how do I trigger an intent using DialogFlow?

Question

I have a conversation with dialogflow to select a favourite type of drink and then depending on the category of drink there are follow up questions (ie follow up intents).

Under the intent tab I have the following intents:

• Default Welcome Intent
• Favourite drink Intent
• Coffee Intent
  • follow up
• Soft Drink Intent
  • follow up
• Juice Intent
  • follow up

I use the training phrase in the Favourite Drink Intent and ask:

"What is your favourite drink?"

And store the response in an entity @drink.

But I don't know how then to trigger the intent "soft drink", "juice" or "coffee" intents depending on the users response. If I was writing code I'd use a switch statement or if/else but that prob doesn't apply here.

I wasn't sure if I had to use the fulfillment inline editor or I could just do that from within the Intent UI.

Thanks

Answer 1

In general - think of Intents as capturing what the user could be saying. Although Intents also have replies, this isn't their primary purpose.

Depending what, exactly, you're trying to do, there are a few approaches. All three of them require fulfillment code, which you can do using the built-in editor, or (better) use a webhook more under your control

If you want to use Intents to determine how to reply

This isn't really the best idea, but it is possible. In your fulfillment code, you would have a switch statement against the parameter with the user's selection. Based on this, you would trigger a followup event from your fulfillment. Your other Intents would have the Event section populated with the possible events, and the system would pick which one to trigger and use for fulfillment/response.

This is a bit of a kludge for what you want, probably.

Update to clarify based on questions in the comments. Sending an event directly triggers a different Intent. Sometimes this is what you want, but it is somewhat exceptional. Most of the time you want to use one of the methods below. In particular, you should remember that Intents are mostly meant to represent what the user is trying to do (what they "intend" to do), and this is mostly represented by what they're saying. Intents are good to capture the complex ways people talk instead of forcing them into a phone-tree-like "conversation".

If you just want to reply to each possible user response differently

You can use the fulfillment webhook code to determine what response should be sent to the user. You don't indicate what library you're using, but in general you'd write code that would determine what message should be sent to the user based on the drink type selected and include that as the speech and/or display text in the response.

You wouldn't use the other, drink specific, Intents in these cases. There isn't any need for them. Unless...

You want to reply to each user response differently, and the followup conversation might be different

Remember - Intents are really best for specifying what you expect the user to say. Not what you expect to reply with. So it is reasonable that you may have a different conversation based on if they selected Coffee (where you might ask how much sugar they want) or Juice (where you might ask if they want a straw).

In this case, you would still do as you have in the previous case (use your fulfillment to include a tailored message in your reply, possibly to prompt them for that info) and include in the reply an Output Context indicating what their choice was. You should do this as part of the response, rather than setting it in the Intent, since you'll want to name it differently for each beverage type.

Then you can create Intents specific to each beverage type with what you expect the user today. For those specific to Coffee, you would set the Input Context to require that the coffee context has been set. The soda context if they specified soda, and so forth.

Update, since you indicated in your comment that this sounded like the avenue you were interested in.

In this scenario, you'd do as you described (almost):

1. Get the value for the drink parameter with code something like

   const drink = request.body.queryResult.parameters.drink;
   

2. Do a switch based on this, and in the body of each case set what we'll reply with and what context we should remember. Something like this pseudocode, perhaps:

   switch( drink ){
     case 'coffee':
       context = 'order_coffee';
       msg = 'Do you want sugar with that?';
       break;
     case 'soda':
       context = 'order_soda';
       msg = 'Do you want a bottle or can?';
       break;
     case 'juice':
       context = 'order_juice';
       msg = 'Would you like a straw?';
       break;
   }
   // Format JSON setting the message and context
   

3. You would then have Intents that would be triggered based on a combination of two things:

   1. What the context is

   2. What the user has said

   For example, you would want a context (let's call it "coffee.black") which would be triggered if the order_coffee context is active and the user answered your question with "No" or "Just black" or other valid combinations.

   But you'd want a different context (say, "juice.nostraw") if the order_juice context is active and the user replied "No".

   And it wouldn't make much sense at all if the user said "No" while the order_soda context was active, so you'd want to try and direct them back to the subject at hand.

Remember, the Intent is for what the user says. Not for what your voice agent is saying. Your agent doesn't normally "trigger" an Intent - the user triggers it based on what they say.

In the example I gave, there might be other Intents that are valid for each of those contexts. For example, you might have a "coffee.sugar" Intent that is valid for the order_coffee context and responds to them saying "Yes". And another one where they might say "Just cream". There are lots of other things they might say as well, but it is important to your agent that the directions they're giving you have to do with ordering coffee.

As for your original question...

(To answer your original, now edited, question: Yes, you can create Intents from within your fulfillment. You almost certainly don't want to do this, however.)