I have a technical question about the Google Assistant - unfortunately, I couldn't find a clear answer anywhere.
At the moment our company have:
the conversational chatbot built on Dialogflow, which is constantly developed by our employees
Google Actions agent. Our developers managed to construct the connection of the Google account and our client's account on our platform using OAuth 2.0 and created the first actions that, by the exchange of tokens, allow the return of certain information from our platform to the Google Assistant and vice versa - providing certain information in the Google Assistant that are sent and saved in the customer's account on our platform.
We would like both actions on actions.google.com (2) and conversations on Dialogflow (1) to cooperate with each other in the Google Assistant. One team is working on the chatbot, and the other on advanced actions, and we would like it to stay that way.
My question is - is the absolute only way to finally publish it on the google assistant is to migrate the chatbot from Dialogflow to Actions Builder and stop using Dialogflow?
Or maybe there is a simpler solution where both these environments (of course woring on one profile / agent) cooperate with each other and it will be possible to continue working on dialogflow?
We understand the advantages of Action Builder, but Dialogflow is just good enough for our needs.
There are a few angles to how you can approach this, depending on your exact needs and limitations you may accept, but the general answer is "yes, you can do both at the same time".
First, Dialogflow ES continues to support the Actions on Google Integration. Just as your Dialogflow agent integrates with other platforms, it should still be able to integrate with Actions.
There are some caveats (and some upsides!) with this, however:
You'll be using the Actions on Google v2 platform, rather than the v3 that comes with the Action Builder (and newer SDK). If the features you need are supported on v2, then you're fine. (Account Linking is supported in v2.) But if you need some of the features in v3, then you will run into problems.
You can't have used the Action Builder on the same Cloud project, and you should start the integration from the Dialogflow side. (But once you do - you'll be able to use the Actions Console to do things such as submit it for review, etc.)
Make sure you do not "upgrade" from Dialogflow to Actions Builder. This severs the two, so you won't be able to update the Action from Dialogflow.
Another approach is that you can use Action Builder, but have it forward all (or nearly all) of the requests to Dialogflow. Under this scheme, you would have an Action Builder project that has as little as one Scene with an Intent that captures all input, sends that to a webhook you control, which sends it to your Dialogflow agent via the Dialogflow API, gets the response from your Dialogflow agent, and forwards that response through Action Builder.
This is a little more complicated, but may offer some benefits if you want to take advantage of more advanced Action concepts that may not be available using v2.
Related
It seems Google Assistant is unable to handle certain trigger phrases in the intent. The ones I have come across are the following:
Send message to scott
chat with q
Send text to felix
It seems to work fine inside dialogflow simulator. However, it doesn't work at all in Action Console Simulator or on a real device like google home mini. On Action Console Simulator, it gives "You cannot use standard Google Assistant features in the Simulator. If you want to try them, use Google Assistant on your phone or other compatible devices" and on a real device it gives an error "I am sorry, i cannot help you .." and exits completely and leaves the device in a funky state. It doesn't seem to trigger any fallback intent. I have tried adding input context but make no difference.
It's very easy to reproduce. Just create a demo action with an intent for the above phrases along with "communicate with penny", invoke your app and then try the above phrases after the welcome message. It will only work if you say "communicate with ..".
Is this a known issue/limitation? Is there a list of phrases that we cannot use to trigger an intent?
The Actions on Google libraries (Node.js, Java) include a limited feature-set that allow third-party developers to build actions for the Google Assistant.
Standard features available in the Google Assistant (like "text Mary 'Hello, world!'") won't be available in your action until you build that feature, using fulfillment.
Rather than looking for a list of phrases you can't use, review the documentation for invocation to see what you can use. Third party actions for the Google Assistant are invoked like:
To learn how to get started building for the Google Assistant, check out Google's codelabs at https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/actions-1/#0
If you've already reviewed Google's Actions on Google Codelabs through level three, consider updating your question to include a list of your intents and a code sample of your fulfillment, so other Stack Overflow users can understand how your project behaves.
See also, What topics can I ask about here?, and How do I ask a good question?
Can you like with the Test Simulator have an embedded Google Action or use a Live chat style bot on a website with Google Actions responses? Are there any code labs or third party platforms that do this?
Yes, some of the 3rd party chat windows I know of:
- Smooch
- Kommunicate
You will have to use the Payload response to send specific components (such as cards, quick replies or images)
There's also this Github repository which allows you to set Google Actions replies and it will display it in chat:
https://github.com/mishushakov/dialogflow-web-v2
Or you can write your own in React or Vue.
Actions on Google is the platform for Google Assistant developers and have own library and components. You can use these features and components only on Google Assistant projects, since every platform has different features and capability. If you need to create a chatbot with these kind of features, you should check platform's docs eg. Facebook, Telegram...
If you want to create a chatbot which has some rich responses, Dialogflow has own attributes such as Card, Suggestion. So, you can build your agent and integrate Dialogflow (not Google Action).
You can check here for platform and Dialogflow's response and payload ability.
I have used Dialogflow for developing the app for Google Assistant. I have created intents and entities in the Dialogflow web GUI and I'm using a webhook response for further conversation.
Now I want to build a chatbot that is part of an existing Android or iOS app and use the code I already wrote for Dialogflow as part of this. What do I need to be aware of when I do so? It looks like I can use the SDK for that platform or make calls to the Dialogflow REST API. Which is faster or are there any tradeoffs? Can I use the Dialogflow NLP without going over the network?
Note: Dialogflow API V1 is deprecated and will be shut down on October 23th, 2019.
That means that the official Javascript, native Android, native iOS and Cordova clients will stop working since they all use V1. There's no word if and when these clients will be upgraded to V2.
So the best bet right now is to use the REST APIs.
There are a few things to be aware of when moving from fulfillment that was built for Actions on Google to using this to also provide responses for other platforms. Actions on Google expects the responses to be formatted slightly differently, and if you're using AoG specific characteristics (such as a SimpleResponse object or a Card object), then it might not appear for other Dialogflow integrations. So you'll need to go over your webhook code to make sure what you send back works across platforms. Your logic and the Dialogflow UI builder should pretty much remain the same - it is just your backend that might need some work.
To make the call, as you say, you can either do the REST call yourself or use the SDK built by Dialogflow. While the SDK will be slightly faster, since it is using ProtoBuffs instead of REST, the difference will likely be fairly slight in most cases. If you're planning to stream audio, you will likely need to either use the SDK or your own ProtoBuff implementation because REST doesn't handle that as well. If you're just sending text, and are more comfortable with doing REST APIs, then this is a perfectly reasonable approach.
There is no "local Dialogflow" library. All calls have to go over the network. There are other libraries that do Speech-to-Text and NLP locally if that is what you need.
i just started on a project in DialogFlow and i was wondering is it possible to link my dialogflow to a specific desktop application? And if possible, what is the solution?
For example:
By saying "launch app", it will open up the desktop application "app"
While this is certainly something that Dialogflow's APIs can help with - this isn't a feature provided by Dialogflow itself. Dialogflow's NLP runs in the cloud - there is nothing local that it can "do".
However, you can create a launcher app that does this sort of thing by opening the microphone and sending either the stream or a speech-to-text version to Dialogflow through the Detect Intent API. Dialogflow can determine an Intent that would handle this and pass that information back to your launcher, and your launcher can then locate the app and start it.
I'm not sure how practical this would be, however. Microsoft already has this feature built-in with Cortana, and Google is building the Assistant into ChromeOS which will do this as well. While I'm not aware of Apple doing this, I may just have missed an announcement that Siri does this as well. And if there isn't someone who is doing this for Linux using some local speech-to-text libraries, it sounds like the perfect opportunity to do so.
You may try and use different Dialogflow clients available on their GitHub page. Java Client 2 may be helpful to start your work. However, you will be required to write your own UI code and have to consume Dialogflow API.
I'm using Dialogflow to interact with my users (they can ask questions, ask to receive reports etc...) and I would like to launch an Android application when they invoke one the intents I created, is there a way to that?
Short answer: Not really.
Longer answer: While you can't have one of your Actions trigger any Android Intent directly, you do have a few options to strongly suggest to a user that they do so. For example:
You can use something like Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to trigger a notification/event.
If you're relying on the screen of the Android device, you can send a card that includes a URL, and that URL can deep link into your application if you've configured it.