google assistant default fallbacks exit code

Question

We are having a problem where saying things like "what is the weather" (something Google Assistant recognizes and is not in our intents) exits our action. We solved this with a fallback on the server/fulfillment side when we used Dialogflow, but now we switched over to Actions Builder and the problem is back.

How can we prevent it from closing our action?

Answer 1

This sounds like it may be related to recent announcements that, in some cases, phrases that don't match a specific Intent may cause your Action to close so the Assistant can handle the phrase instead. This will probably happen when the System NO_MATCH Intent gets matched, although Google has been vague on this point.

The workaround that they appear to have suggested is to create an Intent that can handle "free form text" or "any" input and route that input to your handler using this method. This means that one of your Intents will handle it, rather than falling back to NO_MATCH.

This involves:

1. Creating a new Type (I usually call it "Any") that accepts Free Form Text

2. Creating an Intent (which I have named "matchAny") that accepts values of this type through its training phrases (or even just one phrase that accepts a value of this type)

3. In your Scene, add this as an Intent that can be matched, and then set the handler for your webhook when it does.