Introduction
In this article, we will learn how to get started with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services – Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) APIs.
Overview
I have came across many complicated articles with respect to Cognitive Services, but as I've been working on this service for the last six months, it's really not at all complex to work upon. Hence, I thought to start with writing a simple, step by step article with respect to Cognitive Services.
If you have landed over directly to this article, I would also recommend to read the following.
As defined, Cognitive Services provide the best suite for having interactive, automated model of application. It helps to build powerful intelligence into applications, to enable natural and contextual interactions.
LUIS API, as described by Microsoft, is designed to provide you with an easy way to create models, which allows your applications to understand user commands.
We will learn more about LUIS APIs in later articles. To start with, let's create Cognitive account to use LUIS API using Azure Portal.
Here, let's assume that you have Azure Portal account. If not, create your free Azure account.
Once done with account creation, click '+' => Category, Intelligence + analytics => Services, Cognitive Services APIs.
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Fill in below details.
- Account Name - Unique name for cognitive LUIS API account.
- Subscription - Free or in case any subscription you have must be selected here.
- API Type - Cognitive services provides set of awesome APIs. For this article will go with LUIS API
- Pricing Tier - As per API selected, pricing option will be listed. Select anyone among the listed option
- Resource Group - Can select existing Resource group or create new.
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- Account Name - LUISCongwithKasam.
- Subscription - Have selected my subscription.
- Resource Group - Created new resource group for grouping Cognitive related services, naming, CodeCognitivewithKasam.
- API Type - Cognitive services provides set of awesome APIs. For this article will go with LUIS API.
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Currently, the service is in Preview and hence only available at a Western US location. Once we select LUIS API from list of APIs, Location would get set to ' West US'
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- Pricing Tier - For LUIS API selected, below pricing options are listed. Let's select Free as pricing tier. You can go with standard tier, which is available in free trial account.
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Click on Legal Terms option. A blade with detailed terms will be displayed. Read it carefully and then click = > I Agree => Create.
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After successful creation, it will be notified with below message.
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Click on Resource groups => CodeCognitivewithKasam ( Resource group selected) => Overview. LUIS API Cognitive account created will be listed. Click on account name.
Overview will list all details associated with Cognitive account.
Endpoint is base URL of Restful LUIS APIs provided by Microsoft. We will look into it with deep details in coming articles.
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Click on Keys under Resource Management. This will list key details (Key 1 , Key 2 ), which we will be used in our application to leverage LUIS API Services.
We can also regenerate these Keys by clicking Regenerate Key option available, as shown below.
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Click on Quick Start for having quick introduction of Cognitive services, LUIS, along with, API documentation to use Cognitive LUIS APIs
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Summary
How easy it is to get started with Cognitive Services. So far, we saw how seamlessly we created Cognitive Services LUIS API account using Microsoft Azure Portal.
In later article, we will use these Keys and look at how this could be used in our application.
I would recommend to try this and be ready with Keys.