article by Frank Nimphius, March 2019
Put simple, dialog flows are user-bot interaction scripts that a skill in a digital assistant conversation follows to assist users in completing a task using the conversational channel. Though dialog flows are needed, the best dialog flow would be no dialog flow. Using composite bags in Oracle Digital Assistant you can partially achieve this. Composite bag entities are like business domain objects in that they group several entities and variable type items to a single "super" entity that then aligns with a business object like an order, a customer etc.
Configurations like prompts, error messages, validation, range size settings and more, that normally you would define on a UI component are contained in the composite bag entity attributes. Attributes of an entity bag item are referred to as bag items and can be of type entity or a variable of a primitive data type.
In Oracle Digital Assistant, there are two system components that can be used in combination with composite bag entities to auto-generate bot responses and dialog flows from definitions saved in bag items: System.ResolveEntities is one, System.CommonResponse is the other.
In this article I explain how to use the System.ResolveEntities with component with composite bags. Using a System.CommonResponse component with composite bag entities may be a topic for a later TechExchange article. Most of the default settings and behaviors though are identical.
Related articles
TechExchange – Building Smart Value Lists from Entities
TechExchange: Oracle Digital Assistant Primer
