I have a custom Alexa Skill similar to some Q&A skill , in which I'm asking the user for a response (say option_1, option_2, option_3), but when the user responds with one of these asked options a different intent (say ruleIntent) is triggered because the option text is somewhat similar to its utterances.
I think it is not a good design if more than one IntentHandler is triggered for same( or similar) phrase, but then I don't know the text of options in advance to avoid this (or what the user is going to speak out as the answer of asked question). What if I can somehow maintain the context of user's response, I think that will be one of the solutions.
Example : -
1.User : Start a Science test {Invokes testIntent }.
2.Alexa : Okay, but before starting do you want to know the rules. Please answer in Yes or No. { response generated from testIntentHandler}
3.User : Yes { invokes many intents }
In line 3 even if I hard-code this to a Intent (say ruleIntent) , then what will happen if some question contains its options as Yes or No. How will I differentiate that and map that to the response of asked question.
One way to deal with this is to track the state using persistent or session attributes.
You can do a check of the state in the canhandle method to route the user to appropriate test intent
One way to solve this could be to use Dialogs. You can use auto delegation for dialogs
Enable auto delegation, either for the entire skill or for specific
intents. In this case, Alexa completes all of the dialog steps based
on your dialog model. Alexa sends your skill a single IntentRequest
when the dialog is complete
Delegate the Dialog to Alexa
Related
Currently I'm creating an Action for the Google Assistant.
In this Action, I ask the user to provide its phone number. After this, another intent will repeat the phone number given, and asks if it's correct. If the user responds with 'no', I would like to redirect the user back to the first intent, so it can provide its phone number again. It should be a kind of loop.
(I'm working in a local environment, so only the intents are created within Dialogflow.)
I tried to apply contexts for this case, but in someway it won't succeed.
Thank you guys!
Remember that Intents represent what the user has said, and not what you are doing with that data. So saying that "another intent will repeat the phone number" suggests that you're making some things more complicated.
A better design is likely to have the Intent that collected the data to several things:
Repeat the phone number back
Prompt if this is correct
Set a content indicating you have prompted for confirmation
You can then have another Intent handle the "yes" or "no" statements responding to this prompt. The user may say other things, remember, including giving a correction to the phone number.
See also these articles (based on a StackOverflow question and answer) on designing a conversation and the Dialogflow Intents based on that conversation:
Thinking for Voice: Design conversations, not logic
Conversation to Code (Part 1)
I've developed an Alexa skill and now I am in the process of porting it over to a Google action. At the center of my Alexa skill, I use AMAZON.SearchQuery slot type to capture free-form text messages. Is there an entity/parameter type that is similar for google actions? As an example, see the following interactions from my Alexa skill:
Alexa, tell my test app to say hello everyone my name is Corey
-> slot value = "hello everyone my name is Corey"
Alexa, tell my test app to say goodbye friends I'm logging off
-> slot value = "goodbye friends I'm logging off"
Yes, you have a few options depending on exactly what you want to accomplish as part of your Action.
Using #sys.any
The most equivalent entity type in Dialogflow is the built-in type #sys.any. To use this, you can create an Intent, give it a sample phrase, and select any of the text that would represent what you want included in the parameter. Then select the #sys.any entity type.
Afterwards, it would look something like this.
You may be tempted to select all the text in the sample phrase. Don't do this, since it messes up the training and parsing. Instead use...
Fallback Intents
The Fallback Intent is something that isn't available for Alexa. It is an Intent that gets triggered if there are no other Intents that would match. (It has some additional abilities when you're using Contexts, but thats another topic.)
Fallback Intents will send the entire contents of what the user said to your fulfillment webhook. To create a Fallback Intent, you can either use the default one that is provided, or from the list of Intents select the three dot menu next to the create button and then select "Create Fallback Intent"
So you may be tempted to just create a Fallback Intent if all you want is all the text that the user says. If that is the case, there is an easier way...
Use the Action SDK
If you have your own Natural Language Processing / Understanding (NLP/NLU) system, you don't need Dialogflow in the mix. You just want the Assistant to send you the result of the speech-to-text processing.
You can do this with the Action SDK. In many ways, it is similar to how ASK and Dialogflow work, but it has very basic Intents - most of the time it will just send your webhook a TEXT intent with the contents of what the user has said and let you process it.
Most of the Platform based ASR systems are mainly built on 3 main parameters
1. Intent - all sorts of logic will be written here
2. Entity - On which the intent will work
3. Response - After executing all the process this is what the user will able to hear.
There is another important parameter called webhook, it is used to interact with an external API.
the basic functionalities are the same for all the platforms, already used dialogflow(google developed this platform- supports most of the platforms even Alexa too), Alexa, Watson(developed by IBM).
remember one thing that to get a precise result giving proper training phases is very much important as the o/p hugely depends on the sample input.
I have created a google action, which takes in three parameters, I have done training phrases for many word combinations, but sometimes it will not pick it up.
I set my input parameters in the dialog flow to number1, number2, and number3.
It seems by default, if it misses a value it will say: "what is $varName"
however, this could be misleading to users since it may be unclear if it just prompts the user for 'what is number3'.
Id like to edit this response to be a more descriptive message.
I hope this is clear enough - I cant really post any code since its all concerning this dialogflow ui...
cheers!
If you want to add prompt variations for capturing parameters in an entity follow the "adding prompt variation" explained here. Just add variations to prompts as below or handle it from webhook by enabling slot-filling for webhook.
If you want to ask questions when the agent did not understand the intent then you can either use a Default Fallback Intent for a generic reply or create a follow-up fallback intent for the intent you are targetting.
or
I am developing a google assistant app on Dialogflow.
And I have a intent that receives two entities: #name and #age
Using the fulfillment throught the inline editor I verify if the #age is below 18.
In that case I need to ask for additional info, I need to ask the name of the person responsible for the child.
I looked around the internet, including the fulfillment samples at https://dialogflow.com/docs/samples
I believe it would look something like this:
let conv = agent.conv();
conv.ask('As your age is under 18 I need the name of the person responsible for you:');
//Some code to retrieve user input into a variable
agent.add(conv);
But I was unable to find how to do it.
Can someone help me to achieve this?
Thanks in advance.
While you are handling an Intent, there is no way to "wait for" the user to respond to your question. Instead, you need to handle user input this way:
You send a response back from your Intent.
The user replies with something they say.
You handle this new user statement through an Intent.
Intents always represent the user taking some action - usually saying something.
So one approach would be to create a new Intent that accepts the user's response. But somehow you need to distinguish this response from the initial Intent that captured the person's name.
One way to do this would be, in the case you ask the question about who the responsible adult is, is to also set a Context. Then you can have a different Intent be triggered only when that Context is set and handle this new Intent to get the name of the adult.
I have created a bot using Dialogflow (api.ai) and integrated it with Facebook messenger. I want to get the parameter values from user: like city, date (today, tomorrow) by using the quick reply feature of messenger, where user is presented with select-box like options, and can tap on one of the options. The required parameter receives the user-tapped value, saving the user from typing it manually.
I cannot find anywhere in documentation any way to fill up parameter values (slots) using quick replies. There is an option to give quick replies in response section, but the response section is called on fulfilment, and if I take user input in response, then I have to create another follow up intent to process the user-response further, because the current intent gets fulfilled after response.
If I add quick replies in the response section, then I have to create multiple levels of follow-up intents. Ex: I take city input in one intent, and give two options to user (like New York, Delhi). Then I have to create two follow up intents, each for handling one reply (New York and Delhi), and then for each follow up intent, I will have to create more follow up intents to get more parameter inputs. Below is the flow diagram of this case. --->
This can get pretty complex when more levels are added! Amazon Lex has this feature of filling slots using quick replies. Can't I just fill up parameter values directly using the quick replies like Lex?
You don't have to go this far. There is a simple way of using entities & prompts in dialogflow.com. The workflow can be: Weather(intent)->quick reply(New york/Delhi)->City(intent) use entities here->quick reply(Today/Tomorrow)->Use different intents here for today & tomorrow as you will have different responses. You don't need to create different intents unless you have different responses. User says can have different parameters for which you can define different prompts as well. This will again reduce your complexity of creating follow-up intents. Let me know if you need more explanation on this.