Make it possible to jump between conversation steps

[johkin]

In the current solution it's not possible to skip a step in a conversation.

Maybe there could be a new method nextConversation(event, "confirmBooking"), which could create a conversationQueue "on-the-fly". This would make it possible to change the flow of a conversation depending on the input from the user.

That could perhaps remove the need for startConversation(event) and stopConversation(event) and also the next-attribute in the annotation?

[rampatra]

Hi,

Can you give a particular use case where you need to skip conversation to get the work done easily which would be instead cumbersome with the existing framework?

[johkin]

If you have a story with two or more branches, it would be nice if you could jump to the branch depending on the input. I've been tinkering with jbot to create a time reporting bot, and when handling illness my story has at least two branches. The branches can't be handled by the backing queue, it would then require a graph for the conversation steps.

[rampatra]

@johkin You may be right about jumping between conversation steps but I think your problem will be solvable with the existing queue as well. You can mention your conversation steps here and I can try to help.

For example, let's say you have a food ordering bot and the 2 branches according to you can be:

1. User ordered pizza -> pizza size -> flavour -> quantity
2. User ordered burger -> chicken/beef/pork burger -> quantity

Or you can have 1 branch as (with the existing conversation queue structure):

1. Take order (pizza or burger) -> If pizza ask size & flavour and if burger ask type -> quantity

[johkin]

In my current example I'm trying to build a time-reporting bot, and the first case I've looked into is handling sickness.

Client: I'm feeling ill. Bot: Are you ill? Client: Yes/No if (no) { Bot: Oh, I misunderstood! [End conversation] } else { Bot: Have you been ill all day? Client: Yes/No if (yes) { Bot: Noted! [End conversation] } else { Bot: How long have you been ill? Client: Half day Bot: Ok, noted. Get well! [End conversation] } }

This conversation can probably be refactored to something using the queue, but after looking at "wit.ai" which now supports branching it seems like a natural thing to support a graph instead of a queue.