Conversational Agents - passing session parameters flow -> playbook stopped working?

[Joe_McFadden]

Hi,

I'd previously posted about this issue here.

I did a quick test of the provided solution from @dawnberdan 

That seemed to work, and since then I've been working on other non-playbook features in the same agent. I've now come back to finish setting up diverse examples for how the playbook should use session parameters from the flow that invokes it. 
However, when I test now the playbook no longer sees any context being passed. I've added several more examples but nothing works.

To try and reproduce the issue I've created a new agent, which starts with a simple one page flow. This page prompts for two parameters, name and coaching_goal (see screenshot) and transitions to a playbook when both parameters are provided (a condition route).

@coaching_goal is a custom entity with reference values of 'Find training', 'Find jobs' and 'Explore careers'.

In Coaching Playbook, I have created 4 examples using the parameters which are configured as input parameters for each example. e.g.

And then manually edited the example agent responses to use those same parameter values in the chat, e.g

Finally the playbook instructions are very simple and the first instruction is:

- Greet the user by name from parameter name and ask them to confirm their goal by repeating it from the input parameter goal. You must use the goal passed to you when invoked.

When I test in the console agent simulator, I get this in the debug trace:

Turn 3

Transitioned to playbook "Coaching Playbook" with context.

context: null

Relevant examples: [5f95a10d-5067-41df-822c-22f83450777e(find training carbon accountancy), 07158fcd-b307-4ed9-aa50-d1e9f8614a6c(find training agriculture success), 88b0bf1a-4136-451f-809a-a833afc908e5(Retrofit success example), 46f8f58d-6b12-4687-96c6-17f2cba49b96(Apprenticeship Success)].

action: fail
input: I am sorry, I do not have any information about the user's name or goal. I need this information to start a coaching session.

Got action "fail" from LLM, completing the session.

So the route transition works, it picks up relevant examples, but there is no context passed from the flow to the playbook. How do I troubleshoot this further? And has anyone got parameter passing working reliabily in the new preview Conversational Agents console?

I've also logged this as best efforts support case but thought it was worth posting here as well in case anyone can suggest next steps for debugging / troubleshooting.

[Joe_McFadden]

Okay so there is a note on the playbook parameters page which I tihnk is a new clarification that states:

Important: Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX) playbooks and passing parameters between Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX) flows and playbooks are documented here, but are currently restricted access. Passing parameters between Dialogflow agents is publicly available.

I assumed that as I had access to the preview console and could create working playbooks I would also have the reuqired access to pass parameters from a flow to a playbook - but it would seem this isn't the case. How do I request access? I've tried raising a support case but the suppor tteam don't seem to be able to help.

[MJane]

Hi @Joe_McFadden,

Welcome to Google Cloud Community!

The issue seems to be related to connecting with the playbook in Conversational Agents. This connection is important for the playbook to function correctly and access the necessary information. 

Here are possible workarounds you might consider to help you resolve the issue: 

• Check  Playbook Input Parameters - Make sure the playbook clearly includes name and coaching_goal as input parameters. This is important so the flow can pass these values to the playbook correctly. The documentation also notes that the default playbook does not accept input parameters and only serves as an entry point for user conversations. 
• Validate Flow Parameter Configuration - Check if the session parameters (name and coaching_goal) are correctly captured and saved in the flow.
• Verify Route Condition - Ensure the condition for transitioning to the playbook is correctly checking that both parameters are present. If either parameter is missing or empty, the transition won't work.

Additionally, it may take a few hours for your documents to become available and ready for use by your agent while your newly added domains are being indexed, depending on the number of documents or the size of your domain.

I suggest contacting Google Cloud Support and providing your project ID to get it allowlisted to use the Playbook parameters feature. 

Was this helpful? If so, please accept this answer as “Solution”. If you need additional assistance, reply here within 2 business days and I’ll be happy to help.

[Joe_McFadden]

Hi @MJane - thanks for your response. I have contacted Google support who confirmed (by importing my agent into their own project) that the configuration does work, but my account is not whitelisted.

Unfortunately Google Cloud support cannot whitelist a project themselves. They sent the request to the Engineering team ... who then told them to tell me to contact sales.

I've been trying to contact sales and waiting on a call back, as ironically the live chat guide (which I assume is built on Dialogflow) won't escalate my request to a human in the sales team!

Do you know if there any other route to make this request? For example I can see on other posts there is a google form for a customer to request being added to the Agents Safety Filter Allowlist.
Is there anything similar for the playbook input parameters feature?

Any help on navigating this would much appreciated - otherwise I'll with regret have to abandon all the prototyping work I've done with the Google platform and move to an alternative, having a major impact on our education and goverment customers for this project.
.

[Joe_McFadden · Accepted solution]

For anyway finding this issue at a later date, the solution was to request through sales access to the private preview of input and output parameters. T

This was done eventually through my Google Sales team contact. They process / route may be different now. As and when Conversational Agents becomes GA , I assume the feature will be just enabled by default.