Microsoft may be ready to rev up (again) its conversation as a service strategy, with new additions to its bot-framework toolset.

Microsoft's Virtual Assistant Accelerator and Bot Framework Composer tools are now generally available. And developers can now use Bot Framework to create new Alexa skills.

Visual Studio Code developers can now leverage the power of Microsoft's AI-driven Bot Framework with a new extension developed by Microsoft and Stack Overflow, the popular programming Q&A site.

Since Microsoft announced the Bot Framework at its 2016 developer conference, over 130,000 developers have signed up to use it. The company is now expanding it further, with new capabilities.