Imagine the following scenario:
Our client starts a conversation with our bot regarding a problem with one of their websites.
We go and check the website in our backend through our fulfilment web service and if there is no obvious problem we want to then generate a screenshot of the website and present it to our client.
The screenshot could take more than 5 seconds to take as many websites take longer than 5 seconds to fully load.
As a result the response timeouts.
We can't force our clients to redesign their websites to lead faster than 5 seconds just so that our chatbot can handle their request.
I assume there are many other real-world examples in which fulfillments can take more than 5 seconds.
Example:
Client: My website www.example.com doesn't load.
Bot: I just checked the website and it loads fine for me. Here is a screenshot of your website for you to check:
{Image goes here}
The short answer is - you can't.
There are some tricks that work sometimes, but they won't work in all scenarios, and aren't good practices anyway.
Your best bet would be to respond to the user with a message saying you're doing some checks and diagnostics and to ask for an update in a moment (and, if possible, provide a Suggestion Chip prompting them to ask for it). After sending that message, launch a background task to do the checks to see what might be going on and take the screen shot. When they ask for an update, you can report with what you have (latency time, the screen shot, etc) or if things are being slow and that you're still checking.
Related
I have a Actions on Google project that uses api.ai for its actions. This is working well and I can see request/responses appear on the google assistant interface (On mobiles and simulator)
One of my usecases for api.ai needs to broken into 2 parts, in that we have to inform the user that the processing has started and then inform them again once its completed (without them reprompting for the output).
Im trying for a way to inform the user who is using the Google assistant when the processing is completed, but have failed so far. Something like this
User: I would like to see if my loan request is approved
Google Assistant: Hold on, let me check and let u know .
.... (Makes a webservice call to the backend asynchronously)
.... After few seconds ...
.... Postback to google assistant from the webservice
Google Assistant: Thanks for holding, your request is approved.
Im not sure how to do the "postback to google assistant" call. I have tried to get the SessionId from the Api.AI call and then use that to make a event request , but that doesnt seem to send the response to the assistant. Google Assistant seems to be using the formats defined in https://developers.google.com/actions/reference/rest/Shared.Types/AppRequest, but Im unsure how to get the ConversationToken and use that for sending the response back to the user.
Short answer: you can't do that.
Slightly longer answer: At least right now, there is no good way to send a notification. Your Action can only respond to a specific statement from the user. You can say something like "ask again in a minute and I should have a result for you", but that isn't a great experience. At Google I/O 2017, they announced that notifications would be coming to the Google Home at some point... but gave neither a time frame nor any information about an API.
Long, but probably still unsatisfying answer: You can look into Transactions which let them initiate purchase or request of some sort and then "check out". Once they have checked out, you would confirm that a transaction is being processed with an OrderUpdates and then can send updates with the status of the "order". These status updates can turn into notifications or user's can query the state of the order at any time. Transactions don't require payment, so this may work depending on your needs.
However, there are a few things to note. This is still in developer preview, so things may change in the future. It also doesn't work on all surfaces where the Assistant runs, so while it does work on Assistant on phones, it does not work on the Google Home right now.
My fulfillment needs to do a lot of processing after receiving a certain request from Google Action/API.AI and the default response timeout is 5s.
https://developers.google.com/actions/components/fulfillment#nodejs
Is there any way I could send a delayed response or send a POST request after the results are ready?
The short answer is no - you must respond within 5 seconds, and there is no way to send a notification back through the Assistant at this time.
The slightly longer answer is that we know notifications are coming - but we don't know if there will be an API for them. There have been rumors about other ways that may be coming that allow us to work around the 5 second limit.
The even longer answer is that, if you are using Action Transactions (ie - allowing the user to purchase or reserve something) you can send updates after the fact. However, Transactions are still in developer preview and don't work on all surfaces (they don't work on Google Home at all, for example).
I have an app that sends SMS's out to a bunch of people. Those messages contain links. They are not using any link shorteners or any other service. They link back to my site. The links themselves are randomized strings, which are stored in my db, which are associated with an action. (Click "yes" or "no" link and the db tracks what you chose.) For ALL users, this works perfectly. With one user - and it's always the same user, as soon as the cron job runs, which triggers this event, his "vote" comes in. This is without him clicking or even seeing the message sometimes.
So, the question: has anyone ever seen or heard of a cell provider or a messaging app or similar that "clicks" links as part of some process before sharing the content with the user? I can't see ANYTHING in the code that would single him out so I'm thinking it has to be something in between when the message goes out and he does what he does. Especially because the timestamp is also always within seconds of the cron job running.
Sending an SMS can sometimes go through multiple carriers before reaching an end destination. As such, providers may be "handling" the content in this case.
The best thing to do would for any cases of this in the future would be to write support for further investigation.
I am using the node-whatsapi library
I am getting the number blocked. I am following the exact protocol as mentioned in the WIKI.
The flow that i follow is:
Create Adapter
Connect()
On Connect - Login
On Login
sendIsOnline()
requestPrivacySettings()
requestServerProperties()
requestContactsSync()
For Each Contact sendPresenceSubscription(), getStatus() and getProfilePicture()
And when i receive a message:
adapter.requestContactsSync('1234567890', 'delta', 'background');
getProfilePicture()
Save to DB
Now, what we do and why do we use WhatsApi
We enable our existing Customers to talk to their internal teams on WhatsApp. So, a customer initates a chat and a help desk team responds to them on an application.
Got the number blocked now. Unable to understand where am i going wrong.
Also, the total number of messages exchanged between the customer and the helpdesk team is around 1k a day.
What you're "doing wrong" is using a third party API which is against WhatsApp's terms of service and, if detected, will get your relevant accounts blocked. It's not a fault with WhatsAPI itself or how you are using it.
WhatsApp openly publishes the only approved/compliant way to programmatically interact with their network.
http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/iphone/23559013
http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/android/28000012
Outside of that, you are going to get blocked whenever you are detected as using an unapproved means of interacting with their network.
In your particular example you're using a Node.js port of the original WhatsAPI. As of May 2015 this is the kind of pressure they are dealing with from WhatsApp (despite many years of trying to negotiate an amicable compromise with them around things like message limits and identity verification):
It sucks but that's just how it is. You can look at some alternatives which are still actively updated and may continue working for a while, but given that WhatsApp is now owned by Facebook and considering the kind of legal resources at their disposal, you should be able to see why one might be reluctant to continue updating a rogue API.
Well, got a satisfactory answer from WhatsApi collaborator matteocontrini.
Here is the answer that i got, if somebody is intrested.
It says:
the reason of getting blocked doesn't have to be because you wrote
wrong code. It could be a filter on the kind of messages you send or a
report from someone about your number.
how to ensure visit different web pages by human, not by bot program?
Is there some tecnique?
thanks
if(strstr(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']), "googlebot"))
{
// Google Bot visits you
}
This is an PHP example of finding out, if the visitor is GoogleBOT.
You can either change the User Agent in the HTTP headers, or look for bot like activity, such as a very high frequency of hits over a wide range of pages coming from a single ip address (though you might see that with a Proxy Server too). You can also look for hits on Robots.txt and assume that other visits within the same session where also from a robot.
In reality there is no sure fire way of doing it, as sophisticated robot writers could pretend to be browsers.
Time can be good measurement of whether a visit was a human or a bot.
If you set a time-out or delay on the JavaScript which tracks the user visit to execute after 1 or 2 seconds. Most humans will visit a page for at least that time (even if they don't like it) whereas a bot should be able to scan and move on in that time.
Just a thought.