I just wanted to start with why my blog doesn’t get updated that often.

1. Life is hectic. With continual travel, and a number of other things going on, the chance to be able to sit down for peace and quiet is rare. That may change one way or another soon.
2. I try to avoid other peoples thunder on a range of issues. For example I recommend keeping an eye on Simon Burns blog in relation to the new features.
3. My role continues to evolve, at the moment that is one of “Expert Services”, where people like myself go around the world to help our customers run the show themselves. This probably warrants it’s own page, but it is a balance between what is added value to that service, and what everyone should know. (I’m in the latter camp, but I got to eat too).

The biggest reason for lack of updates? Development keep changing things! I’m not the only one that suffers from this. I read a fantastic design patterns document earlier this year by someone in GBS, which went mostly out of date a week or two after I got it.

So it has been the same situation with the latest update to conversation. It is a total game changer. To give you an example of how awesome it is, here is an image of a sample “I want to buy a dog” dialog flow.

Now compare that to the new Slots code. (btw, you may have noticed the UI looks cooler too).

The same functionality took a fraction of the time, and has even more complexity of understanding than the previous version. That single node looks something like this:

That’s all for the moment, better if you play with it yourself. I have some free time shortly, and I will be posting some outstanding stuff.