Have you been laid off? Are you behind on your bills? Need to renegotiate a contract?

In any of these situations, you may need legal information. And if you live in British Columbia, Canada, you can chat with Beagle to get it. (Try it—click the Messenger chat icon on the bottom-right of this page.)

Tangowork is the technical partner and chatbot consultant to People’s Law School on the Beagle project, with Agentic Digital Media providing design expertise. People’s Law School is a non-profit society in British Columbia dedicated to making the law accessible to everyone.

For our chatbot technical stack, we chose Contentful to manage the content and Rasa to power the chatbot AI. In this post, we discuss the reasons we chose Contentful for content management and the way we approached integration.

Using Contentful for the chatbot

We use Rasa, an open source chatbot engine, to analyze input and decide how to respond. Rasa doesn’t generate language — all possible responses have been written in advance. Rasa simply returns the name of a template to use. Then we retrieve that template from Contentful.

For example, in response to “i got laid off”, Rasa returns laidOff. Then a piece of middleware, built by our development team, calls the Contentful API and requests the content associated with laidOff. Contentful responds with the content, and then we format the text and send it to the chatbot:

Content is delivered from Contentful straight to the chatbot

Using Contentful for the website

The chatbot response to “i got laid off” works perfectly as the introductory paragraph to a webpage. The chatbot buttons, such as “What to know”, show as website headings. Individual chatbot speech bubbles show as website subheadings and paragraphs. (Read more about the website project in How you can grow your website traffic 51%—overnight—by radically increasing speed.)

Content is identical in both the chatbot and the website — it’s just reformatted

Certain pieces of text aren’t appropriate for both the chatbot and the website. For example, we use emoji more liberally in chat. For those instances, we surround the text in question with a span tag like this: <span class="chatOnly">Cool, eh? </span>. The text is then suppressed in the channel where it doesn’t apply.

The Contentful editing interface is easy for content authors to understand

Changing text in Contentful instantly updates both the chatbot and the website

Unified content management in Contentful makes high-quality content easier

People’s Law School has a very high standard for content. After multiple drafts by their legal content developers, content passes to a plain language reviewer, who performs another check to ensure it’s as clear and easy to read as possible. Finally, it’s reviewed for accuracy by one of a host of external lawyers.

If this legal review process had to happen twice — once for website content, and once for chatbot content — it would be unsustainable. Instead, Contentful allows us to manage a single set of content, and publish it in two places: on a website and on a chatbot.

And it doesn’t need to stop there. We can theoretically produce PDFs or other printed collateral via Contentful. Indeed, we’re using maximum-resolution images in Contentful’s media library in case we go down that path. (Contentful resizes and downsamples images on the fly for delivery to the website and chatbot.)

The lawyers at People’s Law School are thrilled with Contentful as their unified content management solution. “Contentful is fast, easy to use and flexible,” says Drew Jackson, lawyer and project lead. “There’s nothing we’ve tried to do with it that it couldn’t handle. And I’m relieved that when the law changes, we don’t have to update both the website and the chatbot. We change the content once, and it updates everywhere.”

Our intranet workshops usually last from one to three days. Regardless of the length, we like to set everyone’s expectations by sharing an agenda. Although we share it in advance via email, discussing it again at the start of a meeting reminds everyone of the plan and provides an opportunity to make any necessary adjustments.

Lately I’ve been using the “Hero’s Journey Agenda” to set the stage for my Content Migration workshops. (Read about it in detail on Gamestorming). The Hero’s Journey captivates the audience and prepares them for what lies ahead.

Hero’s Journey for Intranet Content Migrators

1. Draw a big circle on a whiteboard. Write “Ordinary Life” at the top, and a little figure that represents a person in your group.
2. Explain that every epic tale involves a hero that gets the call to leave his or her ordinary life. Write “The call” around 2 o’clock on your circle.
3. Explain that as the hero embarks on his or her journey, they meet friends to help them along the way. Draw a little figure of “helpers” — perhaps with capes or wizards’ hats — and explain who is going to help your group on this journey.
4. Draw a big line through your circle and divide it into “Known” and “Unknown”. Explain that we’re crossing into the Unknown, and we’re going to be facing Problems and Perils. Write “Problems & Perils” at 4 or 5 o’clock, and draw some dark clouds and monsters.
5. At 6 o’clock, draw The Pit. Explain that this is the low point, when everyone is going to be frustrated. And that this might be a good time to break for lunch.
6. In epic tales, the Hero emerges from the Pit with hope: he or she has acquired “Special Powers”, which you’ll write at 7 or 8 o’clock with lightning bolts, light bulbs and exclamation marks. Explain that the group is going to acquire special abilities, such as the ability to quickly add, edit and manipulate content, files and photos.
7. Finally, write “The Return” around 10 o’clock. This is where the hero crosses back into the Known world, bringing back Gifts to his or her Ordinary Life. Draw little boxed gifts, and explain that everyone will be returning home as Content Heros. They’ll bring back the gift of Content Migration Know-How, which will benefit others on their team.

I used this agenda with a credit union a few weeks ago. The intranet manager loved it when I drew her with a cape, my colleague loved it when I drew her with a magic wand, and the content migrators loved thinking of themselves as heros. When we reviewed our takeaways at the end of the day, many people commented that the Hero’s Journey was a highlight!

The great thing about the Hero’s Journey agenda is that it prepares your group to face a period of frustration during the workshop. This is usually the part where they are learning something new and difficult, or are unravelling a complex problem. But the agenda also assures them that they will break through, learn something new, and leave the workshop with new skills. Presenting the agenda in this way can infuse excitement into what otherwise could appear to be a mundane topic, like content migration.

Coast Mental Health, a rapidly-growing non-profit with 750 staff, needed an intranet. They turned to Tangowork.

Coast Mental Health At-a-Glance

• Purpose: Empower people living with mental illness by providing housing, support services, education and employment.
• Employees: 750
• Locations: 51
• Headquarters: Vancouver, Canada

Services Provided by Tangowork

• User research
• Needs analysis
• Technology recommendations
• Procurement management
• Information architecture
• Software configuration
• Content migration

As a non-profit organization, Coast Mental Health is constrained by fundraising amounts and has to work with limited resources to accomplish its goals. Identifying ways to make operations more efficient across the organization was a key part of choosing a new digital platform. Reducing duplication of work caused by employees siloed at different locations was an important way Coast Mental Health could function more efficiently.

Organizations in the healthcare industry are required to follow many regulations and standards. Standard Operational Procedures need to be current and consistent to meet Accreditation Canada standards. Coast Mental Health’s most up-to-date SOPs needed to be readily accessible to employees at all locations.

User-centred research and a technology shoot-out

Coast Mental Health engaged the services of Tangowork as a digital workplace consultant to guide them through the process of designing and launching the platform they needed to achieve their goals.

To learn about the goals of employees at Coast Mental Health, Tangowork conducted depth interviews with Coast Mental Health employees in a variety of job roles to find out what they do in a day’s work. Tangowork looked for opportunities for a new digital platform to have a positive impact and reduce friction in the employees’ work life.

Based on these interviews, Tangowork created several composite personas — example employees based on real people — and produced journey maps that displayed typical events that would happen in an employee’s day. The journey maps presented how the employees’ experiences affected their satisfaction, and the opportunities for improvement that were represented. These journey maps were presented to the stakeholders and were used to create empathy for employees and their needs within the stakeholders.

Stakeholders then came together to determine their business objectives, and to examine what a new digital platform would make possible for Coast Mental Health, what conditions would need to exist, and what barriers would have to be mitigated for it to succeed.

Once the employee goals and business objectives had been determined, it was time to look at platforms whose features could meet those needs. Tangowork guided Coast Mental Health in looking at the technology vendors that the Real Story Group categorizes as Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software on its Digital Workplace & Marketing Technology Vendor map; vendors who offer products for social networking, intranets, file sharing, and chatbots.

 

All of the information gathered was then used to produce practical user stories with example employee tasks. Multiple technology vendors were asked to demonstrate to the stakeholders how those tasks could be accomplished using their software, and the list of vendors was narrowed down to two.

A team of power users tested out the two intranet vendors in a technology shoot-out — performing tasks using the two software platforms over the span of a month. Then the power users came together and voted 93% in favor of using ThoughtFarmer, a Canadian intranet software platform used by hundreds of organizations worldwide.

Tangowork assisted Coast Mental Health with setting up their new intranet, migrating current information to the intranet, creating new content, and creating areas to inspire future user contributions. Coast Mental Health then introduced their employees to their new intranet, Coast Connect.

“Coast Connect” quickly adopted by employees

Today, Coast Mental Health has an intranet, Coast Connect, that is easily accessible 24/7 via computer or mobile device, making it ideal for casual or shift workers to check out. The homepage is populated with regular news stories including upcoming events, health and safety messages and success stories from different Coast Mental Health locations.

With 20,000 views and counting, employees are accessing the staff directory regularly to connect with the people they need. A Staff Spotlight section on the homepage introduces employees to each other by highlighting a different person every time a user visits the homepage.

CEO Darrell Burnham connects with staff by sending shout-outs on the intranet that recognize employees in a public forum and encourage conversations with the CEO. He has also connected with staff via a New Year’s message and an article encouraging employees to use Coast Connect regularly and keep up-to-date with the news available there.

The tangible benefits of sharing information came swiftly on Coast Connect. Staff at one location created a page with a safety training e-learning module which was quickly noticed and recommended by employees at other locations. The page has been viewed over 1500 times, making it one of the top viewed pages on Coast Connect.

Coast Connect is also an amazing reference tool, with all of Coast Mental Health’s Standard Operational Policies easily accessed by search, navigation or quick links. Having the most up-to-date SOPs online allows staff to be current, consistent and meet Accreditation standards.

Web Forms on the intranet has allowed Coast Mental Health to streamline several of its processes. For instance, previously Coast Mental Health had a generic form for incidents and near-misses that was a catch-all form covering a number of safety requirements, but was ineffective in capturing specific data for analysis. The Forms tool available on Coast Connect has allowed for the creation of a form with data fields that gathers the specific data needed to support ongoing safety standard and auditing processes across the organization.

Strengthened community, greater efficiency

Through their new intranet, Coast Mental Health has found a way for their employees to easily access both current policies & procedures and regular news updates about the organization. Success stories and commendation shared by fellow employees and management on Coast Connect build a sense of community and connection. Accessible Standard Operational Procedures mean that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the requirements for meeting health and safety and Accreditation standards. Sharing information on the intranet reduces duplication of work and results in employees benefiting from each other’s work and experience.

From user research to procurement management to software configuration, Tangowork helped Coast Mental Health deploy an intranet that strengthens community, reduces inefficiencies and helps employees continue giving their best to support the recovery of their clients.

At the start of a morning workshop, there are usually a few people who are tired, glassy-eyed, checking their phone and largely disengaged. I love the challenge of waking these people up! And it’s usually not difficult — it just takes a warm-up exercise. I’m not talking about jumping jacks — although perhaps those would work — but rather a mental exercise. A warm-up gets everyone comfortable with one another and starts the creative juices flowing.

Hopes and Fears

If you’re kicking off a project, I like Hopes and Fears (described in detail on IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking site).

1. Put two headings on a whiteboard: “Hopes” and “Fears”. 
2. Ask everyone to write down one hope and one fear for the project. Give them a couple of minutes. 
3. Ask each person to share theirs out loud, one after the other. You can write them down as they share, or if you use sticky notes, they can post them themselves. 

Besides engaging the room, this warm-up helps you address potential problems. On a recent project, I was concerned that the scope was too large. In a Hopes and Fears exercise, one of the stakeholders listed “We’re trying to solve too many problems” as a Fear. This provided an excellent opportunity to discuss the scope and agree to reduce it!

Trading Cards

If your workshop involves drawing or sketching, Trading Cards (described in detail on Gamestorming) is a great warm-up.

1. Hand out 4×6 index cards.
2. Ask everyone to write their name and draw a stick figure of themselves. It helps to provide an example of your own card.
3. Then ask them to write a little-known fact about themselves
4. Ask everyone to pass the cards around the room. Encourage everyone to ask another person a question about themselves.

At a recent workshop, we learned that one person is studying Punjabi, one is working on the guitar, and another went to college on a softball scholarship. People are fully engaged after this exercise and ready to get to work!

According to Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE, “Humans are like cars: we perform better when we’re warmed up.” Although it takes a few minutes, time spent warming up is time well-spent. It’ll make the rest of your workshop more productive.

For three years we built chatbots on the Microsoft Bot Framework. We built an entire platform for powering chatbots that looked and functioned beautifully. But two issues kept coming up:

• Privacy. How do we keep user conversations completely confidential?
• Context. How do we build a bot that understands not just the words, but the context?

We switched to Rasa to solve these problems and couldn’t be happier with our decision.

The cloud makes many clients uncomfortable

Despite the explosion in cloud computing, many organizations are uncomfortable putting their data on the cloud. We’ve found this is especially true in government, finance, and insurance. And Canadian and European organizations are particularly uncomfortable hosting anything in the United States.

With the Microsoft Bot Framework, we were sending every scrap of data, every user utterance, to Microsoft. Although I generally trust that Microsoft has good intentions, the data was clearly out of our control. I couldn’t confidently make any assurances to my client about exactly where their data would be hosted or how it would be used.

Rasa is open source and installs anywhere

Enter Rasa.

I first heard about it, ironically, on a LUIS blog post in 2017 (LUIS is Microsoft’s natural language understanding service). In independent testing, LUIS and Rasa were neck-and-neck on language comprehension performance, outperforming Watson and API.ai (now Dialogflow).

But unlike its competitors, Rasa is open source. You can install it on your laptop, or in your data center, or on your private cloud. It’s fast, stable, and has been downloaded 1.5 million times. Significantly, Accel is their lead investor, and Accel knows how to spot winners: their past Series A investments include Facebook, Atlassian and Dropbox.

Bots that don’t understand context seem stupid

Our other issue with the Microsoft Bot Framework in general, and LUIS in particular, is the lack of contextual understanding.

Without context, AI assistants are frustratingly limited. Consider how important context is in a conversation like this:

me: can you suggest a restaurant?
bot: i'd recommend Di Beppe at 8 West Cordova Street!
me: any other suggestions?
bot: What would you like suggestions for? Restaurants or hotels?
me: uh… restaurants?!

You can’t easily build contextual understanding using anything from Microsoft Cognitive Services. They have a “Labs” product called “Project Conversation Learner” that promises to handle it, but there’s no word if and when it will be released in Preview, let alone in general availability.

You could build a rules engine or use entity recognition with memory management, but it’s going to get really complicated really quickly. The best solution would be an engine that could predict the next best action based on the previous conversation history — which is exactly what Rasa does.

Rasa understands context

The Rasa natural language understanding engine uses the conversation history to determine what the user means. In the following video, I demonstrate how to set up a Rasa bot that understands context — in about 5 minutes.

Using Rasa X to build a bot that understands context, in about 5 minutes

Rasa refers to this as a “Level 3” Contextual AI Assistant. As you might expect, it takes a lot of training to teach the chatbot how to correctly interpret the context. That’s why they introduced Rasa X, a tool for quickly training a chatbot based on real conversations. In the following video, I use Rasa X to deepen a bot’s understanding.

Using Rasa X to train the bot to understand more

Rasa doesn’t see “Level 3” bots as the end goal. Their vision includes “Level 4” Personalized AI Assistants, and the ultimate “Level 5” Autonomous Organization of Assistants. I don’t know when (or if) they’ll realize a “Level 5” chatbot, but I love that they know where they’re headed.

We’re Rasa consultants now

We liked many aspects of the Microsoft Bot Framework. But the lack of privacy guarantees and the lack of contextual understanding were ultimately deal-breakers for us.

So now we’re full-on Rasa consultants! We’ve developed a custom Docker image for our Rasa projects that runs on a private cloud, uses Contentful as a headless chatbot CMS, extends the functionality of Rasa’s Messenger connector, and emulates everything we had with the Microsoft Bot Framework — plus our data is private and our bots understand context.

me: can you suggest a platform?
bot: for what?
me: an AI assistant
bot: Try Rasa.
me: why?
bot: It understands context, and it runs on your systems.
me: perfect.