What I learned from bots, chatbots and channels on Telegram

After some posts on how to build bots on Facebook, I got some feedback on making a difference between bots and chatbots. On a conversation with Miquel Serrabassa, Head of Technology at the Catalan newspaper La Nació Digital, he pointed out that some bots are, in fact, channels:

“These bots lack of interaction. They are unidirectional and post automated messages, but people cannot chat with them.”

According to Telegram, users interact with bots through messages, commands and inline requests controlled by a developer (and an API). From this definition, examples can be as broad as newspaper notifications, weather forecasts, and quiz games.

I have been experimenting and testing Telegram bots with basic coding skills and this is what I’ve learned so far:

How to build a Facebook Messenger chatbot with API.ai

The previous post shows 5 tools that help to create Facebook Messenger chatbots. The platform that I liked the most was API.ai and I used it to build a bot for my Facebook Page Dinfografia .

Through intents and entities, I tried to build a basic chatbot that displays information about my resumé. I set up some keywords to answer questions around professional experience, education or hobbies:

Here I explain how to create the above bot in 6 steps: