Writing a Salesforce Bot for Facebook Messenger

April 21, 2016 in Bots, Facebook, Messenger, Salesforce

Last week Facebook launched its bot-enabled Messenger Platform. I decided to check it out and build a simple Salesforce bot for Messenger. This is not an official project, just a quick experiment to explore the possibilities.

Watch the video to see the bot in action:

or using the phone version of Messenger:

Bots allow you to access information in an unstructured manner, using natural language, and from wherever you happen to be without having to switch context and load a dedicated app.

Part of exploring the new possibilities enabled by bots is going to be to identify the right use cases; what should be botified and what shouldn’t. This particular bot is a proof of concept that lets employees access their customer information and perform quick actions in a conversational manner. The Facebook Messenger platform is more focused on Customer Engagement use cases, but the approach used in this example to build a simple Salesforce-powered bot remains the same regardless of the specific use case.

Source Code

The source code for the Node.js application is available in this repository. The easiest way to deploy your instance of the Node.js App is to click Deploy to Heroku button below, and fill in the deployment wizard. You need to provide the access token of your Facebook Webhook, the id of your Salesforce connected app, the username and password of an integration user in Salesforce. If you are testing this in a Developer Edition, you can enter your own credentials.

Make sure you are logged in to the Heroku Dashboard
Click the Button below to deploy the application on Heroku.

Your own instance of the application is automatically deployed.

Check out the Messenger Platform documentation to create a Facebook-side of the application.

Authentication

This sample bot uses an “integration user” to connect to Salesforce. In other words, all Facebook users connect to Salesforce using the same Salesforce user. In a production environment, you’d probably want to map Facebook user ids to Salesforce user ids so that requests coming from a specific Facebook user can be served using the associated Salesforce user.

Make sure you understand the security implications before deploying the application in a production environment

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Arulnath

post helps to know about fb messenger bot…
dhiyar

Great post! I am actually getting ready to across this information, is very helpful my friend. Also great blog here with all of the valuable information you have. Keep up the good work you are doing here.Well, got a good knowledge.
Venkatraman Natarajan

I believe the userid received from the webhook for a specific user is not the facebook Id, rather the page scoped id, which is different from the facebook id.

Currently messenger user profile APIs does not provide option to retrieve the facebook id of the user.

In this case, how does the user authenticate against the salesforce?

I believe the users must be authenticated outside the messenger through a weburl from the messenger app, and map the outcome of the authentication to the subsequent transactions. Or do you have another way to achieve this?
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hey Christophe can you please help me out to solve this issue ? :)

I have followed the steps which you have said.It is working fine for me.I want to add enhancements into it like Searching for Escalated Cases.I have added corresponding logic too.

When i deploy the updated build in Heroku am getting the below error stating SyntaxError: Unexpected token case.

Can you please help me out ? Please find below the log for your reference !!!!

2016-06-22T07:39:54.315043+00:00 heroku[api]: Deploy 64f4816 by jagannathan.salesforce@gmail.com
2016-06-22T07:39:54.315092+00:00 heroku[api]: Release v24 created by jagannathan.salesforce@gmail.com
2016-06-22T07:39:54.491553+00:00 heroku[slug-compiler]: Slug compilation started
2016-06-22T07:39:54.488061+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from crashed to starting
2016-06-22T07:39:55.785328+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Starting process with command `npm start`
2016-06-22T07:39:58.289908+00:00 app[web.1]:
2016-06-22T07:39:58.289927+00:00 app[web.1]: > messengerforce@1.0.0 start /app
2016-06-22T07:39:58.289932+00:00 app[web.1]: > node server.js
2016-06-22T07:39:58.289933+00:00 app[web.1]:
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811083+00:00 app[web.1]: /app/modules/formatter-messenger.js:102
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811103+00:00 app[web.1]: Cases.forEach(case =>
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811105+00:00 app[web.1]: ^^^^
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811105+00:00 app[web.1]:
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811106+00:00 app[web.1]: SyntaxError: Unexpected token case
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811107+00:00 app[web.1]: at exports.runInThisContext (vm.js:53:16)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811108+00:00 app[web.1]: at Module._compile (module.js:387:25)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811112+00:00 app[web.1]: at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:422:10)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811113+00:00 app[web.1]: at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811113+00:00 app[web.1]: at Function.Module._load (module.js:314:12)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811114+00:00 app[web.1]: at Module.require (module.js:367:17)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811115+00:00 app[web.1]: at Object. (/app/modules/webhook.js:5:17)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811116+00:00 app[web.1]: at Module._compile (module.js:413:34)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811117+00:00 app[web.1]: at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:422:10)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811117+00:00 app[web.1]: at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.811118+00:00 app[web.1]: at Function.Module._load (module.js:314:12)
2016-06-22T07:39:58.829087+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Linux 3.13.0-85-generic
2016-06-22T07:39:58.831049+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR!
2016-06-22T07:39:58.831243+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Failed at the messengerforce@1.0.0 start script ‘node server.js’.
2016-06-22T07:39:58.833015+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.
2016-06-22T07:39:58.838477+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
2016-06-22T07:39:58.838682+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! /app/npm-debug.log
2016-06-22T07:39:59.638953+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 1
2016-06-22T07:39:59.656110+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting to crashed
2016-06-22T07:39:59.657076+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from crashed to starting
2016-06-22T07:40:00.938560+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Starting process with command `npm start`
2016-06-22T07:40:03.311351+00:00 app[web.1]:
2016-06-22T07:40:03.311373+00:00 app[web.1]: > messengerforce@1.0.0 start /app
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816295+00:00 app[web.1]: /app/modules/formatter-messenger.js:102
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816318+00:00 app[web.1]: Cases.forEach(case =>
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816320+00:00 app[web.1]: ^^^^
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816328+00:00 app[web.1]: SyntaxError: Unexpected token case
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816328+00:00 app[web.1]: at exports.runInThisContext (vm.js:53:16)
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816329+00:00 app[web.1]: at Module._compile (module.js:387:25)
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816333+00:00 app[web.1]: at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816334+00:00 app[web.1]: at Function.Module._load (module.js:314:12)
2016-06-22T07:40:03.816339+00:00 app[web.1]: at require (internal/module.js:20:19)
2016-06-22T07:40:03.834038+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Failed at the messengerforce@1.0.0 start script ‘node server.js’.
2016-06-22T07:40:03.834206+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Make sure you have the latest version of node.js and npm installed.
2016-06-22T07:40:03.835267+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! npm bugs messengerforce
2016-06-22T07:40:03.835426+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Or if that isn’t available, you can get their info via:
2016-06-22T07:40:03.835771+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.
2016-06-22T07:40:03.840989+00:00 app[web.1]:
2016-06-22T07:40:03.841336+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
2016-06-22T07:40:03.841485+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! /app/npm-debug.log
2016-06-22T07:40:04.754095+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 1
2016-06-22T07:40:04.766410+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting to crashed
Eduardo Asenjo Rodriguez

Hi! Great job!. But I have an authentication problem from heroku to salesforce:

Authentication error
{ [Error: invalid_grant – authentication failure] statusCode: 400 }

Any suggestion?
- Vijaya murugan
  
  Did you solve this issue? if you have resolved, Could you please post the solution. I am facing the same issue
- Jeetesh
  
  Any clue, I am also getting the same error.
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Vincent Li

Hi,
Thanks for this quite nice explanation !
I installed everything as explained, but I am stucked at the first level of interaction : I type ‘help’ , then the bot replys by explaining me what i can ask. Then i ask something but i never get an answer.
Has anyone faced this problem ?
Thanks
- vaibhav kaurwar
  
  Instead of integration user you TRY System Administrator’s credentials and check again…hope this helps
  - Bijay S
    
    Hi Vaibhav,
    
    I am using System admin cred but still its not happening , only help key work works.
    
    Could you please help me how you resolved the issue.
    
    Thanks
Pingback: A Bot Toolkit for Creating and Deploying Bots Inside Salesforce - Developer Relations()
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Suraj Gupta

Hello Sir

I have created app, It works fine for me when I type help in messanger. But it is not giving me any response when I ask somthing like search account acme.

Can you help me with the same
- Bijay S
  
  Hi Suraj ,
  
  Were you able to resolve the issue ?
  
  Thanks
- Jeneesha Kasundi
  
  I have solved the issue. You can find the code in the below link.
  
  https://github.com/jenyks/messengerbot
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Jeneesha Kasundi

Hello sir,
Thank you for your great explanation. I am new to salesforce and I have tried this example. But the code worked only for “help” message. So i solved the issue with that code and now it is working.

Those who have the same issue can find the code in the below link.

https://github.com/jenyks/messengerbot
- Panda
  
  Hi,
  
  I have still some issues even when I change the initial code with your version.
  
  Some ideas what the issue can be? I receive the following error when I go to : myapphere.herokuapp.com/webhook => Error, wrong validation token
  
  Thanks in advance!
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