How can I Integrate QnA maker to gather user info?

Question

I have currently integrated LUIS with my chatbot. The scenario is:-

User types in something in bot.
The bot logic calls LUIS to determine the Intent and based on INTENT respective dialog is called.
In the dialog, I am gathering user information using waterfall dialog through prompts.

What i want now is, After step 2 in above scenario, depending on INTENT returned from LUIS, I want the follow-up questions to be presented from QnA rather than the BOT. Basically, I want to replace waterfall steps with QnA maker. Is it okay to do so or is it feasible?

The flow is something like described below:- USER:-Create task

-->>>>Intent returned from LUIS

-->>>>Call QnA based on INTENT returned

QnA:-In which project would you like to create task?

USER:- (provides project name)

QnA:- What is the description of the task?

USER:- (provides description)

This is probably feasible using prompts, but in my opinion that is not a good use of QnA Maker. Can you help me understand why you do not want to do this as waterfall dialogs? — billoverton
What i wanted was instead of hard-coding questions in the code it should be asked from QnA maker so that in future if i need to make any changes to question i need not go back to my code to change it.- @billoverton — Abhijeet

Jay Jay · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-29T09:20:36

addressing this part - I want to replace waterfall steps with QnA maker. Is it okay to do so or is it feasible?

The answer is no. QnA is a combination of your knowledge base with a search engine service. it dynamically picks up answers base don questions asked by you.

Now, moving on to a suggestion of a solution for your main question. (this is something I am doing already in my code)

You could catch user info collection before it even goes to the qna maker in your code. You could create prompts specifically for user info, and if your flow determines that it is user info, you branch out into your now user info gathering system (and thereby preventing qna from being triggered).

When it is not user info (or something you dont want to capture) you let the default flow of qna maker to take over.

        var tempInputText = activity.Text;
        if(tempInputText.Contains("batman") == true)
        {
            var tempActivityBatman = new Activity();
            tempActivityBatman.Text = "did you just ask about batman, " + userProfile.Name + "?";
            tempActivityBatman.Type = "message";
            //await stepContext.Context.SendActivityAsync(_templateEngine.GenerateActivityForLocale("UnsupportedMessage", userProfile));
            await stepContext.Context.SendActivityAsync(tempActivityBatman,cancellationToken);
            return await stepContext.NextAsync();
        }

The above code sample is a quick dirty code that I used to navigate around for specific words I wanted the chat to divert from the regular code.

How can I Integrate QnA maker to gather user info?

2 Answers