I am currently trying to add functionality to my chatbot by allowing it to have quick replies (buttons for the user to click on) when certain questions are raised by the user. However, the implementation on web is not as straightforward as FB messenger/telegram where quick replies can just be keyed in.
After some research it seems like using the custom payload option when selecting a response on dialogflow seems to be the only viable option but I have no idea on the type of code/ format that should be input.
Related
I have made a query flow in dialogflow and it has four intent and in the last intent it uses a webhook to get data from server side and displays the result. It is trained automatically and works perfectly in dialogflow console returning response and query answer. The issue is it does not work when I use embedded url. It fails to recognize the name intent and asks (Can you repeat again or fallback intent). I've removed all intents and made query again, there is no similar name intents. Yet it works well in console and not in embedded url.
For the webhook part I've used node.js service.
Please help in this issue.
By 'embedded url' if you mean Dialogflow Web Demo (DWD), you should keep in mind that DWD can be used only for simple text messages. It does not support messages from webhook or even rich responses. However, if you steel need a web widget to embed your bot to your webpage you either create your own or you should use third party solutions (like Kommunicate). Here's the link regarding the limitations of DWD.
Update: June 30, 2020
After more testing, I have details that might help someone recognize my problem.
The issue seems to be that Slack is sending data to Azure Bot Services, but that data isn't being forwarded to my code. Ive been able to use the Bot Emulator without any problems and the Azure Web Chat works fine.
I know that the Slack configuration for the OAuth Redirect URL is correct (I was able to add my bot to Slack) and the Request URL for Events is correct (they sent the 'challenge' and it's verified). I've subscribed to the exact Scopes and Events that are in the Microsoft documentation and I've verified that the Interactivity and Events options are enabled.
When a user types text in my bot's Slack channel, my app receives "message" activity and my code can send a response, so it looks like Microsoft can communicate end-to-end for normal messages. I do not receive any data when users first join my bot (like a ConversationUpdate) or if they click a button in a dialog. I can see Slack sending data when a button is pressed, it just never arrives.
As a test, I copied the Messaging Endpoint from my Azure bot settings and pasted it into Slack's Interactivity "Request URL" and when I click a button in Slack I can see the data that Slack is sending (sadly in a format that my code can't handle).
Original Post
I have a Bot Framework app (v4) that I've written in nodejs. It works well and I have an ActivityHandler that responds to people being added to a conversation and when they send messages. I was able to get pro-active messaging functioning and everything was great until I tried to get interactivity working.
I started off using some sample button code from Microsoft's documentation:
let reply = MessageFactory.suggestedActions(['Red', 'Yellow', 'Blue'], 'What is the best color?');
await turnContext.sendActivity(reply);
This works fine in the emulator, but in Slack it renders as a bulleted list. It looks like that's the way that "suggested actions" are handled in Slack.
I changed my code to use a "hero card":
let card = CardFactory.heroCard(
'What is the best color?',
undefined,
CardFactory.actions([
{
type: 'imBack',
title: 'Color Red',
value: 'Red Value'
}
])
);
let reply = MessageFactory.attachment(card);
await turnContext.sendActivity(reply);
This works okay in the emulator, except my app thinks the user typed "Red Value" and the button stays on-screen and is still clickable. I might be able to work around that, but the button doesn't work at all in Slack. It is rendered fine, but I don't get a notification in my app.
Clicking the button shows an HTTP request to:
https://{MY_SLACK}.slack.com/api/chat.attachmentAction?_x_id=f8d003c3-1592436018.632&_x_csid=NcWi3y50lFU&slack_route={OTHER_SLACK_STUFF}
And I can see that the request POSTs all sorts of data including:
payload: {"actions":[{"id":"1","name":"imBack","text":"Color Red","type":"button","value":"Red Value","style":"default"}],"attachment_id":"2","callback_id":"{MAGIC_NUMBER}:{TEAM_ID}","channel_id":"{CHANNEL_ID}","message_ts":"1592435983.056000","prompt_app_install":false,"team_id":"{TEAM_ID}"}
I'm not sure how to see anything useful in the Azure Portal - the analytics option for my bot doesn't seem to work and the activities option only says "Write a Bot Service". I don't see any sign of the message going from Slack to Azure.
I'm developing locally and configured ngrok so that my messaging endpoint in Azure could be set to https://69fe1382ce17.ngrok.io/api/messages On the Slack side of things, I've configured the Interactivity Request URL to be https://slack.botframework.com/api/Actions The Event Subscription Request URL is https://slack.botframework.com/api/Events/{MY_BOT_NAME}
What I would like is a set of buttons with different options and when the user clicks one, my bot gets some sort of "value" instead of message text. I'd also like for the button to go away so the user can't send repeated commands. It would be nice if the hero card collapsed with just the prompt being displayed.
Are there any interactive options that work for Slack and other channels?
Thanks!
Lee
I know linking to another site with no additional detail is frowned upon, but I don't have enough expertise to answer your question. I suspect the link here might move you in the right direction:
Choice Prompts are not translated over to Slack format #3974
Good luck!
Your question is multifaceted so I'll try to break it down into smaller pieces.
What's the deal with suggested actions in Slack?
Suggested actions are not supported in Slack, but the Bot Builder SDK thinks they are. This is a longstanding bug. I've just reported it again on the docs page you linked: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/bot-docs/issues/1742
This means you would encounter problems if you were trying to have the choice factory automatically generate the right kind of choices for your channel. You're not doing that, so you should be fine. Hero cards are supposed to work in Slack.
Why aren't hero cards working in Slack?
First I need to mention that hero cards only work with the Slack connector and not the Slack adapter. You seem to be using the connector so you should be fine.
I suspect your problem is related to how you've configured your bot's settings on the Slack side. There is a step in the Bot Framework doc that seems to be important if you want to get buttons to work. If you've followed the doc exactly and you still can't get buttons to work, it may be worthwhile to dig into the Slack API documentation.
How do I only allow a button to be clicked once?
You can update or delete the activity. There's no easy way to do this, but if you voice your support for my cards library then it can be done for you automatically.
The Slack connector actually puts a lot of relevant information in the incoming activity's channel data, and you can use that to figure out what activity the incoming activity came from. That would take some experimentation on your part.
There's another approach that works on more channels than just Slack. It's real complicated, but if you wanna tackle this then here are the basic steps:
You need to put an ID in the action data to help your bot identify the action.
You need to save the activity ID that gets returned when you send the action to Slack.
You need to associate the returned activity ID with the ID you put in the action data.
You need to retrieve the activity ID using the action data ID when the user clicks the button.
You need to use that activity ID to update or delete the activity.
Unfortunately there's no centralized guide to help you do this, but there are many examples explaining it scattered across Stack Overflow. Here is a good one: https://stackoverflow.com/a/55174866/2122672
I am creating a bot for a bank using Dialogflow. I wanted to keep am option to talk with a Customer representative. If a customer wanted to talk with a customer representative, the bot Should stop and the customer representative starts the chat with a customer. How it is possible In Dialogflow.
That option is only available by creating your own custom implementation.
Check out this example here
It can also depend on the channel you are using For example, if you are using Facebook Messenger you can achieve that using the Handover Protocol in your custom implementation
This is currently not possible because dialogflow does not provide any web interface to achieve this, but in dialogflow usually the "input.unknown" action used to deliver a conversation to a human. Default fallback intent is triggered and the associated action is added to the response, and you also need to write a logic to what bot should do after that.
But if you're looking to avoid this hassle, I 'd suggest you use a chat widget tool like Kommunicate, which provides a dashboard UI as well as a chat widget. In fact, they also have a pre-built rich message template to create menu options to deliver a conversation to a human agent. Please check this link for more info
PS: I work for kommunicate
Another option is if you have the phone gateway integration enabled, Click 'Add Response' under the DIALOGFLOW PHONE GATEWAY tab and just select Transfer Call.
I’m coding a bot using PHP-BotMan for complexity reasons and using Dialogflow query api to extract and manipulate the informations from the response. I saw examples and hints from people here and on dialogflow forum suggesting using context or events, some of them mixing both. What is the better way to handle this?
The flow of the application is:
user messages bot
bot queries (text or/and #event?) dialogflow
internally process a reply or return dialogflow slotfilling* request
text response bot reply user with last reply or asking to fill slot
Also, how can I be sure that a slotfilling process is finished with “actionIncomplete” only having two values, NULL or TRUE? The dialogflow query response doesn’t show wich slotfilling parameters are required or not…
Thanks for the help!!
slotfilling is when dialogflow sends a text response requesting required parameters to finish an intent, adding those replied values to the context
I was trying something similar to your scenario, here are few points i found helpful:
When Slotfitting with webhook, i can't use the "Required" params field since i have to control the input parameters via webhook (query database to provide options). Which means actionIncomplete field is not useful anymore.
I personally prefer to use context as it can add/remove params which gives you more control.
Hence the dialog was designed to use webhook to check all required params before move on to next conversation flow. and pop quick replies menu to ease and restrict possible input from users.
HTH.
We are having two teams building two bots for our Facebook fanpage. One is for customer service and the other one is for a quiz campaign. Can we have the two bots on the same fanpage? Will there be any conflicts such as the custom menu?
The short answer is YES!
However unless managed correctly there will be conflict.
I know it is possible to use one chatbot built on ManyChat and another on Flowxo.
I need to ensure that I LIMIT the "keywords" in ManyChat so that ManyChat does not respond and allows FLOWXO to respond.
In my situation, I am using the Pro version of MC to get users subscribed and to further broadcast to them or subscribe them to a sequence. I pass over the conversation to Flowxo for integrations to third party software and for the basic conversational aspect of the chatbot.
Passing the conversation over from one chatbot to the other takes some manipulation of the use of keywords and Flowxo's "unrecognised phrase" flow.
I will post the link to a blog post when I get around to writing about how I did it.
Another issue as you pointed out is the Greeting and Welcome text. I have not figured out a way to control this and as it turns out with my chatbot, users always appear to enter into the chatbot via ManyChat which fortunately for me is exactly what I need.