Business Unit: NCore
Title: Smart meetings
Technologies: .NET, Microsoft Bot Framework, LUIS, Microsoft Exchange, Azure, Xamarin or UWP, Azure Logic Apps

Setting up a meeting can sometimes be a tedious job: finding the right time to do it, so that everybody can attend, finding a meeting room which is free and big enough, ordering food for everyone, ... Outlook’s built-in Scheduling Assistant can already help a bit, but in many aspects, this tool doesn’t feel modern or user friendly. Also, when needing to sit together with a colleague for just a few minutes, it isn’t easy to find a meeting room that is available for the next few minutes without having to look in Outlook.

What do we want to do?
Let a Chat Bot do all the heavy lifting! In such a way that we only need to define our intent. For example: “Schedule a meeting with Gertjan and Jörgen somewhere next week”
The intents can be either very abstract or very concrete: ‘somewhere next week’, ‘tomorrow at 11am’, ‘December 12th in Mechelen at noon’, ...

Depending on your intent, the Bot should start a conversation to get more information about the meeting. For example: if your initial request didn’t include any invitees, the Bot should ask for it. Or if you didn’t specify a date or time already, it should be asked.

The conversation should be fluent. That means that for example “schedule me a meeting...” and “book meeting...” and other variants should be interpreted by the bot.

The conversation should be fluent. That means that for example “schedule me a meeting...” and
“book meeting...” and other variants should be interpreted by the bot. Once the bot has collected all the needed data, it will propose a time and location taking the
schedule of all attendees and the availability of the meeting rooms into account. Of course, the user can ask for other propositions as well. Once a meeting is booked, the bot may ask if you want to order food for the meeting. Of course, this is only relevant for meetings taking place at certain moments of the day. The food handling itself can be done in a dedicated food ordering bot.

A quick “which meeting rooms are available for 10 minutes in the next hour” should for example return a list of meeting rooms that match the query.

Additionally, we want to install little touch screens outside the meeting rooms that display an overview of the current and upcoming meetings in that particular room. That way, you can easily see when a particular meeting room is available. A meeting in that room can then also be booked easily via the app running on the touch screen.

Available materials:
- Azure environment for dev/test
- It might be possible to setup a “dummy” exchange environment for a limited amount of
time. This needs to be checked first.

What we offer

• You will learn a lot (that’s the point, right?)
• You’ll join a team of engaging colleagues
• You will have the opportunity to participate in projects
• You’re welcome to join a lot of workshops, trainings and events
• You will find yourself in a high-tech environment with a focus on knowledge and innovation, an open no-nonsense corporate culture with room for personal initiative

Who we are looking for
• You are a motivated bachelor or master student
• You are a team player
• You can work independent
• Your true passion is IT and you monitor the latest trends and best practices
• You are not afraid of complex issues, and fixing them
• Knowledge of .NET is a plus