Known DialogFlow Bugs & Interesting Workarounds

DialogFlow is not always able to parse user input correctly. The most common problem I’ve seen is that it sometimes fails to recognize the word “open,” so you need to make sure that the intent name includes a synonym for open. For example, you might use “Read a book” instead of “Open a book.” Another commonly-encountered problem is that it can fail to recognize complete sentences or phrases. For example, it might think something like “I don’t want that anymore” means “What do you want?” That makes sense in English—but not in this case! If you encounter issues like this, try breaking up your words into separate entities, such as by using double-quotes for each word: “I don’t want that anymore.” Finally, be careful with punctuation and special characters when using the API directly via HTTP requests. DialogFlow sometimes gets confused if you include them in your text (e.g., spaces within sentences). Avoid these characters if at all possible!

Testing and Monitoring Your Interactions

If you just want to get your feet wet with DialogFlow, it’s simple enough to test the API by simply using a browser interface. You can also use Google’s testing console to run a few tests—just be sure to switch the “Project” dropdown menu at the top of the page from “Default Project” to “My First Project.” It will take a couple minutes for the project to show up in this list, so don’t worry if you don’t see it right away. The text box on the left side of that page is where you can enter your utterances and sample inputs (for example: “What time is my meeting?”). The audio output on the right shows what your agent says in response to each input. You can adjust some settings on this page as well, such as adjusting its language settings and choosing which intents are allowed for each utterance type. This allows you to limit it only to certain things like date/time values or phone numbers, or even disable specific intents entirely. For example, if you don’t want users saying out loud that they love or hate something (which might not be appropriate in every context), you could disable those intents by unchecking them here (though I personally recommend being more proactive than just disabling these types of things!). This page also allows you to publish your agent so that others can try it out; however, this doesn’t use live data so users will always get back pre-recorded responses when interacting with your agent through this interface.

After testing via any of these methods, there are two more ways you should verify that everything works correctly: 1) testing via Postman; 2) checking Google Cloud Console logs. Both take about 30 seconds apiece and will allow you verify that everything is working as expected before deploying anything publicly! To learn how those work, check out our previous tutorial Getting Started With Google Assistant — Part 4: Testing & Monitoring Your Actions & Reactions!

Try Flourishing Your Agent With These Resources!

DialogFlow agents are pretty powerful, but they can get even more so by adding some flourish to your agent! These might take a little longer to set up, but they’re worth it if you want users to have an overall better experience. The resources I recommend using are: Full-Featured Emojis : Instead of just using text strings for your agent’s responses, use full-featured emoji icons. This makes the agent seem friendlier and more human-like. You can download the full set from Google. If you want to be able to change the color/style of these emojis with each response, check out this Github repo that adds some customization options! : Instead of just using text strings for your agent’s responses, use full-featured emoji icons. This makes the agent seem friendlier and more human-like. You can download the full set from Google. If you want to be able to change the color/style of these emojis with each response, check out this Github repo that adds some customization options! Custom Buttons : The DialogFlow website allows you change the buttons that appear on your agent’s user interface (upwards arrow button -> “OK Google” or downwards arrow button -> “Cancel”). For example, I created a custom downward arrow icon in Adobe Illustrator and then uploaded it via my DialogFlow account settings page under “Customize Button Icons” (you can also find this option under “Assets & Tags > Assets > Customize Button Icons”). This allows me to add a bit more polish and flair to my agents! There are other ways too—just look around on Google Images for inspiration on how other people have done it (for example, here is one awesome example!). : The DialogFlow website allows you change the buttons that appear on your agent’s user interface (upwards arrow button -> “OK Google” or downwards arrow button -> “Cancel”). For example, I created a custom downward arrow icon in Adobe Illustrator and then uploaded it via my DialogFlow account settings page under “Customize Button Icons” (you can also find this option under “Assets & Tags > Assets > Customize Button Icons”). This allows me to add a bit more polish and flair to my agents! There are other ways too—just look around on Google Images for inspiration on how other people have done it (for example, here is one awesome example!). Face Emoji Cards : Many users prefer interacting with bots over phone calls because it feels less personal than talking directly with someone else; however, sometimes users do like having at least some sense of physical presence when talking with their chatbot—especially if they feel like they are talking with an actual person rather than an automated system. That sense of physical presence doesn’t need to be anything fancy; as long as there is something there that gives an indication that someone is listening/responding back when interacting with your bot, customers will feel much more comfortable interacting with it over their phones! To do this easily within Dialogflow’s design studio while designing your bot’s user interface pages—just upload images representing different emotions or facial expressions as card background cards within each page’s element area.

If you’d like to learn more about Dialogflow please leave a comment below and one of our team members will reach out to you.