Completing a conversation

In order to complete a conversation it is usually best to ask the user to confirm their input, and once they are happy with the result, push the data to your backend or trigger some other process outside of the chatbot domain.

Entities Confirmation

Entities confirmation is a crucial step that brings in a lot of value to the conversation:

• it shows the user all the values that they provided
• it allows the user to change any of the values - that is without the need to redo the whole conversation
• it provides a mechanism to confirm the conversation, which allows the chatbot to complete the transaction

There is a special type of a step, entities-confirmation, which handles all of the above functionality in a simple, but elegant fashion.

Add confirmation step

Add a confirmation step to the rent-car conversation, which should ask the user to confirm the startDate, endDate, city, car and email entities. Like this:

1. Go to the end of the rent-car conversation
2. Add entities-confirmation step => start typing sten and select step-entities-confirmation. You should get the following code

   {
     "type": "entities-confirmation",
     "entity": "result-entity-name",
     "entities": [
       "entity-name"
     ],
     "messages": [
       "Confirm entities?"
     ]
   }

3. Add the startDate, endDate, city, car and email entities to the entities array
4. Update the messages to display a message in the following three lines:
   • Are these the correct details?
   • Press on any of the items you wish to update.
   • Press “Confirm” to complete the transaction.
5. Save

Solution

The whole step should look like this:

{
  "type": "entities-confirmation",
  "entity": "result-entity-name",
  "entities": [
    "startDate",
    "endDate",
    "city",
    "car",
    "email"
  ],
  "messages": [
    [
      "Are these the correct details?",
      "Press on any of the items you wish to update.",
      "Press \"Confirm\" to complete the transaction."
    ]
  ]
}

Test

Now you should be able to test the confirmation step in the rent-car conversation.

Try the following steps:

1. Send: I want to rent a car
2. Select: StartDate, EndDate, Country, City, Car, Email
3. You should be presented with the confirmation step and the provided entity values
4. Click on the email, and change it
5. You should be presented with the confirmation step again, but the email should be changed
6. Press: Confirm

Complete the conversation with a Webhook

Once the user completes the conversation and confirms their choice, all you are left with is to take the data collected in the conversation and send it to your backend.
This would usually mean triggering a process to execute on the agreed transaction. For example:

1. user: orders a pizza via your chatbot
2. chatbot: sends the order to your backend
3. payment system: charge the provided payment card
4. kitchen: cooks a pizza
5. delivery: delivers the pizza

In order to send the data to your backend, you can use a webhook step. Its purpose is simple, execute an HTTP command described in the data-source property and display the provided message once that is complete.

Here is what the step-webhook code snippet generates:

{
  "type": "webhook",
  "data-source": {
    "endpoint": "https://",
    "method": "POST",
    "headers": {
      "header name": "header value"
    },
    "payload": {
      "key": "value"
    }
  }
}

Conversation Flow for Webhook Steps

A Webhook Step behaves just like a Message Step in the sense that the Conversation Flow Algorithm will execute it every time it steps over it. So, if you follow the pizza order webhook step with a satisfaction question, your customer might get charged twice and will receive two pizza orders.

This can be easily avoided. You can add an entity property, which is used to store the result returned from executing the webhook. You can use the entity content to display it to the user (more on that in the bonus section below). But in this case, the Conversation Flow Algorithm will see that the webhook already contains a result, and therefore it will not execute it again.

Send the Order to the backend

To finalize the car renting conversation, you need to send the Order to the backend, and then provide the user with a confirmation message.

Backend

For the purposes of the Car Rental service, there is a Cloud Function called book-car, that allows you to complete the booking process.

book-car can be reached with the following parameters:

"endpoint": "https://api.demo.nativechat.com/v1/car-rental/book-car",
"method": "POST",
"headers": {
  "Authorization": "Basic ZGVtby11c2VyOmRlbW8tcGFzc3dvcmQ="
},

The booking details should be provided as the request body (payload in the chatbot configuration). For example:

{
  "pickUpDate": "24 Mar 2019",
  "dropOffDate": "30 Mar 2019",
  "car": "Smart",
  "price": "200",
  "city": "Berlin",
  "email": "me@email.com"
}

In the real-world application, the book-car function should perform some extra validations, save the new order and trigger additional processes (like an email confirmation, etc.).

In the context of this tutorial, book-car only returns a unique booking reference, i.e. { bookingRef: BER01234 }

Add a Webhook step to call book-car

In order to complete the transaction with a call to the book-car cloud function, follow these steps:

1. Got to the end of the rent-car conversation
2. Add a webhook step => start typing stw
3. Configure the data-source to call book-car (see the configuration above),
4. Configure the payload, use the following fields

   • pickUpDate -> startDate

   • dropOffDate -> endDate

   • car -> car

   • price -> car.price

   • city -> city

   • email -> email (although you can ignore this field, as it is not used)

     Additionally, you should format the dates, so that they are passed to the backend in a specific format. This can be done with the $date formatter, like this: {{$date startDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}.

5. Your data-source should look like this:

   "data-source": {
     "endpoint": "https://api.demo.nativechat.com/v1/car-rental/book-car",
     "method": "POST",
     "headers": {
       "Authorization": "Basic ZGVtby11c2VyOmRlbW8tcGFzc3dvcmQ="
     },
     "payload": {
       "pickUpDate": "{{$date startDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}",
       "dropOffDate": "{{$date endDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}",
       "car": "{{car}}",
       "price": "{{car.price}}",
       "city": "{{city}}",
       "email": "{{email}}"
     }
   },

6. Add an entity property (preferably, just before the data-source configuration) => start typing en and select entity and call it order-response. This will allow you to capture the response returned by book-car.
7. Add a messages array (preferably, at the end of the step configuration) => start typing me and select messages.
8. Then add this message: Your car is booked. Your booking reference is {{order-response.bookingRef}}.
9. Save

Solution

The whole step should look like this:

{
  "type": "webhook",
  "entity": "order-response",
  "data-source": {
    "endpoint": "https://api.demo.nativechat.com/v1/car-rental/book-car",
    "method": "POST",
    "headers": {
      "Authorization": "Basic ZGVtby11c2VyOmRlbW8tcGFzc3dvcmQ="
    },
    "payload": {
      "pickUpDate": "{{$date startDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}",
      "dropOffDate": "{{$date endDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}",
      "car": "{{car}}",
      "price": "{{car.price}}",
      "city": "{{city}}",
      "email": "{{email}}"
    }
  },
  "messages": [
    "Your car is booked. Your booking reference is {{order-response.bookingRef}}"
  ]
}

Test

Now you should be able to test the full conversation rent-car conversation.

Try the following steps:

1. Send: I want to rent a car
2. Select: StartDate, EndDate, Country, City, Car, Email
3. Press: Confirm
4. You should receive a message with a unique bookingRef

Congratulations

And just like that, you have created a fully functioning chatbot. It can communicate using Natural Language Processing, communicate with the backend to display data, validate user input and save the transaction to the backend.

There is still more to master. You can learn more from the NativeChat documentation.

Homework

As a bonus, here is the final homework for you, which should use a lot of the knowledge that you’ve learned in this tutorial.

Before booking the car, you should:

1. Provide the user with a quote and ask if they would like to go ahead with the booking.
2. If the user confirms, then execute the book-car webhook.
3. If not, then just print a message: I understand. I will cancel the quote now.

get-quote

To get a quote you should call the get-quote cloud function.

get-quote can be reached with the following parameters:

"endpoint": "https://api.demo.nativechat.com/v1/car-rental/get-quote",
"method": "POST",
"headers": {
  "Authorization": "Basic ZGVtby11c2VyOmRlbW8tcGFzc3dvcmQ="
},

It expects the body to be like:

{
  "car": "Smart"
  "pickUpDate": "2023-01-22T00:00:00Z",
  "dropOffDate": "2023-01-27T00:00:00Z"
}

As a result, it returns something like this:

{
  "days": 5
  "price": 200
}

High-level guide

Here is a high-level guide on how to complete this challenge.

Step 0

Before you display the quote. You need to add a webhook step, that we'll call get-quote.

Make sure to add the entity property (you can call it quote), which you will use to display the result later. Like: {{quote.days}}.

For a message, you could add something like: Preparing a quote, but that is not necessary.

Step 1

After that, add a confirmation type step.

Make sure to call the entity property something meaningful like wantsToBook.

It should display a message like:

Here is the summary of your order:
Car: Smart
Price per day: $50
5 day(s): from  10-Mar-2019 to 15-Mar-2019
Total price $250
Would you like to go ahead and book it?

The number of days you can get from quote.days (or whatever you called the webhook entity), and the total price from quote.price.

Also, note that you should use $currency and $date formatters to display the data in the desired format.

Step 2

Add a message step with a condition checking the entity form the confirmation step is false. (i.e. check if wantsToBook equals false or is not true).

If you don’t remember how, you can go back to the comparison chapter, or check the docs.

The message should be something like: I understand. I will cancel the quote now.

Step 3

Update the book-car Webhook step. Add a condition, so that it executes when the confirmation entity is true (i.e. check wantsToBook is true)

Step 4

Test it, you know the drill.

Solution

I hope that you completed the solution all by yourself, and you are here to just compare the results. Either way, here are the three new steps, and the updated book-car step.

GetQuote Step

{
  "type": "webhook",
  "entity": "quote",
  "data-source": {
    "endpoint": "https://api.demo.nativechat.com/v1/car-rental/get-quote",
    "method": "POST",
    "headers": {
      "Authorization": "Basic ZGVtby11c2VyOmRlbW8tcGFzc3dvcmQ="
    },
    "payload": {
      "car": "{{car}}",
      "pickUpDate": "{{$date startDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}",
      "dropOffDate": "{{$date endDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}"
    }
  }
},

Confirmation Step

{
  "type": "confirmation",
  "entity": "wantsToBook",
  "messages": [
    [
      "Here is the summary of your order:",
      "Car: {{car}}",
      "Price per day: {{$currency car.price 'USD'}}",
      "{{ quote.days }} day(s): from  {{$date startDate 'D MMM YYYY'}} to {{$date endDate 'D MMM YYYY'}}",
      "Total price {{$currency quote.price 'USD'}}.",
      "Would you like to go ahead and book it?"
    ]
  ]
},

Message Step

{
  "type": "message",
  "messages": [
    "I understand. I will cancel the quote now."
  ],
  "conditions": [
    "{{$not wantsToBook}}"
  ]
},

Webhook BookCar step

{
  "type": "webhook",
  "entity": "order-response",
  "data-source": {
    "endpoint": "https://api.demo.nativechat.com/v1/car-rental/book-car",
    "method": "POST",
    "headers": {
      "Authorization": "Basic ZGVtby11c2VyOmRlbW8tcGFzc3dvcmQ="
    },
    "payload": {
      "pickUpDate": "{{$date startDate 'YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ'}}",
      "dropOffDate": "{{$date endDate 'YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ'}}",
      "car": "{{car}}",
      "price": "{{car.price}}",
      "city": "{{city}}",
      "email": "{{email}}"
    }
  },
  "messages": [
    "Your car is booked. Your booking reference is {{order-response.bookingRef}}"
  ],
  "conditions": [
    "{{wantsToBook}}"
  ]
}

Outro

Congratulations on reaching the end of the tutorial and building your first chatbot with NativeChat! Even though this is just the beginning, the foundational knowledge you have gained will help you along your journey. You can further your knowledge by checking out the official NativeChat documentation. Moreover, you’re welcome to take a close look at the NativeChat Accelerators, which can help you get started even faster!