As stated at the beginning of this topic, all the nodes in the dialog branch are evaluated in order. There is no way you can break the dialog flow manually, i.e., just by itself. To help you progress from one node to any other node in a dialog flow, there’s the jump option. This option helps you progress from one node to any node in the flow with ease. If you choose the jump node option, you’ll need to specify when the target node should be processed.
Follow these steps to ensure that you configure the Jump option right:
1. Select the dialog you want to jump to.
2. Once the dialog is selected, you will be prompted with three different options: Wait for user input, If bot recognizes and Execute dialog.
When you choose the jump node option, the Virtual Assistant will first check if the conditions of the target nodes are evaluated properly based on the selection you made:
- If the condition is true, the Virtual Assistant will process the node immediately.
- If the condition is found to be false, the Virtual Assistant will evaluate all other nodes in the dialog flow to find any node that can be evaluated with the condition specified in the node.
- If the Virtual Assistant processes all the nodes and finds none of the conditions to be true, a fallback strategy will be implemented wherein the nodes at the base level of the tree will be evaluated.
Wait for User Input
Wait for user input can be used, when you don’t know what the user wants to do and based on the user input all the dialogs will be checked for a possible match with the user input.
This option should be used when you are expecting an answer/input from the user and based on the user input you want to continue the dialog conversation flow.
Note: Dialog mapping search will happen in a sequential order starting from the dialog node that the jump is added to. If none of the dialogs matches with the user input, then fall back dialog will be called.
You can use this option if your source node is phrased as a question and you’d like to wait for a valid user input before evaluating other nodes.
If bot recognizes
If bot recognizes option should be used when you want the virtual assistant to identify the dialog condition based on the last input received in the chat from the user.
When this option is used, Virtual Assistant will not wait for further user input and will start checking the dialog conditions to execute the dialog conversation based on the last received input from the user.
Note: Dialog mapping search will happen in a sequential order starting from the dialog node that the jump is added to. If none of the dialogs matches with the user input, then fall back dialog will be called.
Respond
If you want to jump to a dialog and don’t want to check the selected dialog’s condition and to respond with the conversation flow of that dialog directly, then use the Respond option.
Note: This won’t check other dialogs’ conditions, it will make the virtual assistant jump to the selected dialog/sub-dialog and execute all its nodes irrespective of whether that dialog’s condition is satisfied or not.