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Naming conventions for intents, events and contexts

I am wondering if there are any agreed upon naming conventions for intents, events and contexts in Dialogflow.

If there are none, then I would appreciate if you shared your own naming conventions!

Solution

  • I find that it's a bit of a contradiction to say 'it doesn’t really matter as long as it‘s easy to understand for others'. If there were naming conventions, it would be much easier for someone to understand a new Dialogflow bot.

    Here's my take:

    Intents

    I use dots to group intents and imply a hierarchy. The first part of the intent name is ideally just one word that clearly indicates the main subject of the intent. For example name would be an intent that receives a user's name as an input. name.confirm would be the follow-up intent that receives confirmation of the name. name.confirm.yes would be the intent where the user has given confirmation.

    This is in the context of a bot which is gathering contact data so the input function is implied. In a more mixed-type chatbot, you could add the type of intent as a first word to categorize your intents better. E.g. input.name.confirm.yes or FAQ.shipping.overseas or smalltalk.agent.location ('Where are you?').

    I use the same approach for fallback intents: fallback.name would be the fallback intent that is triggered when the bot is waiting for the user to input their name but doesn't understand the answer.

    Contexts

    For contexts I use snake case. For example awaiting_email would be the context that is set when the bot is waiting for the user to input their email address. After I have the email address I would set a context email to carry forward the information so that other intents can use it as a context. Or if I'm collecting several pieces of data about the user, I will set the context user and other intents can access certain parameters e.g. via user.email.

    I made a video about the topic as well: https://youtu.be/kgKuS2RJcy4

    It's obvious that everyone is coming from a slightly different angle because their area of application is different. I'm sure we'll get to a common standard eventually!