Dialog Flows
Let's talk about the first part of the knowledge base, the one built from conversational flows.
What are dialog flows?
Flows are dialogues that deal with a specific subject. To design a flow, it is necessary to think about all the components that will compose this dialog.
In the Dialog Manager session, you can find the following subsections:
1. Workspace: space where conversational flows are created
2. Repositories: that store the components that will compose the flows (represented by the Flows, Intents, Entities, Services, and Answers)
3. Training: where you can train some components of the conversational flows.
Before you create the first flow of a virtual agent, you will have to choose of what type it will be:
The Welcome flow is for cases where the virtual agent takes the initiative to greet users. It is a greeting composed of a single cell.
The Not Expected Flow is mandatory and executed when the virtual agent cannot identify what the user is saying. It is a micro-flow of one answer. After you have created the not expected flow, you cannot delete it. There can be only one message.
A User Journey Flow, which is the dialog per se, built with all the conversational tools that eva offers. It must start with an intent. If you want, you can reuse an intent as the first step of a user journey flow, as long it does not start another flow.
There is also the Jump Flow, a complementary flow. You will see more about this process in the next chapter.
When building a flow, you can zoom in and out and move it freely to see different components.
When building a flow, view it as a funnel. Always go from the broad to the specific. The order of the factors can alter the way your virtual agent behaves significantly. An entity for soup flavor might hinder a flow if it comes before an entity for food in general.
Any flow can be edited (by clicking on the pencil) and deleted (by clicking on the trash can).
Important: Deleting a flow is an irreversible action. Building flows with more than one hundred (100) cells can slow down the system. It is good to avoid.
Hide and Reveal Flow Function
These two functions are very useful for improving the visualization of flows with many branches.
On the right side of each cell, there is a colored sidebar. Yellow for Intent, blue for Answer and pink for the others (Entity, Code and Rule).
If you click on the sidebar of a cell once, you will notice that all the cells following after it will disappear, as shown in the image below:
To make the flow reappear, just click on the same place again.
Important: This function does not occur in End, Not Expected cells and some types of Jump (only those located at the ends of the flows), simply because they are always positioned at the end of the flows.
Once you are familiar with the most important features of Dialog Manager, it's very easy to create dialogs and requires just a few steps:
You can start a flow with an Intent, a Welcome message, or a Not Expected Cell.
If you start with an Intent, you can create one or use one from the repository. Always Remember: you need at least 5 Intents registered to start your flow. And also have at least 5 Examples/Utterances registered on each Intent.
Flows that don’t start with Intents can only be accessed through jumps from other flows.
When you move your mouse over the cell, you will see 3 buttons: plus (+), a pen and a trash (as shown in the image below)
5. When you click the plus (+) button, a modal opens showing cell types you can add to your flow. You cannot add an intent after another intent. You can, however, insert an Answer, an Entity, or a Service.
6. The pen button, allows you to edit that cell.
7. Clicking on the trash button, you will delete that cell.
Important:
Every flow must end with an answer. If a flow ends with a jump to another flow, the other flow must end with an answer
After the second intent, comes a second answer and so on
Remove and Reconnect Cells modal
Perhaps during your work of building dialogues, you decide to delete several cells.
You can select each cell that should be removed and click on “Remove” button in Workspace.
If you choose to remove only the selected cells and not their subsequent siblings, the flow will have disconnected cells that you will have to reconnect.
To reconnect those cells, you will have to link them. To see if the link is possible, click on one of the magnets that appear. Possible links will appear as green magnets. In this case, just click on the two magnets to connect two cells, or select the third cell to go in the middle. Impossible links will appear as red magnets. In this case, you will have inserted a cell between them to reconnect the flow.
To reconnect cells, you should:
1) Click on the “add cell” button (plus icon) of the first cell.
2) After that, you can create a cell or select one from the repository.
3) If there is an available endpoint, the link will happen automatically.
4) If there is any branch that is not connected, you can link it to an available endpoint or remove it.
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