techtrantor.com/erp-adapter-business-events/): One of the most powerful and unique features of the Oracle ERP Adapter is the capability to subscribe to real-time business events. On top of that, it’s actually [...] - [Kafka Adapter for OIC](https://techtrantor.com/kafka-adapter-for-oic/): This article was originally published in the Oracle Integration Blog. The Kafka adapter for Oracle Integration Cloud came out earlier this month, and it was [...] - [Slack Adapter for OIC](https://techtrantor.com/slack-adapter-for-oic/): This article was originally published in the Oracle Integration Blog.  The Slack adapter for Oracle Integration Cloud was released recently and delivers an easy way [...] - [Invoke a Co-located Integration from a Parent Integration](https://techtrantor.com/invoke-a-co-located-integration/):   This article was originally published in the Oracle Integration Blog. The capability to ‘Invoke an Integration from another Integration’ is now GA – in [...] - [Integration Patterns - Publish/Subscribe (Part2)](https://techtrantor.com/integration-patterns-publishsubscribe_25/):   Article originally posted on the Oracle Integration Blog. In my previous blog post, I explained the integration pattern publish/subscribe, and how easy it is [...] - [Integration Patterns - Publish/Subscribe (Part1)](https://techtrantor.com/integration-patterns-publishsubscribe/): Article originally published on the Oracle Integration Blog.   Broadcasting, Publish/Subscribe, Distributed Messaging, One-to-many, these are just some of the names referring to the same [...] - [Service Now KB Chatbot](https://techtrantor.com/service-now-kb-chatbot-part-1/): Why I’m Building This After reading some articles about ServiceNow AI use cases, I became curious about the platform and wanted to better understand how AI solutions can be combined with modern SaaS offerings. Having worked with Oracle SaaS solutions and in roles where we built extensions using low code tools, chatbots, business processes and custom applications built on top of HCM/SCM/ERP, I was interested in exploring the additional value that AI can bring to the SaaS ecosystem. My initial plan was to start with a Service Now Personal Developer Instance (PDI), and explore Service Now AI capabilities, but I [...] - [Building a Practical RAG Pipeline with LangChain](https://techtrantor.com/building-a-practical-rag-pipeline-with-langchain/): RAG is one of the best solutions since the proliferation of LLMs (The next one being Agents). Its simple, and yet very powerful. The basic idea is clear enough, we retrieve relevant data, give it to an LLM, and ask the model to answer from it. But the quality of the final answer depends a lot on the decisions made across the entire end2end flow (or pipeline) I have experimented with several of the previous steps, but all on isolation, whether from the angle of the Vector Database, or the angle of the available strategies for chunking and retrieval. This [...] - [Chunking Strategies for Better RAG Retrieval With Qdrant](https://techtrantor.com/chunking-strategies-for-better-rag-retrieval-with-qdrant/): Lately I have been exploring RAG systems in more detail, and while creating some local RAGs for experimentaton several things become clear – one of those, is the quality of Chunking affect immensely the quality of the entire RAG system Looking at the entire pipeline its easy to focus on the LLM, the vector database, or the embedding model. Those are important pieces, of course. But before any of that can work well, we need to decide how the source material is split into smaller pieces. As someone that worked many years with data and application integration, there is one [...] - [Exploring Qdrant Cloud and Vector Database](https://techtrantor.com/exploring-qdrant-cloud-and-vector-database/): I recently came across Qdrant when doing some research in the RAG space, and decided to give it a try. Cloud trials, or docker images for local experimentation are so easy that it makes it almost comical to think about the old days of software trials. First and foremost Qdrant is a Vector Database built for Semantic Search in modern (AI) systems. That makes it a natural fit for modern AI workloads like RAG pipelines, agent systems, and any scenario where meaning matters more than keywords. When we finish the cluster creation we get a pair of API keys + [...] - [AI Agents 101: Build an AI Agent with Ollama (llama3.1)](https://techtrantor.com/ai-agents-101-build-an-ai-agent-with-ollama-llama3-1/): What is an AI agent? I find the below quote very self-explanatory. I don’t recall where I saw it, but it sums it up very well. LLMs answer questions, Agents perform tasks So, how to they perform those tasks? An agent framework consists of the below steps/sequence Agent = Goal + LLM + Tools + Loop + Guardrails There are variations of these, but ultimately the core is the same. The Starting Point LLMs are phenomenal but limited in their scope of operation. Agents are a little different. An agent can decide what action to take, call a tool, inspect the [...] - [Beyond Basic RAG: Advanced Retrieval Techniques for a Star Trek Knowledge Base](https://techtrantor.com/beyond-basic-rag-advanced-retrieval-techniques-for-a-star-trek-knowledge-base/): In a previous post, I built a basic Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline using the Star Trek Memory Alpha wiki as a knowledge base. The system worked, questions were inserted, relevant chunks were retrieved from a vector database, and a local LLM generated answers grounded in that retrieved context. However, the quality of the answers was inconsistent. Sometimes the RAG retrieved good quality information and assembled excellent answers. Other times it returned unrelated text chunks that caused the model to generate incomplete or inaccurate responses. This highlighted an important lesson when building RAG systems Answer quality is limited by retrieval [...] - [Trying out Kong Konnect AI Gateway](https://techtrantor.com/trying-out-kong-konnect-ai-gateway/): Recently I came across a Kong billboard that might seem a bit odd if you’ve never had a dog… but for those of us who have, it’s a funny and unexpected take 🙂 It reminded me about API management and my experience with Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC). Back then, we had Apiary (for API design) through acquisition, along with a mix of API Portal and Catalog solutions that felt quite disconnected, and were not up to the competition level at the time. These evolved into more native OIC capabilities, with OIC API Gateway and also including a proper API Catalog [...] - [Create Your Own Garmin Watch Face](https://techtrantor.com/create-your-own-garmin-watch-face/): The other day I saw a pretty cool Garmin Watch Face on Reddit, and before I could download it, I realized it was a paid face :/ I very much dislike paid apps, so this was the trigger for me to embark on the journey of creating my own Watch Face, all because of 2.99$. Garmin SDK – Developer Account Let’s go – first thing is a visit to Garmin’s developer page which is the first time i heard of it 🙂 https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/sdk – Download Connect IQ SDK During installation you can use your own Garmin account to login – [...] - [OpenAI Codex App: A New Teammate for Developers](https://techtrantor.com/openai-codex-app-a-new-teammate-for-developers/): AI innovation is going at warp speed, and keeping up is not easy. Being an early adopter gained a whole new meaning as trying anything just 1 week later means we are already behind. I recently spent the weekend testing the OpenAI Codex app and its coding models, and the experience felt much different from using the same models integrated in VSCode for example. Until now, my AI usage in development was focused on code reviews or generating/refactoring code. Codex App goes further. Rather than acting like simple (!! funny how we take amazing things for granted) autocomplete, Codex behaves [...] - [From Fandom to RAG: Building a Complete Star Trek Assistant in Python](https://techtrantor.com/from-fandom-to-rag-building-a-complete-star-trek-assistant-in-python-part-1/): In a previous post I covered how Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) can be used to extend a Large Language Model (LLM) knowledge beyond what it learned during training. That example was quite simple and just did the minimum basic steps to have a working RAG. In this post, I will take things a step further. Instead of working with a small dataset, I’ll build a much larger knowledge base by ingesting the complete set of Star Trek information from the massive Memory Alpha Fandom wiki. This site contains tens of thousands of pages covering characters, species, starships, technologies, and episodes [...] - [Building a Local RAG Pipeline with Ollama and Llama 3.1 in 50 Lines of Python](https://techtrantor.com/building-a-local-rag-pipeline-with-ollama-and-llama-3-1-in-50-lines-of-python/): Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) came out in a research paper in 2020 and addressed one of the earlier LLM limitations, to easily extend its knowledge base in a fast and inexpensive way. Up until then, if one needed to extend the knowledge of a LLM it would required fine tuning and extra training which is an expensive and lengthy process. Also given these models were shared ones, it prevented companies from adding their own data into the training as this was not really feasible. RAG came to address those limitations by “appending” a new set of data from external data [...] - [Analyzing My Sport Data with Elasticsearch](https://techtrantor.com/analyzing-my-sport-data-with-elasticsearch/): Many people assume that with ChatGPT, there is no longer a need for people to write articles or blogs. That would be true if the content was purely meant for an audience. But to be honest, my motivation is a bit more selfish 🙂 This is my process when I want to learn something new. I write about it, which forces me to research, take notes and organize things a bit. On top of that I can always return to it later to refresh my memory, which I end up doing more often than not. How to start? Looking at [...] - [Experimenting with Local LLMs Using Ollama on Mac M3](https://techtrantor.com/experimenting-with-local-llms-using-ollama-on-mac-m3/): I’ve been putting this aside for some time. But the time has come and I will be experimenting/learning about local LLM deployment, expanding them with RAG and learn more about Agents and MCP, Agentic flows etc The only obvious limitation is not having access to GPUs, only access to my Mac M3 but that should be enough for a lot of the smaller models out there, and should fit perfectly for my self-education project here. In this post I ll cover my experience setting up a local LLM with Ollama. Why Ollama? I will be using Ollama for the fact [...] - [A New Chapter: From ODA to the Oracle AI Health](https://techtrantor.com/a-new-chapter-from-oda-to-the-oracle-ai-health/): Over the past year, my role at work has changed quite a bit, and the lack of activity here on my site has been a clear reflection of that, mainly due to the new nature of my work – which although extremely interesting and at the forefront of AI innovation gives me less free time to pursue other areas of interest and also to write about them. After several years working deeply with Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) and later with Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA), I moved into a team that’s building something new using cut edge technology to deliver the [...] - [Run DeepSeek Locally with Ollama in Under 5 Minutes](https://techtrantor.com/run-deepseek-locally-with-ollama-in-under-5-minutes/): Installing DeepSeek locally is as quick and easy as it gets. Step 1 is to install Ollama, which can you can find on https://ollama.com/ You can explore the available models that you can pull with Ollama. If you open deepseek-r1, you see a list with all the models – obviously we need to pick a smaller model, in my case I got the 7b, but could go for the 32b. My mac does not have resources for a bigger model. Once you pick your model, you can open a terminal and use the respective command. This is Step 2. And [...] - [Family Calendar with Raspberry-Pi 4 and a E-Reader Display (Part 1)](https://techtrantor.com/family-calendar-with-raspberry-pi-4-and-a-e-reader-display-part-1/): In 2020 I got a Raspberry Pi 3 and after several months of experiencing with it I found a permanent project — taking daily pictures of the sky and creating a mosaic. With that project up and running, I decided to buy a Raspberry Pi 4 for my next venture. Fast forward three years… the Raspberry Pi 4 ended up forgotten in a drawer. After multiple attempts to locate it (and even accusing my significant other of throwing it out), I finally found it! To my surprise, it was already set up, including Wi-Fi configuration. All I had to do [...] - [TechTrantor reaches 200k views! 🥳 🥳 ](https://techtrantor.com/techtrantor-reaches-200k-views-%f0%9f%a5%b3-%f0%9f%a5%b3/): What started as a little experiment on Blogspot turned into something far more meaningful in just a few weeks. Today, TechTrantor.com celebrates a significant milestone—200,000 views over the past 4 years! (Okay, okay, probably 10k of those are just mine.) I’ve used this platform as a space to document what I’m working on, from small side PoCs to interesting areas of technology I’ve come across. My hope is that these posts have been helpful to some of you along the way. Over time, my focus has evolved—from Oracle Integration Cloud to new domains like Oracle Digital Assistant and OCI AI—but [...] - [Prompt Engineering in a Nutshell](https://techtrantor.com/prompt-engineering-in-a-nutshell/): Prompt Engineering is a very recent concept, widely used to optimize interactions with large language models (LLMs) When ChatGPT was first introduced, my initial approach was to ask questions in a straightforward manner. I didn’t think about providing examples, setting the tone, or even to incorporate some characteristics in the request (like acting as a customer support agent specializing in claim handling). I always found weird the usage of the word engineering on an activity that is hard to measure and quantify, many times its counter intuitive, and other times simply not consistent. Having said that, it still seems to [...] - [The Day-to-Day Challenges of a Conversation Designer](https://techtrantor.com/the-day-to-day-challenges-of-a-conversation-designer/): A conversation designer creates the flow and the structure of the interactions between users and AI systems, like chatbots, to ensure smooth, natural communication. They focus on making the way the bot answers, manage the entire flow of dialog to provide the best experience to the user in a way that reflects the brand’s tone and personality. I feel this a role is still largely misunderstood, but I have seen first hand how valuable it is for any conversational AI project. A proper carved conversation has the ability to transform the entire user experience. There are a number of challenges that conversation designers face and need to learn how to handle. Here are five of the most common ones. 1. Too much [...] - [Google NotebookLM: Transform Your Data into an Audio Podcast with AI](https://techtrantor.com/google-notebooklm-transform-your-data-into-an-audio-podcast-with-ai/): We’re living in an AI ‘gold rush,’ where innovations pop up almost every week. After ChatGPT, it’s difficult to come across something truly surprising. However, Google’s NotebookLM did just that, particularly with its impressive ‘audio overview’ feature, which really caught my attention. https://notebooklm.google.com Google’s NotebookLM is an experimental AI-powered note-taking tool developed by Google Labs. It’s designed to help users organize and analyze large amounts of information by uploading documents (like PDFs or web pages) and then using an AI model to generate summaries, answer questions, and provide insights based on those sources. It’s especially useful for research, enabling users [...] - [The new Oracle Generative AI Agent!](https://techtrantor.com/the-new-oracle-generative-ai-agent/): OCI Generative AI Agents is a fully managed service that combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with an intelligent retrieval system to create contextually relevant answers by searching your knowledge base, making your AI applications smart and efficient. It’s hard to keep track of all the developments that followed the wake of ChatGPT and LLM technologies, but clearly, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and AI Agents have proven to be powerful solutions for addressing the complex needs of enterprises Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) now offers the OCI Generative AI Agent Service, currently available in the Chicago Region. Key Features Documentation [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud Now Features RPA Capabilities](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-now-features-rpa-capabilities/): This is one of the most significant enhancements to Oracle Integration Cloud in recent times—introducing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities. Previously, OIC allowed integration with third-party RPA vendors, but this is a game-changer. Now, OIC has native RPA capabilities, enabling it to perform automated actions directly within the platform. What is RPA? RPA uses software robots to automate manual repetitive tasks performed everyday by your employees, such as mundane data entry and transaction processing tasks. Automating such tasks not only frees those valuable resources for more strategic activities but also improves business process efficiency and effectiveness. RPA works by using [...] - [OCI Generative AI with Python SDK](https://techtrantor.com/oci-generative-ai-with-python-sdk/): The Python SDK for OCI is an incredible easy way to consume any OCI service. I covered the required pre-requisites on this post here, but as a recap here you go. OCI Configuration First you need to configure your OCI tenancy for access. After that you will be able to load a config variable that can be used for authentication Python Configuration With Python installed the only thing we need to do is to install oci pip install oci Once that is out of the way, then you are ready to go. The below code is a working example of [...] - [Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's Generative AI Service Overview](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-cloud-infrastructures-generative-ai-service-overview/): Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s Generative AI service is the latest AI service in the OCI AI catalog and it offers advanced large language models (LLMs) tailored for various text generation needs. You can explore and experiment with the pre-trained models in the playground, or develop and deploy your own customized models using your data on specialized AI clusters. Playground The playground is a web interface in the Oracle Cloud Console that lets you explore hosted pre-trained and custom models without any coding. Use the playground to test use cases and refine prompts and parameters. You simply add your input, select the [...] - [Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-clinical-digital-assistant/): The last year was a busy one* as we have been collectively working towards a innovative assistant for healthcare productivity. Below is a first glimpse of the Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant. *which reflected in fewer posts on TechTrantor - [OCI Generative AI is now GA](https://techtrantor.com/oci-generative-ai-is-now-ga/): Oracle today announced the general availability of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oracle-announces-availability-oci-generative-ai-service-2024-01-23/ This service has been in Beta/LA since last September and now sees the daylight as GA. The OCI Generative AI service is a fully managed tool that easily uses large language models (LLMs) from Cohere and Meta Llama 2, making it suitable for various business needs. Customers may further refine these models using their own data with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques, so the models will understand their unique internal operations. Now in beta, OCI Generative AI Agents service with a RAG agent combines the power of LLMs and [...] - [🎉🎉 Happy New Year 2024  🎉🎉](https://techtrantor.com/%f0%9f%8e%89%f0%9f%8e%89-happy-new-year-2024-%f0%9f%8e%89%f0%9f%8e%89/): I wish everyone visiting this page a happy new year 2024!! There were visitors from pretty much every corner of the world 🙂 - [Python Script to Retrieve Running Services in OCI](https://techtrantor.com/fetching-all-running-services-across-all-compartments-in-oci-with-python/): To fetch running resources from different Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services like instances, databases, analytics, integration, and Oracle Digital Assistant services, you can modify the script to accommodate each service’s unique API endpoints and methods. Below, I’ll provide you with an outline of how you can adapt the script to fetch running resources from these services: Prerequisites: The basics Ensure you have the OCI SDK for Python installed and your authentication configured. With these foundations in place, you can move to the next step. Step 1: Authenticating with OCI First things first, let’s establish a secure connection to your OCI [...] - [Zoom Integration with the Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/zoom-integration-with-the-oracle-digital-assistant/): You now (since 23.10) have the capability to customize a digital assistant to seamlessly integrate with Zoom Meetings video conferences. This integration is facilitated through the Oracle Digital Assistant for Zoom app, available for installation via Zoom’s App Marketplace. Once installed, users gain the ability to engage in real-time conversations with your digital assistant directly within the app while participating in an active Zoom meeting. Zoom Marketplace Please be aware that full administrative control of Zoom is necessary for the following procedures. If you are utilizing a corporate version of Zoom and lack administrative access, these methods will not be [...] - [What Are The Benefits of a Conversational AI Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/3-2-what-are-the-benefits-of-a-conversational-ai-assistant/): Introduction Conversational AI, encompassing digital assistants and chatbots, provides a multitude of benefits for both users and businesses. From a user perspective, one of the primary advantages of conversational AI is the instant nature of the interaction. There are no waiting times, and the user gets an instant response 24/7 – if you think about customer service, this is a fantastic benefit. There is no need to install a dedicated app, as typically conversational AI assistants are deployed in a wide variety of channels, most of them users already have access to. Think about social media (Messenger, Twitter) or communication [...] - [ODA What's New - 23.10](https://techtrantor.com/oda-whats-new-23-10/): The upcoming Oracle Digital Assistant release 23.10 brings us plenty of cool new features, paving the way for even more amazing stuff. LLM Blocks: You can now add a generative AI capability like summarization, sentiment analysis, and small talk whenever you need it in your dialog flow using the new Invoke Large Language Model (LLM) component. This component handles interactive transactions, such as multi-turn refinements, the back-and-forth exchanges between the user and the LMM that hone the LLM output through rounds of user feedback. You can also use LLM components to collect out for downstream use. The LLM component’s built-in validation [...] - [OCI Generative AI (Beta) Service Product Tour](https://techtrantor.com/oci-generative-ai-beta-service-product-tour/): This is an awareness post to shed some light on a highly anticipated Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Service. The OCI Generative AI Service It is still in Limited Availability but you can check the product tour in the below video. A bit more info is available in this blog post https://blogs.oracle.com/ai-and-datascience/post/hello-world-oci-generative-ai-is-here This is a brave new world and I am super excited for the upcoming developments!! - [A step back on the history of conversational AI](https://techtrantor.com/1-2-a-step-back-on-the-history-of-conversational-ai/): Introduction Do you remember your first interaction with a chatbot? To be honest, I don’t, and that means only one thing – it was not impactful enough (either in a good or a bad way). Chatbots have been around for quite some time, in earlier days mainly as products of academic research, but since the internet Era they started to become more visible, and nowadays they are everywhere. While some chatbots catch our attention immediately upon visiting a website, others remain a bit shy and hide on the contact page. However, it is quite common to encounter chatbots in the [...] - [OCI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code](https://techtrantor.com/oci-toolkit-for-visual-studio-code/): The OCI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code offers developers a range of functionalities that facilitate the creation, testing, and deployment of resources and applications on OCI directly from Microsoft Visual Studio Code. To locate the OCI Toolkit for VS Code, navigate to the Visual Studio Code Marketplace and conduct a search using the keyword ‘OCI’. It’s great to have a plugin for VS Code, even if as limited as it appears with this first release. Let’s hope that more supported services follow shortly. The plugin can be found here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Oracle.oci-vscode-toolkit - [Oracle Integration Cloud - Role Based Control Access with Projects](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-role-based-control-access-with-projects/): The inclusion of fine-grained access controls for integrations has been a highly anticipated and long-awaited feature in the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC). Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is highly important in project development, especially when it comes to managing access and permissions within an application or system. RBAC is a security model that defines and regulates user access rights based on their assigned roles. So, when you have a shared OIC instance across several Lines of Business, there may be the need to apply segregation based on those LOBs. We may not want that in an HR project, other people outside [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud – ERP Integration Patterns – Real-Time Inbound](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-erp-integration-patterns-real-time-inbound/): Customers usually manage multiple systems to support their business activities, and these systems are directly related to the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. Each of these systems is capable of generating substantial volumes of financial transaction data. To meet the requirements of a single consolidated view, there is a need to seamlessly integrate this data into the Oracle ERP system, preferably in an automated manner. Real-time data synchronization can be critical in certain scenarios, particularly for businesses that rely heavily on up-to-date information and require immediate data availability across systems. In such cases, an integration pattern that supports real-time data [...] - [ODA Handy FreeMarker Expressions](https://techtrantor.com/oda-handy-freemarker-expressions/): This will be one of those posts I will use for easy access whenever looking for some Apache FreeMarker Expressions. This is all documented in the ODA docs. Handy Expressions In your flows, you can use FreeMarker expressions for a variety of purposes. Here are some commonly-used expressions. Tip: Autocompletion guides you through writing these (and other) Apache FreeMarker expressions. Operation Freemarker Expression Result Type Get name of parent flow ${system.parentFlow} String Get event payload ${skill.system.event.value.EVENT_NAME} JSON object Access NLP result ${skill.system.nlpresult.value} JSON object Access skill-scope variable ${skill.VAR_NAME}   Access flow-scope variable ${VAR_NAME}   Access flow input param ${INPUT_PARAM_NAME}   [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud - ERP Integration Patterns - Bulk Import](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-erp-integration-patterns-bulk-import/): This is an updated take on an older post. Customers usually manage multiple systems to support their business activities, and many of these systems are directly related to the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. Each of these systems is capable of generating substantial volumes of financial transaction data. To meet the requirements of a single consolidated view, there is a need to seamlessly integrate this data into the Oracle ERP system, preferably in an automated manner. Given that many of these systems produce files and real-time data synchronization is not always necessary (most cases only require a daily update), we [...] - [SQL Dialog and Generative AI - Have you talked to your database lately?](https://techtrantor.com/sql-dialog-and-generative-ai-have-you-talked-to-your-database-lately/): Earlier this year I wrote a series of articles on ODA’s SQL Dialog capabilities. Oracle Digital Assistant release 22.12 brings us a ground-breaking new capability – SQL Dialog – which can translate a user’s natural language input into SQL queries, send the queries to a backend data source, and display the response. All of these without the need to create intents, utterances, or custom components! https://techtrantor.com/introducing-the-new-oracle-digital-assistant-sql-dialog/ What’s New? This week, Mark Johnson (Chief AI Scientist, Oracle Digital Assistant) and Pradeep Vincent (SVP & Chief Technical Architect OCI), released an in-depth take on SQL Dialogs and Generative AI. You can find the entire [...] - [New with ODA 23.06: Editable forms - Yes, you can easily add forms to your dialog!](https://techtrantor.com/new-with-oda-23-06-editable-forms-yes-you-can-easily-add-forms-to-your-dialog/): You can use the new Create Input Form template in the Visual Flow Designer to build editable forms with text and numeric fields, date/time pickers, buttons, select lists, radio buttons, and checkboxes. Such forms are supported on the Web, iOS, Android, Slack, and Microsoft Teams channels. https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/digital-assistant/whats-new/index.html#GUID-249A3F93-6CC8-4B8F-9B14-EA4F56ECC266 This is actually a long waited feature, that will allow us to easily (and quickly) create input forms to capture data from users. In some use cases, having a fully conversational approach may not be the most efficient means to capture data, so instead of having a back-and-forth interaction with the user, we [...] - [Enhance your Answer Intents with Prelude and Feedback!](https://techtrantor.com/enhance-your-answer-intents-with-prelude-and-feedback/): Answer intents are the best approach for frequently asked questions – they are easy to implement, use the same NLP engine that powers regular intents, and deliver tremendous value. “Can we customize them?” The answer is – YES! You can create a flow to handle all of the answer intents and even create a flow dedicated to a single answer intent. One of the best practices in conversational design is to acknowledge the user query before following up on it. This is how we do it. Add a Prelude In order to acknowledge the user request, we use the Conversation [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud Gen3 (OIC3) has over 150 recipes](https://techtrantor.com/oic3-has-over-150-recipes/): One of the premises of OIC has always been the low code approach with ease of implementation. Throughout the entire product lifecycle, this was always a main feature driver. Recipes are not new, but they went from 20 to over 150 in the last year or so (the time I took off from OIC To be honest this is a phenomenal step up in the offering, which shows a big focus on providing built-in Integrations and OIC3 is not shy of this, as it is all displayed on the main home page. We can filter/search by name or application. I [...] - [NEW! Become a Digital Assistant Developer (2023)](https://techtrantor.com/new-become-a-digital-assistant-developer-2023/): I am happy to share the news that we have a completely new Oracle Digital Assistant course, a new Hands-On Lab, and a new Certification Exam – all available on the Oracle Education page To top that, starting this month of June, until the end of August, both the course and the exam are FREE Go to https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/become-a-digital-assistant-developer-2023/122172 And check here for the Promotions In this learning path, you will learn to: Some screenshots of what you can expect… More than 11 hours of training material in the form of videos and activity guides And a handful of Hands-on Labs [...] - [OCI AI Face Detection is now LA](https://techtrantor.com/oci-ai-face-detection-is-now-la/): Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vision is a serverless, multi-tenant service, accessible using the Console, REST APIs, SDK, or CLI. You can upload images to detect and classify objects in them. If you have lots of images, you can process them in batch using asynchronous API endpoints. Vision’s features are thematically split between Document AI for document-centric images, and Image Analysis for object and scene-based images. Pretrained models and custom models are supported. https://docs-uat.us.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/vision/vision/using/overview.htm#overview Now there is a new addition to the OCI Vision capabilities! The Face Detection feature will provide the following information: If you are acquainted with the existing Vision AI service, you [...] - [Enterprise Chatbots for Oracle Databases SQL Dialog in Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/enterprise-chatbots-for-oracle-databases-sql-dialog-in-oracle-digital-assistant/): SQL-Dialogs allows users to speak to their databases in natural language to build Enterprise Chatbots Oracle Digital Assistant’s new SQL Dialog, … Enterprise Chatbots for Oracle Databases SQL Dialog in Oracle Digital Assistant - [How to create a custom integration between Oracle Digital Assistant and WhatsApp Cloud API using rich elements such as buttons, lists, attachments, and other components](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-create-a-custom-integration-between-oracle-digital-assistant-and-whatsapp-cloud-api-using-rich-elements-such-as-buttons-lists-attachments-and-other-components/): Article by Leo Barros Before You Begin Introduction Oracle Digital Assistant is an AI-powered platform for building chatbots across various channels, including messaging platforms like WhatsApp. One of the most effective ways to integrate your digital assistant with external systems, such as the WhatsApp channel, is using webhooks. WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging platform with 2 billion active users around the world, 100 billion messages sent on an everyday basis, and 1 billion users added freshly over the last 4. WhatsApp is a space to build profound relationships with customers to achieve a higher conversion rate, boost sales, and automatically [...] - [The NEW Oracle Integration Cloud Gen 3!](https://techtrantor.com/the-new-oracle-integration-cloud-gen-3/): A lot has happened with the Oracle Integration Cloud lately. The new gen is now running natively on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This re-architecture will bring lots of benefits from the tight coupling with OCI. OIC Gen 3 is still being rolled out. I see it is now available in my tenancy so I will give it a spin! Create Instance The first noticeable thing was how fast it created the instance – it took a couple of minutes! When I tried to open it, it actually give me some unauthorized message – this is what one gets by not reading the [...] - [New! OCI Translation Services supported in Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/new-oci-translation-services-supported-in-oracle-digital-assistant/): From ODA release 23.04, you can now use OCI Language as a translation service for your skills and digital assistants. This enables you to use a wide variety of languages in your digital assistants without exposing conversation text to third-party translation services Setup the Translation Service Just like the existing supported translation services we need to add the new OCI service. OCI now appears in the drop-down for the service type. The only requirement is: To use OCI Language as a translation service, you need to subscribe to the service and create permissions for Digital Assistant to access it. See Policies for OCI [...] - [How to have your ODA search blogs and other documentation sites as a fallback strategy](https://techtrantor.com/how-to-have-your-oda-search-blogs-and-other-documentation-sites-as-a-fallback-strategy/): Typically we design Skills and Digital Assistants to handle specific tasks and provide information based on user input. When users make requests that fall outside the assistant’s intended use case, the assistant may fail to understand the user’s intention and we take the dialog path that was defined for an “unresolved Intent”. Sometimes the assistant simply was not designed to handle a particular query, or queries, even if they are within domain. Especially now with the prominence of Large Language Models (LLM), users may feel frustrated when not being understood. We can implement a couple of easy solutions to address [...] - [Trigger an ODA External Event with POSTMAN - it's that easy!](https://techtrantor.com/trigger-an-oda-external-event-with-postman-its-that-easy/): This is a follow-up to this article that explains the new Events 2.0 framework to trigger conversations in ODA. The most complex part was to create the application to send the requests to ODA. This article shows an alternative (an easier) approach, ideal for dev and testing purposes. Pre-requisites You need to collect the following information: In POSTMAN create a POST request with the URL following this format: In the tab Pre-request Script add the below script: Make sure to have the 2 below headers. And the Body should contain your request. And that’s all you need – this approach [...] - [Multimodal Conversational AI: The Future of Natural Language Interaction](https://techtrantor.com/multimodal-conversational-ai-the-future-of-natural-language-interaction/): <update> 15/03/23: It seems this article was spot on as OpenAI just released their GPT-4 (https://openai.com/product/gpt-4) which is Multimodal!! </update> Multimodal Conversation is something I came across recently, so I decided to do a little bit of research! What is Multimodal Conversational AI? Multimodal conversational AI is a type of conversational AI that uses multiple modes to enable human-like communication. It can combine various modalities such as voice, text, images, and video to create a more seamless and natural interaction between humans and machines. For example, imagine you are ordering food through a chatbot. Instead of typing out your order, [...] - [Oracle Fusion can now be integrated with ODA using "DA as an Agent"](https://techtrantor.com/da-as-an-agent-now-also-for-oracle-fusion-b2b/): Updated with documentation links at the bottom (15/05/2023) The new releases of ODA (23.02) and Oracle Fusion Service (23A) give us the ability to have DA as an agent support in Oracle Fusion. Up until now, this was only supported for Oracle B2C. This is where we stand now! Here is a quick recap on the DA as an Agent Framework DA as an agent enables you to transform your digital assistant into an automated agent that can effectively participate in B2C/Fusion chats, just like live agents. With this feature, the chat begins in the Oracle B2C/Fusion Chat Service and [...] - [Integrating Oracle Digital Assistant with WhatsApp (API)](https://techtrantor.com/integrating-oracle-digital-assistant-with-whatsapp-api/): This article was written by Anshuman Panda, and co-published with the Oracle Digital Assistant Blog. Introduction WhatsApp Cloud API allows businesses to send and receive messages using cloud hosted version of its WhatsApp Business API. By offering free, secure, and cloud-based hosting, businesses can scale their customer communication and reduce the go-live time. Sandbox Setup Sandbox is for testing. It is easy to use. You need to have an app created in Meta for Developers my apps. Here are the steps to create a new app if not already created. 3. Click on create app and choose “Business” as app type and [...] - [Finding the Perfect Agent Integration Strategy for Your Needs](https://techtrantor.com/finding-the-perfect-agent-integration-strategy-for-your-needs/): Customer service challenges are not new, but they have become more pressing in the digital age. One of the most significant challenges is managing a limited number of service agents who can only handle a specific number of customers at a given time. Additionally, some user requests take longer to resolve than others, which can cause delays and bottlenecks. The Solution To address these challenges, businesses need to find ways to scale their customer service operations to manage peaks in demand. One approach is to use digital assistants to deflect high-volume, low-value requests, such as simple information queries like “What [...] - [Check out these two new tutorials for the Oracle Integration GEN 3!](https://techtrantor.com/check-out-these-two-new-tutorials-for-the-oracle-integration-gen-3/): The new OIC Gen3 is here and I will cover that in a separate post. Meanwhile, check the new Live Labs: - [SQL Dialog: Customize how to present data](https://techtrantor.com/sql-dialog-customize-how-to-present-data/): Oracle Digital Assistant release 22.12 brings us a ground-breaking new capability – SQL Dialog – which can translate a user’s natural language input into SQL queries, send the queries to a backend data source, and display the response. All of these without the need to create intents, utterances, or custom components! If you read the first article in this series, you should have (or know how to do it) a SQL Dialog Skill. This article will focus on how can we can configure the presentation of data to the user and the available capabilities. Presentation What can we do? All of the configurations are [...] - [Oracle Integration Cloud #1 in Gartner](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-integration-cloud-1-in-gartner/): Having been involved with OIC since some years back, when it was still a challenger, it’s amazing to see the journey it took – to reach #1 in the ability o execute and be a leader in this quadrant! Read all about it here! - [Our NEW YouTube Channel!! Please Subscribe!](https://techtrantor.com/our-new-youtube-channel-please-subscribe/): https://www.youtube.com/@oracledigitalassistant This is the new YouTube channel from the ODA PM team, where I am actively involved. We will be releasing weekly videos on a wide variety of topics, from Learning, Demos, New Features, etc! Please Subscribe and stay tuned for more content! - [Mastering the Art of Testing: How to Ensure Accurate and Effective Responses with Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/mastering-the-art-of-testing-how-to-ensure-accurate-and-effective-responses-with-oracle-digital-assistant/): Oracle Digital Assistant is a powerful platform for creating and deploying digital assistants. One of the key features of the platform is its ability to test and evaluate the performance of your digital assistant model. In this article, we will take a closer look at the different ways you can test your Oracle Digital Assistant model to ensure that it is providing accurate and effective responses to user requests, including testing the natural language processing (NLP) capabilities of your digital assistant. There are several ways to test your Oracle Digital Assistant model. One of the most common is through the [...] - [SQL Dialog: Everything you need to know about Training Data](https://techtrantor.com/sql-dialog-everything-you-need-to-know-about-training-data/): Oracle Digital Assistant release 22.12 brings us a ground-breaking new capability – SQL Dialog – which can translate a user’s natural language input into SQL queries, send the queries to a backend data source, and display the response. All of these without the need to create intents, utterances, or custom components! If you read the first article in this series, you should have (or know how to do it) a SQL Dialog Skill. This article will focus on how can we improve the baseline model. Train the Skill to Convert Natural Language Utterances into SQL After importing the model, the [...] - [Introducing the new Oracle Digital Assistant SQL Dialog!](https://techtrantor.com/introducing-the-new-oracle-digital-assistant-sql-dialog/): Oracle Digital Assistant release 22.12 brings us a ground-breaking new capability – SQL Dialog – which can translate a user’s natural language input into SQL queries, send the queries to a backend data source, and display the response. All of these without the need to create intents, utterances, or custom components! How SQL Dialogs Work SQL Dialogs mechanism is fundamentally different from the standard skill development, where we anticipate what the user may say by pre-defining intents, utterances, entities, and dialog flows and creating components for backend connectivity. With SQL Dialogs we do not require any of the above! Surprising, [...] - [Happy New Year 2023!!](https://techtrantor.com/happy-new-year-2023/): Wishes of a great 2023 to everyone! Traffic doubled in the last year! The upcoming year will continue with an ODA focus, with the occasional OCI/OIC article! Thanks to everyone visiting – starting with the new year, I will try a new WordPress Theme!! - [The SkyProject - a custom model of sky pictures with OCI AI Vision](https://techtrantor.com/the-skyproject-a-custom-model-of-sky-pictures-with-oci-ai-vision/): Some time ago, while in the role of a Solution Engineer, I had a customer from the agriculture industry with a very interesting use case. He wanted to have an automated process to identify when some of the leaves were showing signs of disease or anything affecting their health. The idea was to have pictures taken from the leaves and once a positive detection was made then they could take preventive actions to try and revert the situation. But how would this work from a technology point of view? The answer was an OCI AI Vision custom model. Obviously, there [...] - [Extend the Oracle Digital Assistant with OCI AI Vision!](https://techtrantor.com/extend-the-oracle-digital-assistant-with-oci-ai-vision/): The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) AI Vision service is a fantastic complement to the Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA). OCI AI Vision is a serverless, multi-tenant service, accessible using the Console, REST APIs, SDK, or CLI. You can upload images to detect and classify objects in them. Vision’s features are thematically split between Document AI for document-centric images, and Image Analysis for object and scene-based images. Pretrained models and custom models are supported. This service offers two main modes. The Document AI allows us to detect and recognize text in a document, identify the type of document (passport, invoice, payslip, etc), extract [...] - [Quick start your development with OpenAI-generated utterances!](https://techtrantor.com/quick-start-your-development-with-openai-generated-utterances/): Generating quality utterances can be a challenge, especially when in the initial stages of development. We typically manually generate enough utterances to get us started, while in parallel creating crowd-soucing jobs to grab real utterances provided by the business users. The new OpenAI chat can help us in the first part, which is creating enough utterances to get development going. It is pretty resourceful in generating what we ask for, but keep in mind that it does not provide the level of variance or level of real-life human-produced utterances. The more information you provide the better the outcome is. This [...] - [Strategies to make your digital assistant smarter!](https://techtrantor.com/strategies-to-make-your-digital-assistant-smarter/): This is an article written by my colleague Daniel Niculescu How often have you talked to a chatbot and felt it sounds too robotic? How many times you’ve thought that it did not understand you well? In this article, you will find a couple of ideas on how you could overcome this and enhance the conversations that users have with your Digital Assistant. Make sure you always try not to leave the user hanging and help him grab “low-hanging fruit” follow-up actions. Reflect back on what the Digital Assistant understood Sometimes when you are in a conversation with a Digital [...] - [ChatGPT - The new Large Language Model chat from OpenAI!](https://techtrantor.com/chatgpt-the-new-large-language-model-chat-from-openai/): We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ Well, this just came out this week, and it looks amazing! It’s actually mesmerizing 🙂 It does not hold up a conversation, but it’s a box full of surprises in the reach of information it can output. It responded accurately on pretty much any topic [...] - [Welcome to the Brave New World of the Large Language Models](https://techtrantor.com/welcome-to-the-brave-new-world-of-the-large-language-models/): What is a large language model? The large language model is an unsupervised machine learning algorithm for natural language processing tasks such as machine translation and text summarization. This type of model has been shown to provide higher accuracy than standard models because it uses a larger amount of data in its training process, but it is not supervised by humans. The name refers to the fact that it’s based on a larger amount of data than standard models, which increases its accuracy. AI Generated with Rytr The above paragraph was fully generated with AI based on a simple question. [...] - [OCI AI-Language 2.0 released custom models for text classification!](https://techtrantor.com/oci-ai-language-2-0-released-custom-models-for-text-classification/): With custom text classification, you can build a custom AI model to automatically classify your text into a set of classes that you predefine. Create a project Upload the data set to Object Storage You need to have a data set that consists of the text, and the label that classifies the text. Minimum 10, but recommended 100 per label. This should be uploaded to the Object Storage. The above is just a sample of the entire data set Create and train the model Create a model endpoint Once the model is generated (this took about 5 minutes) you can [...] - [Configure the OCI AI Vision and Language REST API in ODA](https://techtrantor.com/configure-the-oci-ai-vision-and-language-rest-api-in-oda/): This post will be a quick reference on how to configure an OCI AI Vision/Language REST API in ODA for the dialog flow REST component. Before configuring anything in ODA you must have the proper permissions in OCI to use the API’s. Granting Access to OCI AI services Open the OCI Console for the tenancy used to provision your ODA instance and navigate to the Identity & Security > Policies page Having selected the Root compartment, click Create Policy to open the policy editor. Fill in the form with the following details: Name – AIServicesAccessPolicy Description – Allow any users in the Tenancy to access the Language & [...] - [ODA Best Practices - Expose your assistant anywhere you need  (6)](https://techtrantor.com/oda-best-practices-expose-your-assistant-anywhere-you-need-6/): In this last session, we look at the frontend and how we can leverage the different channels to deploy our assistants! - [ODA Best Practices - Connect ODA with any backend application (5)](https://techtrantor.com/oda-best-practices-connect-oda-with-any-backend-application-5/): This session looks at the backend connectivity with custom components and also the new REST connector. - [ODA Best Practices – Best practices while designing conversations (4)](https://techtrantor.com/oda-best-practices-best-practices-while-designing-conversations-4/): This session looks at the visual flow designer and how to design conversations with ODA! - [(UPDATED) Guide to configuring Microsoft Teams with the Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/updated-guide-to-configuring-microsoft-teams-with-the-oracle-digital-assistant/): The App Studio is no longer supported, hence we need to use the Developer Portal to configure MS Teams to configure the ODA connectivity. Check the original post here. Microsoft Teams (MS) is one of the most widely used communication channels and is very popular among Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) customers. The initial setup was not easy as my personal hotmail.com account was not enough. My work email also did not work as I do not have admin privileges for the oracle domain (obviously) So I ended up creating a developer account valid for 90 days. This account gives all [...] - [Best practices in conversational design by Conversation Design Institute](https://techtrantor.com/best-practices-in-conversational-design-by-conversation-design-institute/): I stumbled upon this blog post which pretty much sums up some of the most important aspects of conversational design. Most conversational AI projects start without any conversational design strategy, and that shows clearly in the first interaction. The Conversation Design Institute has a cool blog post about some of the best practices around conversation design. On top of that, they do offer structured content to help people build knowledge around this area! Check it out! https://www.conversationdesigninstitute.com/blog/9-best-practices-in-conversation-design - [Integrate ODA with Oracle APEX](https://techtrantor.com/integrate-oda-with-oracle-apex/): ​Article originally published in the Oracle Digital Assistant blog The Oracle Web SDK is a JavaScript library that you can use to integrate Oracle Digital Assistant into your website or web application. The library provides a customizable messenger that communicates with the Oracle Digital Assistant web channel via the Oracle Digital Assistant message server.  Oracle APEX is the world’s most popular enterprise low-code application platform that enables you to build scalable, secure enterprise apps, with world-class features. These apps can be deployed anywhere – cloud or on-premises Using APEX, developers can quickly develop and deploy compelling apps that solve real [...] - [Send an email with the attachment uploaded by the ODA user!](https://techtrantor.com/send-an-email-with-the-attachment-added-by-the-oda-user/): Often we get the below question: How can we add the ODA-uploaded file as an attachment to an email? an ODA developer This can easily be done in 2 parts. Get the attachment Whenever a user uploads a file to the conversation (whether is a picture a pdf or any other type), that file is internally stored In the ODA attachment server. In order to fetch that file we need a custom component where we run the below code: The variable fileurl will hold an URL that points to the attachment Send the email with the attachment Some time ago [...] - [A showcase of best practices with the new Financial Digital Assistant sample](https://techtrantor.com/a-showcase-of-best-practices-with-the-new-financial-digital-assistant-sample/): Originally published on the Oracle Digital Assistant Blog​ A new sample digital assistant, called Financial.DigitalAssistant has been added to the Store with release 22.10. This digital assistant and its skills showcase a variety of useful design and implementation practices, such as composite bag entities, ML entities, visual flow design, test suites, handling of small talk, and using answer intent. This is a handy guide to keep in mind if you’re developing an AI assistant of your own. Store You can find the Financial Digital Assistant sample in the Store. Press Pull to have it installed in your ODA instance. Let’s examine a bit more [...] - [OCI AI Language Service - Python SDK](https://techtrantor.com/oci-ai-language-service-python-sdk/): Python is great!! With just few lines of code, we can implement a service that authenticates, calls an OCI service, and prints the result 🙂 Granted, this authentication method (Instance Principals) only works from within an OCI Compute instance. Locally we would use the .oci config file for authentication. config = oci.config.from_file(file_location=’C:/Users/DANIMMAR/Documents/.oci/config’) The batch request supports also Sentence based analysis Instead of analyzing aspect-based (words) sentiment, we can also have sentence-based. The result is easier to visualize in the console, but the output is obviously the same. - [The new OCI Code Editor makes development faster and easier!](https://techtrantor.com/the-new-oci-code-editor-makes-development-faster-and-easier/): The new OCI Code Editor is a great (new!) tool to make life easier.We have the entire OCI development ecosystem ready to be used in a couple of clicks.These are some of the features: Create and edit code files in 15 languages, including Java, Python, Docker, JSON, YAML, and Terraform. Out-of-the-box managed plugins for OCI services enable a seamless code editing experienceGit integration Persists state across user sessions Direct access to Cloud Shell and its 30+ cloud-based tools Workspace and user management Personalized user experience through multiple color themes, language localization, customizable keyboard shortcuts, customizable screen layouts, and more Start [...] - [The new Events channel enables a bot-initiated conversation!](https://techtrantor.com/the-new-events-channel-enables-a-bot-initiated-conversation%ef%bf%bc/): ​ Originally published in the Oracle digital assistant blog In a typical AI-powered chatbot interaction, the user is usually the one who initiates the chat. There are, however, many instances where we need our conversational agent to be able to send out messages that are triggered by an external event. To support this, ODA 22.08 brought a new enhanced capability called Events* that follows the cloud events specification, which defines common formats for event data to make it interoperable across services, platforms, and systems (https://cloudevents.io/) *Events require the Visual Flow Designer. Up until now, we had Application Initiated Conversations which is only supported with dialog 1.0 [...] - [Introducing the new DATE_TIME entity!](https://techtrantor.com/introducing-the-new-date_time-entity/): Originally published in the Oracle digital assistant blog One way or the other, most of the things we do in conversations revolve around dates and times: “I want to book a vacation in July 2023” “Add a team meeting to my calendar for June 10, 2023, at 10 am and repeat every month until December 2030″ “What is the status of my orders from last month”. While conversational AI makes it easy to understand the intent of a request (e.g., understanding a request for a vacation booking), extracting and understanding date and time information is often not that easy.  With [...] - [ODA Best Practices – Why are Entities so important (3)](https://techtrantor.com/webinar-oracle-digital-assistant-best-practices-part-3/): This session covers Entities and I had the pleasure of presenting! For details please visit the registration page here for US EMEA and LATAM. We also have a JAPAC session at a more suitable time. - [The ultimate list of all ODA Application Skills and Starter Templates!](https://techtrantor.com/the-ultimate-list-of-all-oda-application-skills-and-starter-templates/): The Oracle Digital Assistant has a large number of pre built skills for Cloud Apps (Fusion and others) and also On-Premise Apps. On top of this, there are also Industry starter templates, and templates for common use cases (FAQ).Most of these info is scattered over different documentation (the apps teams own most of these templates) and blog articles. This is my attempt to consolidate it, and I will try to keep this post up to date. Note: A pre-built skill is a Skill managed by Oracle that is ready to be used (upon configuration). A template or a starter Skill [...] - [ODA Best Practices - Production quality NLP (2)](https://techtrantor.com/webinar-oracle-digital-assistant-best-practices-part-2/): This is the second video of a 6 part series that focuses on the end-to-end best practices, to guide you on what constitutes a great conversational experience: For details please visit the registration page here for US EMEA and LATAM. We also have a JAPAC session with a more suitable time. - [ODA Best Practices - What makes a great digital assistant (1)](https://techtrantor.com/webinar-oracle-digital-assistant-best-practices-part-1/): This is the first video of a 6 part series that focuses on the end-to-end best practices, to guide you on what constitutes a great conversational experience: - [The new Skill Quality Report!](https://techtrantor.com/the-new-skill-quality-report/): ODA’s release 22.08 brought yet again a significant number of new features. One of those is the new Skill Quality Report, which enables us to assert on the Skill’s intent and utterances quality, by providing metrics and suggestions, You can use the following reports (accessed by clicking  in the left navbar) throughout the skill development process: The Overview Report – This report’s metrics and graphs allow you quickly assess the size and shape of your training data by breaking down each of the skill’s intents by the number of utterances that they have. You can use this report as your data [...] - [ODA - Migrate your YAML to the Visual Flow Designer](https://techtrantor.com/oda-migrate-your-yaml-to-the-visual-flow-designer/): The 22.06 ODA release gave us the possibility to migrate the older dialog 1.0 with yaml, to the new dialog 2.0 that uses the visual flow designer. I will try this in a custom HCM Skill, with plenty of regular and answer intents. It does make a good candidate to test the yaml – to – visual flow migration capability. If you are on version 22.06, you will have the “Migrate to Flow Designer” button enabled on the top right. Once you press it, give it a new name, or leave it as default. Some notes to keep in mind [...] - [Chatbot Fails - A list of what not to do!](https://techtrantor.com/chatbot-fails-a-list-of-what-not-to-do/): Sometimes looking at mistakes is as valuable as looking at good examples. It opens up our understanding for the type of situations we need a strategy for. The examples below were found laying around in the internet, and only serve as an example to some particular common errors. Locked user Being able to understand when the user asks for help or wants to exit the current conversation is critical in order to maintain a good conversation. Failing to acknowledge any of this will result in frustration and ultimately in the end of the interaction. Failing at Error Handling There are [...] - [Design Camp - Visual Flow Designer, a practitioners guide!](https://techtrantor.com/design-camp-visual-flow-designer-a-practitioners-guide/): This week’s design camp was the follow up to the Introduction to the Visual Flow Designer In a previous Oracle Digital Assistant design camp session, we provided an overview to the Visual dialog mode and the Visual Flow Designer in Oracle Digital Assistant. In this follow-up session on this topic, we will focus on developer-centric topics that help you to make the right decisions when starting a new skill development using the new visual dialog mode. We’ll discuss architectural decisions, the need for good naming conventions, different implementations of response intents, enforcing authentication on flows, entering and exiting flows, and [...] - [NEW! Call a REST service from within the Dialog Flow](https://techtrantor.com/new-call-a-rest-service-from-within-the-dialog-flow/): Up until now we required an external custom component in order to implement any backend integration. But starting with 22.06, we have an easier way to simplify backend integration, with the ability to call a REST service from within the dialog flow, where we have a new state for that purpose. Important to note that this is aimed at simple integrations. If one still needs extensive transformation and/or orchestration, the customer component is the ideal choice. If your skill needs to retrieve or update some data through a backend service, you can quickly implement this by adding a REST service [...] - [Translation is the new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Language service!](https://techtrantor.com/translation-is-the-new-oracle-cloud-infrastructure-ai-language-service/): Language is serverless and multi-tenant service that is accessible using REST API calls. It provides pretrained models that are frequently retrained and monitored to provide you with the best results. You can automate sophisticated text analysis at scale without any machine learning expertise. https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/language/using/overview.htm#language I wrote about this service before and also how to integrate it with the Oracle Digital Assistant and the Oracle Integration Cloud. What’s new? There is a new Translation service that is still in Limited Availability (LA) mode, but should be released soon. This translation service, similarly to the other Language services, can be accessed via the [...] - [Design Camp - The anatomy of a conversation design project!](https://techtrantor.com/design-camp-the-anatomy-of-a-conversation-design-project/): This week the ODA PM team hosted another design camp session, this time looking to the big picture of a conversational AI project. In this session we will look at the big picture. What does a conversation design project consists of? How do we start? How do we choose a use case? What kind of skills are required in the project team? These are some of the frequently asked questions around conversational projects and now we compiled all the answers in one Design Camp session! In my opinion it is a must see for anyone looking to embark on a [...] - [The challenges of real world entity extraction](https://techtrantor.com/the-challenges-of-real-world-entity-extraction/): One of the topics I have been focusing recently is about the challenges of entity extraction. It is a product agnostic topic as it mainly focusses in identifying common patterns. This awareness will then help when trying to design the entire entity extraction strategy. Humans have a natural ability to understand a conversation and extract all relevant information from it. For humans it is natural to be able to extract all the relevant information when reading or hearing a sentence, but how can a conversational AI Platform match such innate capabilities? What if there are any implicit rules or ambiguity? [...] - [ODA Design Camp - Introduction to Visual Flow Designer](https://techtrantor.com/oda-design-camp-introduction-to-visual-flow-designer/): This week we hosted another ODA Design Camp. This time it covered the Visual Flow Designer and it gave a solid overview of the new approach to designer conversations. “Oracle Digital Assistant Visual dialog mode is an improvement over the existing YAML-based dialog mode. Beside of other new features, the Visual dialog mode allows you to create multiple dialog flow documents for a skill and map them to intents or events, which gives bot developers better options for reuse and modularization.  In addition to the visual dialog mode, the visual flow designer provides a declarative environment for creating conversation flows. [...] - [Oracle Digital Assistant Design Camp](https://techtrantor.com/oracle-digital-assistant-design-camp/): ODA’s Design Camp are sessions help by the ODA Product Management team and cover best practices and guidelines on designing and deploying successful chatbots. These sessions resumed pace again last week, and twice a month there will be new content presented! “With Machine Learning Entities we can extract unknown values from the user input! Behind this “magic” there is a great set of training data which powers ML Entities. This session will explain how to automatically generate hundreds of utterances for ML entities.” All of the available sessions can be found in the official documentation - [In ODA you can now automatically generate FAQs from a PDF or a Web Page!](https://techtrantor.com/in-oda-you-can-now-automatically-generate-faqs-from-a-pdf-or-a-web-page/): Implementing FAQ’s is probably the most popular use case for a chatbot. ODA supports this with answer intents which allow to very easily being those FAQ’s under the same NLP ‘umbrella’ as the regular intents. That being said, in some cases, where those FAQ’s where already present in a document (pdf) or in a webpage, porting that information to the ODA answer intents would take some manual work. Fear no more, because starting with 22.04 we can now import PDF’s and URL’s that will be converted into answer intents. Read all about it here! Create Skill Let’s create a new [...] - [Learn how to add your Oracle Digital Assistant to Twitter](https://techtrantor.com/learn-how-to-add-your-oracle-digital-assistant-to-twitter/): Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms and plenty of companies use it to provide customer service, among other services. In this post I will explain how to connect Twitter to the Oracle Digital Assistant . This post is a follow-up of this other one where I explained how to create a simple webhook. If you are unfamiliar with webhooks, start with the below link. The Use Case I will create a Skill with some answer intents and small talk intents, nothing fancy, just to support this Channel Integration. Before that let’s look at the backend implementation. [...] - [Learn how to create a Webhook for the Oracle Digital Assistant](https://techtrantor.com/learn-how-to-create-a-webhook-for-the-oracle-digital-assistant/): The Oracle Digital Assistant supports several channels out of the box. If you need to integrate with Slack, MS Teams, FB Messenger, or connect to iOS or Android. These are all native ODA channels, and that means that the webhook implementation is complete including all the message transformation and the bot developer does not need to create anything else. One only needs to configure the connection to make everything work. What if your channel or messaging service is not supported out of the box? Then you can use an a webhook channel to manually integrate Oracle Digital Assistant with it. [...] - [The magic of extracting unknown values with Machine Learning Entities](https://techtrantor.com/the-magic-of-extracting-unknown-values-with-machine-learning-entities/): In a previous post I wrote about Entities and their importance in conversational AI. In this post I will cover Machine Learning (ML) Entities and the use cases where we should be using them. But first a small introduction to why one would need such a type of entities. Custom Entities One of the most important types of custom entities is Value List , which as the name indicates, provides a list of values. We define a limited set of data, including synonyms and we assign that entity to an intent. Whenever any of those values, or associated synonyms appear [...] ## Pages - [Other](https://techtrantor.com/other/) - [The Conversational AI Binder](https://techtrantor.com/book/): This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: - [Bots](https://techtrantor.com/bots/): This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: - [Home](https://techtrantor.com/home/) - [Contact](https://techtrantor.com/contact/): Please use this form if you have questions or suggestions! Coming Soon… - [About Me](https://techtrantor.com/about-me/): My name is Daniel Teixeira, and I’m a Technical Product Leader / Solutions Engineer working for Oracle at the intersection of Integration & AI. I have a strong background in Consulting, Pre-Sales and Product Evangelization, with experience at companies such as Accenture, TIBCO, and Information Builders (IBI). Throughout my career, I’ve worked closely with customers to design, position, and deliver solutions across integration, cloud, and application development platforms. Today, my focus is on AI-driven experiences, particularly around Oracle Digital Assistant, LLMs, and Generative AI. I’m especially interested in how these technologies can simplify complex enterprise workflows and create more natural, [...] ## Optional - [Agent (MCP protocol)](websites-agents.hostinger.com/techtrantor.com/mcp) [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)