Microsoft's continues its campaign to introduce chat bots on Skype by making them available on group chats.
On Friday, July 8, on its blog dedicated to Skype, Microsoft announced that the bot functionality in the messaging app will allow let automated participants to take part in group text conversations. In a similar manner to what Slack offers today, developers that use the bot functionality can open their robotic conversation partners to groups of coworkers and friends,.
According to PC World, Skype also supports now visual cards that allow users see receipts, pictures and more, in a similar manner to what Facebook offers to bot developers through tools for Messenger. These new features are all part of Microsoft's aim to promote its computing platform for conversations.
At the Build conference in March, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described his vision of a future in which artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like Cortana will work together with special-purpose bots in order to help humans perform various tasks like booking flights and making hotel reservations.
In accord to this vision, developers building Skype bots can now also allow users to log into a various services, such as a hotel loyalty program. This aims to make it easier for users to keep interacting with different businesses without the need to log in constantly.
The news specific for Skype comes alongside with updates made to Microsoft Bot Framework, the developer tools designed to create conversational bots for Skype and other services. According to Venture Beat, the Bot Framework has become now better integrated with Skype. Developers are able now to configure bots automatically to work on Skype.
The Bot Framework supports now new controls for developers that allow their bots to send messages including clickable elements like carousels and cards. Lately, more messaging services allow bots to incorporate those rich elements in order to make it easier for users to interact with them.
Many tech companies are taking part in a massive bot race. Among them are Telegram, Slack, Google and many others. All of them want take advantage of the new bot invasion that could give them more business opportunities.
