1. From the main menu, select View > Other Windows > Conversation Window. The Conversation Windowdisplays.

2. At the top of the Conversation window, select Tutorial from the drop-down list.

3. The Conversation window has two buttons at the top. One is for connecting a session; the other is for disconnecting the session. Click the Connect button. The Conversation window will connect to the Query Server (one of the Windows Live Agents Server components) to start the session. You should see a status message displaying at the top of the Conversation window. It will describe the login information, similar to this: Processing username = joeuser service =TXT uid = 4Request cluster : GLOBALGLOBAL for user

4. In the text entry field at the bottom of the Conversation window, type hello and click Send. Both your input statement and Tutorial buddy's response will display in the Conversation window display area. You may be surprised by the agent's response. It should contain the text specified in the script, Hello, world. However, it could also contain a default greeting, appearing above Hello, world. This default greeting is triggered by the fact that you're talking to Tutorial buddy for the first time. BuddyScript provides ways for you to treat a user's first message, and the first message in a given session, as special cases. Later, you'll learn how to write your own script to handle these cases, overriding the default behavior.

5. Now that you have an input and response set, you have two choices of how to work with them. These options are discussed later in the documentation:

   • Option 1: Double-click on the input/response pair to display the Comprehension Info window. This window provides information on how well Tutorial buddy recognized the user's input.
     
   • Option 2: You can open the file to view the BuddyScript code that describes the input/response pair. To do this, right-click on the input/response pair and select Goto winning pattern.
     

6. To confirm that the other patterns in your script are working, return to the text entry area at the bottom of the Conversation window and try a couple more inputs: Goodbye! and How many states are there?, for example. Also try entering an input for which there is no pattern in the script — you should see another default response, indicating that the agent didn't understand. Again, this response is something you can customize later.

7. When you're satisfied, click the Disconnect button in the upper left corner of the Conversation window to end the simulated session.

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