Is there a way to clear/close a session in AWS Lex through the API call (boto3).
Say, the user is conversing with Lex bot which serves multiple intents. At some point, the user gives a negative answer to a prompt from the bot to abort the current intent. I am able to recognize that the user wants to talk about some other intent of the bot. I want a way to clear the current session through API call (Boto3) so that the bot is not expecting input for the closed intent.
Thanks.
There is no published API call for resetting the slot data and attributes of a Lex session, but you can always switch to a brand-new session. This is what the Console does when you click on "Clear chat history" in the "Test bot" interface. The abandoned session will time out in 5 min by default.
You can open a new session by submitting a new userId in the next call to PostText. This is one way to do it – every call will start a new session:
import uuid
boto3.client('lex-runtime').post_text(
botName='mybot',
botAlias = 'alphathree',
userId=uuid.uuid4().hex,
inputText="I want to order 5 gallons of ice cream")
Related
I was wondering if anybody has ever experimented with this issue I'm having and could give me any input on the subject.
As it stands right now I'm trying to see if there is a way to grab a users input through the AWS Connect. I understand that there is already a "Get User Input" block in the GUI that is available for me to use, unfortunately it does not offer the fine grain control I am looking for with requests and responses from Lex.
Right now I am able to Post Content to Lex and get responses just fine, as well as output speech using Amazon Polly via my Lambda. This works great for things that do not require a user to have to give feedback for a question.
For example if a client asks
"What time is my appointment?"
and we give back
"Your appointment is for X at X time, would you like an email with
this confirmation?"
I want to be able to capture what the user says back within that same lambda.
So the interaction would go like so:
User asks a question.
Lambda POST's it to Lex and gets a response
Amazon Polly says the response - i.e: 'Would you like an email to confirm?'
Lambda then picks up if the user says yes or no - POST's info to Lex
Gets response and outputs voice through Polly.
If anybody has any information on this please let me know, thank you!
Why do you make so much complications to implement IVR system using Amazon Connect. I have done the complete IVR automated system to one of my biggest US banking client. Use the below procedure to achieve what you desire.
Build a complete interactive lex bot(So that you can avoid amazon poly & using lex post content api). It is advised to build each bot has only one intent in it.
In connect using "Get User Input" node map the lex bot which you have created earlier with the question to be asked "What time is my appointment?". Once this question has been played the complete control goes to lex and then you fulfilled your intent from lex side, you can come back to connect as like that.
Refer AWS contact center for the clear idea.
Just wanted to know from a high level how I would accomplish this.
I thought that when a user opens the application, I will keep track of the last opened time in a Dynamo DB table.
Then I could have a background worker constantly check and see if anybody hasn't used their app in 3 or 4 days and then send a push notification, ie, "you haven't used your app in a while, why don't you open it up and do XYZ."
From a very high level, there are two possible ways:
1.) Local notifications (you don't need AWS for this):
You can schedule a local notification, every time the user opens up the app (or better - every time the user brings the app to foreground). It works like: User opens app -> cancel old scheduled notification if existing -> schedule new notification for "in 3 or 4 days" -> ready :-)
You can use something like this: https://github.com/zo0r/react-native-push-notification (see section Sheduled Notifications).
2.) You could do it with remote notifications (https://aws.amazon.com/sns/):
You can go the way you proposed. Then you have to store an entry in your db with the push notification token of the device and the last time the app was opened. Your worker then has to check and send the push message to the device using a service like SNS.
I would recommend 1.) over 2.) because you are independent from the users internet connection when getting the app opening info. In 2.) you can miss the opening info, when the user opens the app without internet connection. Also 2.) is more expensive then 1.) when you scale your app.
An advantage of 2.) would be, that you are more flexible when and what you send in your notification, since you can edit it on server side. 1.) would mean that it is coded in your app (at least until you build a synchronization mechanism for the variables) :-)
I'm trying to build an alexa skill that fires a custom alarm every set number of times per day (30 min intervals for example). I'm reading through their docs and not fulling understanding where to go to next.
Does anyone have some good Alexa skill apps that I can reference or an article? I couldn't find much online and it looks like it hasn't been an accessible feature for too long.
You cannot trigger Alexa to speak without user interaction. That means, the user has to say something to trigger your skill, which will in turn create a request to you skill's backend, and you can only respond (be it audio or speech) back to that request.
However, you can send Push Notifications.
Notification indicators inform end users that new content is available
from Alexa skills and domains. When a notification is delivered,
depending on what the product is capable of, the user is notified by
visual and audio indicators.
More on Push Notification here
I built the BookTrip bot from Amazon Lex detailed here.
When chatting with the bot the user can continue to book hotel rooms or rent cars until they end the conversation. Here is an example of a successful reservation followed by another reservation attempt through the chatbot interface:
When I use this chatbot in an Amazon Connect contact flow the user is not able to continue booking anything past the first reservation. Logically, the contact flow would keep executing the BookHotel or BookCar intents until the ConnectToAgent or EndConversation intents are executed.
I have tried looping BookHotel and BookCar back to the beginning of the "Get customer" input block but that errors out.
The best way to do this is keep the user in the bot until they have done all of their booking, and then exit back to Amazon Connect. You would do this in the following way:
Get slot values for initial booking
Use lambda to fullfil the intent (write to database, etc.) and clear the slot values
Use ConfrimIntent to as ask “would you like to add another booking”
If the user responds “yes”, confirming the intent then you would elicit the slot values (starting over at step 1)
If the user responds “no”, you would exit back to Amazon Connect
You can check out the lambda request and response details here
There is also a good discussion about this pattern on the AWS developer forum here.
I found one way around this that works for when you have multiple intents, though there are a couple drawbacks.
Basically, create a dummy block in Amazon Connect. I use Set Contact Attributes with a dummy attribute I named 'continue' with the value of 'continuing'. It is never used. Then on Success, loop it back to restart the Lex block!
No error when saving and publishing and works well for my use case.
Here's how the image above's set up works:
A. Play welcome prompt (this used to be the prompt when the Lex block initiated)
B. "Get customer input" is the Lex block.
C. Lex ends any intent and moves to dummy block (Set contact attributes)
D. On Success of setting dummy attribute, move back to restart B. Lex block.
Here are the drawbacks:
1. The Lex block requires some prompt when it initiates so you will have to design that into your bot, since it will deliver a prompt at the close of your intent, then another prompt at the restart of the Lex block.
2. This creates an infinite loop, at least until the user ends the call, or the session times out. One way around this though is to create an intent specifically for saying goodbye and don't point that intent fulfillment to the dummy block.
What I have implemented and successfully tested is adding "Greeting", "Yes" and "No" intents. When a real intent is fulfilled, I transfer the contact to the next Get customer input block that ask if the bot can help with anything else and checks for "Yes" and "No" intents. "Yes" transfers to the main Lex block. "No" obviously exits.
The key thing to me here is how do you set your text greetings so it doesn't seem confusing. Please see what I came up with on the flow diagram. Seems to be working to me.
P.S. Didn't test it in production.
I made a quiz skill where a user is first prompted with a response from Alexa asking if they are ready to proceed. From there, the user must either say yes or no to activate a corresponding AMAZON.YesIntent or AMAZON.NoIntent respectively. The quiz then begins, and a user says an answer letter followed by the answer for each question. I use a server to simulate state within my skill.
Normally I start my skill by saying:
"Alexa, start Quiz Skill"
But, I am finding that simulating state using a server does not make a very robust voice interface for the Echo. If a user says:
"Alexa, ask Quiz Skill yes"
The skill will jump to whatever I have setup to trigger when Amazon detects an AMAZON.YesIntent. This is not what I want! I want the user to follow the flow of the skill I have set out.
Is there a way to govern what intents can be activated at what time? A thought I had was to use attributes to basically set what intents are allowed to be invoked next.
There is a session object on each Alexa request. That session object has a new property that is either true or false depending on whether it's a brand new session for your Skill.
If you happen to be using the alexa-sdk node module to build your skill you can also use a NewSession handler to catch the new session and divert flow to what ever event/intent you want interaction to begin at. More on the state handlers can be found on the github page here
While I don't think it is possible to enable/disable intents, you can certain change how they respond. It's easy to use the session object to keep track of what the last intent spoken was. Then your intent handler(s) can read the session object to see what the previous response was in order to choose how to respond.
In your example above, you might save the last question number to the session object. If 'yes' doesn't make sense based on the previous (or lack of) question, then your YesIntent handler could respond with "I'm sorry, I don't know what to do with that", or even maybe just ignore it and start the dialog from the beginning.