2

I am creating a chatbot using Dialogflow and Dialogflow's Inline Editor (for Cloud functions and Firebase database "Real-Time Database"). I will integrate this chatbot with Google Assistant.

I have to read a list from the database, wherein the list has several children, few of them have sub-children, and few of sub-children have sub-sub-children. Because the output is a list and consists long-text, it will take too long to speak all data at once. So I would like to output one child from the list and ask the user for permission (Yes/No) as "Do you want to read the next?". If the user says "Yes", I will continue reading likewise until the end. And if the user says "No", I will trigger an event. Asking for the permission from the user is true before reading a child, even sub-child, and even sub-sub-child.

The approach that I have taken involves creating a separate DB record for each user when they first request the list, to keep track of where they are in the list. When the user says yes, get user’s current item id from the database, get the next item in the list (return it to the user via agent.add) and then update the user’s DB record to the next item’s id and so on until the user reaches the end of the list. After agent.add(), ask for the permission from the user by agent.setFollowupEvent(). If the user says no, just reset/delete the DB record for that user.

Few questions I would like to ask:

  • How will I identify each user as an individual: by some id, session, or something else?
  • When I run the below code in return cloud function, agent.add is overridden by agent.setFollowupEvent. How do I stop this?
agent.add('I will print the list here!');
agent.setFollowupEvent('SOME_EVENT'); //invoking an intent to ask for the permission.
E_net4
  • 27,810
  • 13
  • 101
  • 139
Shivam
  • 192
  • 1
  • 12

1 Answers1

2

You have a few issues you're trying to raise here, in addition to the one you're dealing with. Looking at each:

How can I stop setFollowupEvent() from overriding the message I've set?

You don't. The entire point of setFollowupEvent() is to switch to a different Intent instead of the one that is currently being processed.

Most of the time you think you want setFollowupEvent(), you probably don't. Don't use it.

So how can I add the question at the end of what I'm saying?

Just ask it.

Really, it is that easy.

You can either include it in the string you're sending to agent.add(), or (depending on the details), you can do a second add() with the prompt.

But don't I need to trigger an Intent to get the answer?

No. That isn't what an Intent is for.

Intents capture what the user is saying, not what you are asking or what your agent is doing. Your fulfillment does something based on both the Intent that is triggered as well as the rest of the state that you know about the conversation. But the Intent is just one bit of that information.

You mentioned user state. How can I keep track of the user state during the conversation?

Since it looks like you're using the dialogflow-fulfillment library, the easiest way is to store your state in the parameters in a Context with a very long lifespan (or that you keep renewing).

So the first time your fulfillment is triggered, you can check the Context. If the Context or ID aren't there, then you would generate a random user ID and store it in the Context. Subsequently, you would use this ID to look up the user's information in the real time database.

If I'm doing this work, do I need the database?

Nope! If you are just storing a little bit of information about the user, and the information will just last the lifespan of the conversation, you can store all of it in Context parameters directly. You do need to make sure that these parameter names don't conflict with any parameters that your Intents have, but otherwise these will last las long as the Context does.

If you need to store information about this person in between conversations, then you will need to look into other methods. There is a User ID available for Actions, but this is deprecated and scheduled to be removed. There are also session storage and user storage fields that the Assistant makes available, but these are a little tricker to use using the dialogflow-fulfillment library if you don't need them.

Prisoner
  • 49,922
  • 7
  • 53
  • 105