I have two conversation nodes defined. The first is triggered on conversation_start and asks the users's name. The second stores the user name from input.text in a context variable and asks if the user wants to take a brief survey or do something else. The second one never executes. What should the trigger be on the second one in order to advance the conversation? There is no intent or condition set yet. Basically, I just want to follow a string-of-pearls pattern where every question gets asked and let the user opt out of some of the questions.
Bluemix Conversation can be thought of as a state machine. Each transition is diagrammed in the tooling, but each node can only be triggered by a condition. So that if you're on a node asking a question, and the answer that comes back does not trigger one of the child nodes, the state will not transition to a child. Answers entered into a node are processed by Watson, who provides "intents", which are essentially keywords found in the sentence he just analyzed. So one way to advance the conversation is to match named "intents" using the # prefix to the trigger of in a child node. Another way it to match named "entities" using the @ prefex, although it is less clear how Watson builds entities. The third way is to match context variables using the $ prefix and simple conditional operators such as ==. Context variables are entirely managed by you, the developer. You are allowed to set one context variable at each node. And then you can use it to trigger a child node. This appears to be a good approach to managing the type of conversation I want to implement. The fourth way is to use the previous parent node's input value using along with simple conditional operators.