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dialogflow-es

Dialogflow parameter and entities

I wanted to know if it possible for dialog flow to store value of parameter without set the entities for it. For example The bot ask the user What is your name? and the user respond with Jack. So dialogflow will store value “John” in the parameter. Thank you.

Solution

  • Dialogflow Web UI

    So when working with the Dialogflow Web UI your options are a bit more limited compared to fulfillment and you won't really get around using entities. In the Web UI the best way to extract values from the user input is by using entities and parameters. The only way of using "raw" input via the Web UI is by using the @sys.any entity, but you should be careful with this.

    The @sys.any entity takes the complete input from the user and gives it to you, but it doesn't provide any information on what entity the input might be off. For instance, if you ask the user "What is you name?" the user might respond with "John", but they also could respond by saying "Oh.. uhh. My name is John" and if you use @sys.any you get the whole string and you have to detect what is a name and extract it from the input yourself. Entities and parameters do this for you.

    You can use the input from the user in your response by using $parameterName in your response

    Dialogflow Fulfillment

    When working with code the issues with raw input remain the same, you will get the whole user input, but have to do recognition or regexing to retrieve the values yourself.

    One benefit of working with fulfillment is that you always have access to the raw input, you can call agent.query to retrieve the raw input, so you are not required to use a @sys.any entity in your parameter setup.

    Conclusion

    So as I mentioned in the above, there are a couple ways of retrieving the raw input of the user, but in both cases you lose the automatic detection provided by entities and parameters when you do so. While at first it might seem a hassle to work with entities and parameters, if you are going to use the user input for anything, like saving the name or making a decision, I really recommend sticking to the entity approach because it automatically detect the input from the string, you don't have to worry about how the user answers your question, which is a big part of developing a bot.

    There are very few cases where using raw input has made developing easier for me in the long run.