Getting LUIS entities inside a child dialog

Question

I'm developing a bot using Bot Framework, LUIS and ActionBinding.

In one of my intent handlers I call a new Dialog which has the methods StartAsync(IDialogContext context) and ReceiveMessageAsync(IDialogContext context, IAwaitable<IMessageActivity> result)

As I understand it, the messages typed by the user while waiting (with context.Wait(ReceiveMessageAsync)) won't be sent to LUIS, right?

So if I need to understand what the user is saying without having to parse the string, which are my options? Could call the ILuisService.QueryAsync with the message.Text for each message be an option?

I want to be able to detect entities typed by the user so I can map them to missing fields. For example in this conversation:

User: I want to book a flight.                   // LUIS detects intent
Bot: Ok. Can you tell me more about your flight? // child dialog is called to handle the rest of the conversation
User: I want to go to Madrid.
Bot: To fly to Madrid you can choose between company A, B or C.
User: I want to go with A tomorrow night
Bot: Ok, searching for available tickets for tomorrow night in A...

In this case there are no initial entities when the intent is detected, but there could be, and in that case the bot would not ask for the already given information.

For my project, a simple Form with one to one question-answer is not enough. I also need to make more validations and confirmations on previously set parameters if the user wants to change one or more parameters (i.e., I need to go back to all parameters and check if the changed parameter affects them). For example:

User: Wait, I want to fly to Barcelona instead.
Bot: Company A does not fly to Barcelona. You can choose between C and D.
User: Ok I want to fly with C.
Bot: There are tickets available for tomorrow night in company C. Keep the flight for tomorrow night?
User: yes.

Any tips or guidance for best practices would help a lot.

Thanks in advance.

Edit:

With the Sub Action solution, where would my validators operate? On the FulfillAsync method? I'd need to validate and then send a question to the user and understand the reply he sent (parsing entities). Would that be possible inside a LuisAction?

I'd like to use the QueryValueFromLuisAsync but after looking at it, I'd need to pass the paramName, which is one of the action properties (if i'm not mistaken) and that is what I'm trying to avoid. I don't want to map one answer (i.e., message.Text) to one field, i want to map one answer to multiple fields.

Let's say i need to fill a model that has 6 properties. If the bot asks one question to the user and in his reply there are 3 entities I want to map those entities to 3 fields and only make questions about the remaining non mapped fields afterwards.

Are u doing action binding with github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder-Samples/tree/master/CSharp/…? — Ezequiel Jadib
Yes. I have the project in my VS solution, which i copied after cloning the BotBuilder-Samples repo. — André Mantas
@EzequielJadib Also, is it possible to get the LuisResult object while using ActionBinding intent handlers? — André Mantas

Ezequiel Jadib Ezequiel Jadib · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-07T13:49:46

My first reaction to this is to avoid using a custom child dialog and go with SubActions and create your own validators if you want to have complex logic there or even override the IsValid method from the sub action.

However, if that's not a possibility, then I would consider reusing the QueryValueFromLuisAsync method, where the action should be the model you want to interact with. That function will end up calling LUIS and will try to assign the result or return another intent/action depending on the scenario. I would give this a try.

Getting LUIS entities inside a child dialog

1 Answers