dialog-start.md

copyright	lastupdated	subcollection
years 2015, 2020	2020-11-19	assistant

{:shortdesc: .shortdesc} {:new_window: target="_blank"} {:deprecated: .deprecated} {:important: .important} {:note: .note} {:tip: .tip} {:pre: .pre} {:codeblock: .codeblock} {:screen: .screen} {:javascript: .ph data-hd-programlang='javascript'} {:java: .ph data-hd-programlang='java'} {:python: .ph data-hd-programlang='python'} {:swift: .ph data-hd-programlang='swift'}

Starting and ending the dialog

{: #dialog-start}

Learn more about how to use the nodes that are added to your dialog automatically to start and end the conversation. {: shortdesc}

When you add a dialog to your dialog skill, the following dialog nodes are added to it automatically:

• Welcome: Defines how the assistant greets the user and starts the conversation.
• Anything else: What the assistant says when a customer's request cannot be satisfied by any of the defined intents.

Starting the conversation

{: #dialog-start-welcome}

The response you define for the welcome node in the dialog is displayed to initiate a conversation from the "Try it out" pane, and from other integrations, like Web chat or Preview link. However, it is not displayed from the Slack and Facebook integrations because nodes with the welcome special condition are skipped in dialog flows that are started by users. Assistants that are deployed to messaging channels typically wait for users to initiate conversations with them, not the other way around.

Unlike the welcome special condition, the conversation_start special condition is always triggered at the start of a dialog. You can use a combination of nodes with these two special conditions (welcome and conversation_start) to manage the start of your dialog in a consistent way.

For more information, see Special conditions.

You cannot use the built-in welcome node to start a dialog in the Slack and Facebook integrations. Use this workaround instead. {: tip}

Complete the following steps to manage the dialog start:

1. Add a dialog node above the Welcome node that is automatically added to the top of the dialog tree when you create the dialog.

2. Set the node condition for this newly added node to conversation_start, which is a special condition as described earlier.

3. Define any context variables that you want to set with default values for the dialog in the conversation_start node.

   Be sure to define context variables in the conversation_start node because it is always processed regardless of who starts the conversation.

4. Do not define a text response for this node.

5. Configure this node to jump to the Welcome node directly below it in the dialog tree, and choose If assistant recognizes (condition).

This design results in a dialog that works like this:

• Whatever the integration type, the conversation_start node is processed, which means any context variables that you define in it are initialized.
• In integrations where the assistant starts the dialog flow, the Welcome node is triggered and its text response is displayed.
• In integrations where the user starts the dialog flow, the user's first input is evaluated and then processed by the node that can provide the best response.

Ending the conversation gracefully

{: #dialog-start-anything-else}

The Anything else node is designed to recognize the anything_else special condition, which understands when user input does not match any of the intents that are used as conditions in a dialog's nodes.

• Don't delete the Anything else node. You might not recognize its value at first, but it serves an important function. It prevents your assistant from going silent and failing to respond at all to your customers. The Anything else node is what enables your assistant to - if nothing else - say, I'm sorry, I didn't understand. or I can't help you with that.

• Don't change the name of the Anything else node. If you want the skill's analytics to be able to recognize topics that your dialog couldn't address, keep the node name as-is. The coverage metric looks for occurrences of a node named Anything else being processed in the user conversation logs. It uses this metric to determine the frequency with which your dialog is able to match user requests to intents that can address them.

  You can configure your assistant to redirect queries to the search skill if the dialog is unable to address the request. When a customer's message reaches the Anything else node in your dialog, the message is sent to the search skill to find a relevant answer in your configured data collections. Messages that trigger search in this way are registered by the coverage metric as messages that are not covered. For more information about searching for an answer when your dialog can't provide a response, see Search triggers.

  For more information about the coverage metric, see Graphs and statistics.