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I am new to DialogFlow and chatbots in general. From the tutorials I'm following, it seems to be fairly straightforward to take data from the chatbot and send it to the backend via the webhook and then get the fulfilment response back to the user. However, I was wondering if there is any way to retain the parameters the user has input before the webhook was invoked and thus continue the conversation from where it left off.

For instance, say I've made a recipe bot. The user enters ingredients, say, flour, butter, eggs, vanilla essence and sugar that they have in their pantry. The webhook is invoked and it sends these parameters to the backend (flask based in my case). The ML at the backend identifies a set of recipes that could be made with these ingredients (mostly cake) and returns the most promising one.

If the user now remembers that they actually are out of vanilla essence but have chocolate, they should be able to update the chatbot with that one detail and have the bot come up with another recipe.

I'm not sure how to do that. My chatbot essentially resets the parameters when the fulfillment response is returned. I tried using Output Contexts to return the input parameters to the bot - and I can see the returned parameters - but they don't seem to be accessible.

Update: Another person has tried this, which is very similar to what I've done:

I have two intents. The first one (intent1) asks for a fruit (that value is saved in $firstParameter), and let's say the user sets it to "Apple".

function intent1() {
    //does something with agent.parameter.firstParameter
    console.log(agent.parameter.firstParameter);
}

This outputs:

Apple

No issue. Then, there's a follow-up intent, intent2, that asks for another fruit (that value is saved in $secondParameter) and lets say the user sets it to "Orange".

function intent2() {
    //does something with agent.parameter.firstParameter and agent.parameter.secondParameter 
    console.log(agent.parameter.firstParameter);
    console.log(agent.parameter.secondParameter);
}

This outputs:

undefined
Orange

The output context of the first intent activates the input context of the second intent, but the parameters are erased from existence, vanished, deleted, sent back into the void, cast into the fire, destroyed.

Prisoner
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RHD
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  • welcome! Your question is a little vague, so it is a bit difficult to give you a good answer. StackOverflow works best if you can provide a concrete example, with code, showing what you're trying to do and details of the input and output showing what is or isn't working. I suggest you update your question (or post a new one if this gets closed) with as much of this information as you can. The more concrete examples you can give - the better we can point you in the right direction. See "[ask] a good question" for more. – Prisoner Mar 27 '21 at 00:46
  • Hi @Prisoner, MauroOyhanart put up a more concrete example below. It is precisely what I was asking. Please let me know if that makes the question clear enough. – RHD Mar 29 '21 at 19:50
  • It helps, but seeing what your Intents look like and how you've tried it with Contexts can help clarify further. – Prisoner Mar 29 '21 at 22:14

1 Answers1

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I'm assuming you're using the dialogflow-fulfillment-nodejs library, which uses agent.parameters to store the parameters provided in the current Intent.

If you need to store parameters in subsequent Intents, you need to make sure you have an Output Context set with a long enough lifespan. You don't need to have this as the Input Context set for your second Intent - but it might help.

In the fulfillment for the second Intent, you would get the parameter value from the context with something like

  const context = agent.context.get( 'contextName' );
  const parameter1 = context.parameters.parameter1;
Prisoner
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