Conversation always restarts in Directline BOT channel websocket, how to keep it flowing?

Question

I have built an app that needs to connect to a Bot DirectLine - websockets channel to interact in conversations via LUIS and sms with Twilio. To make the bot talk to the app I wrote a mvc controller that relays messages. I am not sure this approach is correct, I made it up from some samples. It works, but the main problem is that my code seems to always start a new conversation when a message is received from the client, so the context is not maintained. How can I keep the conversation flowing and not restarting at every message? I mean, the steps should be, for example:

Bot: Hello, what's your name?
User: Carl
Bot: Pleased to meet you Carl!


instead I get:
Bot: Hello, what's your name?
User: Carl
Bot: Sorry, I can't help you with that.

like the conversation is restarted from scratch.

Here is my controller code (the Twilio webhook is set to https://mySmsMVCapp.azurewebsites.net/smsapp/):

public class smsappController : TwilioController
{

    private static string directLineSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["DirectLineSecret"];
    private static string botId = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["BotId"];


    const string accountSid = "obfuscated";
    const string authToken = "obfuscated";

    private static string fromUser = "DirectLineSampleClientUser";
    private string SMSreply = "";


    public async Task<TwiMLResult> Index(SmsRequest incomingMessage)
    {

            // Obtain a token using the Direct Line secret
            var tokenResponse = await new DirectLineClient(directLineSecret).Tokens.GenerateTokenForNewConversationAsync();

            // Use token to create conversation
            var directLineClient = new DirectLineClient(tokenResponse.Token);
            var conversation = await directLineClient.Conversations.StartConversationAsync();


        using (var webSocketClient = new WebSocket(conversation.StreamUrl))
        {
            webSocketClient.OnMessage += WebSocketClient_OnMessage;
            // You have to specify TLS version to 1.2 or connection will be failed in handshake.
            webSocketClient.SslConfiguration.EnabledSslProtocols = System.Security.Authentication.SslProtocols.Tls12;
            webSocketClient.Connect();

            while (true)
            {
                string input = incomingMessage.Body;
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(input))
                {
                    if (input.ToLower() == "exit")
                    {
                        break;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        if (input.Length > 0)
                        {
                            Activity userMessage = new Activity
                            {
                                From = new ChannelAccount(fromUser),
                                Text = input,
                                Type = ActivityTypes.Message
                            };

                            await directLineClient.Conversations.PostActivityAsync(conversation.ConversationId, userMessage);
                            //break;

                            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(SMSreply))
                            {
                                var messagingResponse = new MessagingResponse();
                                var message = messagingResponse.AddChild("Message");

                                message.AddText(SMSreply); //send text


                                SMSreply = string.Empty;
                                return TwiML(messagingResponse);
                            }

                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        return null;

    }


    private void WebSocketClient_OnMessage(object sender, MessageEventArgs e)
    {
        // Occasionally, the Direct Line service sends an empty message as a liveness ping. Ignore these messages.
        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(e.Data))
        {

            var activitySet = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ActivitySet>(e.Data);
            var activities = from x in activitySet.Activities
                             where x.From.Id == botId
                             select x;

            foreach (Activity activity in activities)
            {
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(activity.Text))
                {

                    SMSreply = activity.Text;

                }

            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

The issue was actually I wasn't saving and retrieving conversationID. For the moment I am testing using a static variable to store the value. Then I reconnect to the conversation with it and the conversation with the bot keeps in context.