Triggers

A flow can be triggered by one of the following events:

• Main: when the conversation is started

• Unknown: unrecognized user input

• Intent: recognized user input

• DTMF when receiving keypad input (phone channels)

• Closed: when the conversation is closed (including at hangup)

• Timeout: when there is no user interaction for some time (for chat-based channels)

Common

All triggers share the same common settings to determine whether the trigger applies or not.

It can be configured for one or more specific channels in which case the trigger will only apply to the selected channel and ignored otherwise.

It can also be configured with a condition to limit the trigger to certain situations. See the Conditions page to learn more about using conditions.

Main

In case of the Playbook flow, the Main trigger starts the conversation. Therefore, any node that is linked to this trigger will be processed first.

For sub flows, the Main trigger is the entry point of the flow when it is triggered by the Playbook or another flow. Flows trigger other flows using the Go to node.

Unknown

When user input is received that cannot be matched by the current node or any of the defined Intent triggers, the system will resolve an Unknown trigger. This enables you to arrange for fallback behaviour, like escalating to a human or trying to elicit the user intent using questioning by the Bot.

An unknown trigger can also be handled within the context of an Ask node by adding a trigger link, see Trigger links in Ask choice for example.

Intent

Intent triggers are used to trigger on user input that is not caught by the current node using trained (local) user intents. By defining an intent trigger in the Playbook flow it will be available everywhere in your conversation. By defining it in a sub flow it will only apply to the scope of that flow.

The intent to trigger on can be picked from a list, created instantly, or imported from the intent library.

Create an Intent

Press the little plus button next to the search bar to add an intent.

Creating an intent requires a label and example sentences. The system will use the example sentences to teach the AI to recognize similar sentences. It uses a pre-trained language model to understand context of words within a sentence. Therefore, the best results are achieved when using full sentences rather than standalone words.

In a Bot that supports multiple languages, the little exclamation mark icon indicates that translations are missing. Click on the icon to cycle through all languages and add translations when needed.

Import an Intent

Intents can be imported by clicking on the little book icon next to the search bar in the intent picker. When configured by your administrator with an intent library Bot this importer will allow you to pick an intent and import its training phrases.

DTMF

The system can receive DTMF (keypad input, like pressing 1, 2, or #) when on a phone channel. A example use case for this is being able to press 0 to reset the conversation at any point during the call.

Closed

To be able to execute a final piece of logic right before a conversation is really closed, the closed entry node can be used as a trigger. This will even trigger at a user hang-up. This node is particularly useful when the bot needs to create a Note or send an email with data the bot has captured from the user, even when the user didn't finish the conversation.

Timeout

Timeout triggers are best used in conjunction with the Chat skill. That skill allows you to set timeout values depending on whether or not a conversation has been escalated.

You could use this trigger to leave a final message indicating you didn't receive any message for some time and the conversation will be closed.

The phone channel does not make use of this trigger. This is because for phone conversations the turn taking in the conversation is managed more strictly by the platform to prevent opening the microphone of the caller for too long.