This is a continuation on the exploration of Chatbot channels. Microsoft Teams (msteams) development are based on their own adaptive cards concepts while other channels have its own characteristics. After testing a few channels, I concluded that it will be exhaustive for organisations to cover across multiple channels. This is a quick guide for you to select the 3 channels.
Top 3 Channels to Start Your Bot
I reviewed a few channels like Teams, Telegram, Web, WeChat and Facebook. These are the top 3 channels that your organisations can kickstart your Chatbot development.
- Web
- Teams
- Telegram
Web is the easiest as it using existing web page to embed your Chatbot. Thus, you just need to be web ready to do your bot development. Teams is selected because it is the default organisation chat application. You can replace this with other channels if your organisation is using other chat application. Lastly, the commercial and most popular Telegram is very bot friendly. This is why you can find many Telegram channel is adopted.
POC Bot Channels
It is recommended to POC (Proof of Concept) your bot channels before investing in your bot development. All channels have its strength and weakness. What works for your competitors may not work for you. The learning curve may be steep at first. Once you get the hang of your channel characteristics, it is quite simple to proceed with your bot.
Overall, channels selection can be quite tricky. If you pick the wrong channel, you will be stuck with your suck cost in bot development. This is why many switch their bot channels accordingly. Web is the standard and most easy to start. Subsequent choice will depends on your organisation default chat. To external users, the bot channel choice will be the most popular chat used in your region.
Danny Kwok 
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