I am trying to develop a chat-bot in google Dialog Flow where user deviates from the original conversation flow (CF) but ends up coming back to original somewhere in the middle.
bot responses are in bold
For example:
original CF: hi -> how may i help you -> i would like to go travelling -> OK, i would suggest Europe. would you be interested? -> yes -> alright here's the price
deviated CF: hi -> how may i help you -> i would like to go travelling -> OK, i would suggest Europe. would you be interested? -> maybe -> Europe has lot of beautiful destinations u can travel to. would you be interested -> yes -> alright here's the price
The only way i found to implement this is to make a new intent and develop its followups which is making this very redundant. I had to develop two separate intents fully. Is there any way i can make an intent just for the deviated CF and join it to the original intent?
One simple solution is to make many follow-up intents, but that is never ending process.
Here is another approach I want to suggest:
Make a list of important intents which you want to handle in case of
deviation
When the intent is hit, save that to some DB (or cache), let's say
unfinished_intent
In each request or every 2-3 requests check the value of
unfinished_intent, if it contains some intent name, prompt for it
After your intent is fulfilled, delete the unfinished_intent
This is just an idea, how to implement is upto you.
I suggested this because it is generic and it will catch all the cases.
Hope it helps.
Keep in mind that the user can change the direction of the conversation at any time. So using a long chain of followup intents is a bad idea. Even using a short chain is a bad idea. Followup intents should be limited to fairly narrow circumstances, and in most cases they're not wise nor necessary.
Instead, keep track of the information that you have about the user and the information that you still need as part of a context. If you are engaged in a side conversation, or have made a recommendation, keep track of that as well, since the user may ask questions about it. Build many top-level Intents that represent what the user is saying, not where you are in the conversation or how you plan to reply.
See also Thinking for Voice: Design Conversations, not Code based on this answer on StackOverflow.
Related
I want to ask the users a few questions in my welcome intent and depending on their answers give them a particular output.
My problem is that, once the user answers the first question, the agent exits my welcome intent and tries to match with the next intent.
I thought I could solve this by matching it back to the welcome intent.
So ideally it should have gone like this :
Welcome intent -> 1st question -> user answer -> Welcome intent ->2nd question -> and so on
But actually this happens :
Welcome intent -> 1st question -> user answer ->Welcome intent -> 1st question
It will keep asking the first question.
To solve this , I started maintaining a flag for each question.
If question 1 was answered I would set its flag true and then use it to skip the first question when the welcome intent is matched for the second time.
This is a very convoluted way to do it and probably far from the best way to do it.
Can anyone point me in the right direction to implement it?
Thank you.
Edit : I have given up my old method. Let me explain what I want to do and then I can get guidance on the way I should implement it.
I have 16 different outputs and I would like to show one of them to the user depending on their answer to 4 questions. Each question will only have two answers as options and depending on the option chosen by the user for each question , I will pick one of the 16 outputs and display it to the user.
How do I accomplish this using diaglogflow node.js?
First of all remember that an Intent captures what the user says or does and not what you do with that information or how you reply to it. That part is best handled by your fulfillment. While we can use Contexts to limit which Intents will be considered for a user response they are probably most useful in this case to store your state and keep track of which questions have been asked and answered.
Under this scheme, your Intents remain responsible for capturing input and your fulfillment examines this input, changes state based on this input, and sends a reply based on the new state (what it needs to ask next). If the user's responses will be mostly the same (free form, or from the same set of phrases), you can even use the same Intent to capture this input and the fulfillment would use the state and input to determine what logic to execute. If you need different types of input, and thus different Intents, their handlers can still call common functions to do the processing and change the state/reply.
This is further discussed in Thinking for Code: Design conversations not logic
You can use the concept of the follow-up intents in Dialogflow Console to create a chain of questions/answers.
Here is an example of my chain of questions/answers:
Though I still strongly advise you to study also how input/output context works. Especially if you want to collect all user reply parameters in the one final fulfillment of the last step to avoid storing the user inputs in fulfillments attached to every intent of the chain.
I'm trying to make a simple dialogflow conversation. I have made a simple conversation to ask a person who they are trying to call and then says if a person is available / unavailable, which is just a text reply. When a person is unavailable I have potentially 3 actions the user can do, leave a voicemail, redirect to a colleague or wait until the person is available.
The message I would return is
"I'm sorry nameOfPerson is not available, would you like to leave a voicemail message, redirect to a colleague or wait until nameOfPerson is available?"
Which works, but how can I make it so that lets say there is no voicemail the intent only response with, "I'm sorry nameOfPerson is not available, would you like to redirect to a colleague or wait until nameOfPerson is available?"
Currently the only way I see to fix this is making 7 intents with all different contexts like:
Intent1: voicemailContext
Intent2: redirectContext
Intent3: voicemailContext, redirectContext
Intent4: waitingContext
Intent5: WaitingContext, redirectContext
Intent6: waitingContext, voicemailContext
intent7: waitingContext,redirectContext, voicemailContext
All that work for just a small adjustment seems way to complicated. Also currently I'm sending those options in a call which I would much rather not since people could also just say those options and get a match
Dialogflow is very poor at handling logic. You can sorta do it, as you've seen, but this does lead to overly complicated models. One thing to remember that might help with this is that Intents are good at modeling what the user says, but that you're still responsible for what you do with that.
Better in many cases is to put the logic in a fulfillment webhook. This lets your code determine what the best response is and send that response. Depending how you want to structure your replies, you have a few other options:
You can send a context back in the reply. This would limit which Intents can get triggered when the user replies.
Another approach is to only have one Intent for the reply, but to use Entities to represent what sorts of things they can do. Then have your fulfillment, again, determine if they have given you a valid or invalid reply and respond accordingly.
I am trying to make a search algorithm with dialogflow that could take any combination of: first name, address, phone number, zip code or city as input to a search algorithm. The user does not need all of them, but we will refine our search with each additional answer until we only have one result. Basically we are trying to identify which customer we are talking to.
How should this type of intent (or set of intents) be structured? We have tried one intent with multiple parameters, but we do not need all of them to be required. We have also written a JavaScript function for fulfillment but how can we communicate back to dialogflow as to whether we need more information?
Thank you very much for your help.
Slot filling is designed for this purpose.
Hope that helps.
Please post more code/details to help answers be more specific.
First, keep in mind that Intents reflect what the user is saying, and not typically what you're replying with or what other information you need. Slot filling sometimes bends this rule, but only if you have required slots.
Since you don't - you need a different approach.
This can be done with a single intent, although you may find that multiple intents make it easier in some ways. The approach is broadly the same:
When you ask the question, make sure you set an Outgoing Context with a relatively short lifespan (2-3 is good) to indicate you are collecting user info.
Create an Intent (or Intents) that have sample phrases that capture the information you need.
Some of these will have obvious entity types (phone number and zip code) while others will be more difficult (First name has a system entity type, but it doesn't include all possible first names).
You will need to create sample phrases that collect the parameters by themselves, along with phrases that make sense. You're the best judge of this, and you should probably write some sample conversations before you write the phrases.
In your fulfillment, you'll figure out if you have enough information.
If you do, you can reply and clear the Context that was set. (Clearing it is important so Dialogflow doesn't match the information collecting Intent again.)
If you do not, you can add the information you have as parameters to the Context so you can save it for later processing, make sure you reset the Context lifespan (so it doesn't expire), and prompt the user for additional information. Again, having a conversation mocked out ahead of time will help here.
I want to make a simple Q&A Alexa app similar to Alexa's custom Q&A blueprint app. I don't want to use blueprints because I need additional functionality. What is the best practice for creating the Alexa app? Should I create a separate intent for each question or should I somehow use utterances?
The best way depends upon what the questions are and how it will be asked.
1. If the questions has a simple structure
Consider these examples:
what is a black hole
define supernova
tell me about milkyway
what is a dwarf star
then it can be configured like this in an intent:
what is a {space}
define {space}
tell me about {space}
and the slot {space} -> black hole, supernova, milkyway, dwarf star.
From the slot value, you can understand what the question is and respond. Since Alexa will also fill slots with values other than those configured, you will be able to accommodate more questions which follows this sentence structure.
2. If the question structure is little complex
what is the temperature of sun
temperature to boil water
number of eyes of a spider
what is the weight of an elephant
then it can be configured like this in an intent:
what is the {unit} of {item}
{unit} to boil {item}
{unit} of eyes of a {item}
what is the {unit} of an {item}
Here,
{unit} -> temperature, number, weight, height etc.
{item} -> sun, moon, water, spider etc
With proper validation of slots you will be able to provide the right answer to the user.
Also, you will be able to provide suggestions if the user asks a question partially.
Ex:
user: what is the temperature
[slots filled: "unit"="temperature","item":""]
Now, you know that the user asked about temperature but the item is missing, so you respond back with a suggestion like this
"Sorry I didn't understand. Do you want to know the temperature of the sun?"
3. If the questions has totally different structure
How to deal with an annoying neighbor
What are the types of man made debris in space
Recommend few good Nickelback songs
Can I jump out of a running train
If your questions are like this, with total random structure, you can focus on certain keywords or crust of the question and group them. Even if you can't group them, find out the required fields or mandatory words.
IntentA: How to deal with an annoying {person}
IntentB: What are the types of man made {item} in {place}
IntentC: Recommend few good {person} songs
IntentD: Can I {action} out of a running {vehicle}
The advantage of using slots here is that even if the user asks a partial question and an associated intent is triggered, you will be able to identify it and respond back with an answer/suggestion or error message.
Ex:
user: what are the types of man made mangoes in space
[IntentB will be triggered]
If you have configured this without a mandatory slot, your backend will be focusing on the intent triggered and will respond with the right answer (man made debris in space), which in this case won't make any sense to the user.
Now, with proper usage of slots and validation you can find that instead of debris your backend received "mangoes" which is not valid. And therefore you can respond back with a suggestion or error message like
"Sorry, I don't know that. Do you want to know about the man made debris found in space"
Grouping questions will help you to add other similar questions later with ease. You can use one intent per question if it is too difficult to group. But remember to validate it with a slot if you want to avoid the situation mentioned right above.
While naming question-intents use a prefix. This might help you to group handlers in your backend code depending on your backend design. This is not mandatory, just a suggestion.
Summary:
Group questions with similar structure.
Use slots appropriately and validate them.
Use predefined slots wherever possible.
Don't just depend on intents alone, because intents can be mapped if its the closest match. But the question might be entirely different or might not make any sense. So use slots appropriately and validate them.
If possible provide suggestion for partial questions.
Test thoroughly and make sure it wont break your interaction model.
You should check Alexa Dialog Interface that allow you to make Q/A or QUIZZ.
https://developer.amazon.com/fr/docs/custom-skills/dialog-interface-reference.html
Suppose i want to make a pizza ordering DialogFlow agent. To order a pizza we need 3 things: size, type and toppings.
If we want to go with follow-up intents approach rather than using entities then there will be so many combinations in which user might provide the information.
1: i want a pizza -> no info
2: i want small pizza -> size
3: i want small cheese pizza -> size and type
4: i want small cheese pizza with olives -> size, type and toppings
5: i want small pizza with olives -> size and toppings
...
and so on
How to solve this problem?
There will be so many combinations if we have more entities (2^n combinations)
Note 1: cannot take entities and slotfilling option as there are so many problems if we go down that road, like re-prompts loop, validation etc.
Is there any better solution?
Note 2: If we use entities, mark them required, and set prompts then many times if it does not get desired input from user it get stuck in re-prompt loop, i.e it keeps asking user same (or random) prompt for same entity. In my use case, it is bad for user experience. If we use follow-up intents instead, then we can set fallback intents for all those intents which solved this problem. (please note that this is just example of the use case)
This is another example of why I used follow-up intents, it solved my date capturing problem as well. I took #sys.date.recent and set a fallback intent to capture inputs like last week, last month etc, this was not possible using slots.
First, remember that Intents should reflect what the user says, not necessarily what you are doing.
On the surface, it isn't clear why slot filling (either with fulfillment or using built-in prompts) won't meet your needs. Since you've indicated that all three bits of information are necessary (size, type, and toppings), you can mark them as such in your phrases and Dialogflow will prompt for the missing information until it gets everything.
You almost certainly do not want to use Followup Intents. These are good when you always have a specific response that you send that will always have a very narrow set of replies from the user, but are very poor if the response from your action will prompt the user to reply in many different ways.
Instead, I would use a related concept: Contexts. (At least if you're not going to use slot filling.) When you ask the question of what they want, set a Context so you know they are. Then have one or more Intents that have this as an Input Context that accept the various things the user might say. Your webhook should see if you have the information you need and, if not, prompt them what else you're looking for. At the end, prompt for a confirmation, but they may say something that adjusts the order.