Doubts about features

[Robert_Cavalcante]

Hi guys,

I’m using flowxo since May and I have to say that I’m very impressed about the simplicity and how this tool can become powerful in every situation, but I’m facing some problems that I didn’t found a solution. Here we go :

1) Datepicker :
I have a conversation where the user has to choose a date. It would be perfect if we have a way to show to the user a Datepicker, which one he could choose a day in a Calendar. You guys already passed through a situation like that?
And more, If there is a way to show a Datepicker, how can I get the chosen date and display a confirmation message to the user? (e.g : “Ok, you selected 2017-07-20, its correct?”)

2)Dynamic choice in “Ask a question” task
There is a way that I can configure a “Ask a question” with dynamic “choices” ? Example : I have a question : “Which day of week is better for you?” . Then, I would show all days of week (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday…), except the actual day.

3)Change the default message if the user wrong the Ask a question Choice
I’m from Brazil and when an user answer anything that isn’t available in choices, the bot return a message that is grammatically wrong. And more, if the user wrong 2 times the question, the bot send another message(worse than the first) ending the conversation. There is a way to change this message? And increase the number of try to end the conversation?

4)Http webhook handling error calls
When I use Webhook task and the result of a http request is ok, it works well. But, if a request goes wrong (the server not responding, the Url does not exists, and so on) the flow stops and the conversation is restarted. The best way the conversation go on is the one which the bot says something like that : “sorry, it looks like our service is facing some problems, could you try again later? thanks!”. How do you usually recommend to handle error requests?

That’s all guys, sorry if something in my questions aren’t clear.
Appreciate for the help.

Best regards,

Bob

[DanielBeckett]

Hi Robert,

For questions 1 & 2 there’s currently no way of displaying a datepicker to the user inside the chat window. Features like this would really require support from the platform that the bot is created on, e.g. Facebook Messenger, Telegram etc.

When using Bot > Ask a Question with the question type set to choice there isn’t a way to exclude certain values dynamically - the only real way of doing this would be to setup, let’s say 7 questions, each of which excluding a certain day of the week and then have a filter set on each so that it only sends if it’s a certain day of the week. A pretty messy solution I’m sure you’d agree

With that said, it may better to just simply let the user answer this question as text. Our Date & Time Handling is fairly comprehensive and much more conversational which can make the experience more natural for the user. Your bot can take an answer like ‘Next Friday’ and then you could use the Date & Time Service to format the date so that you can output it back to the user to confirm.

Questions 3 & 4 are both currently on the development roadmap to be considered for future updates. Please see better error handling and Customise Validation Options. Unfortunately there isn’t really a workaround for these two issues at the moment but adjusting your flow to use Bot > Ask a Question with the type set to text can help slightly for now.

Feel free to let me know if anything is unclear or if you have any further questions.

Thanks,
Dan

[Robert_Cavalcante]

Hey daniel, thanks for the quick reply.

About datepicker, I understood your point, it’s ok !

About Dynamic Choice, I found a workaround :

I created a “Execute Code” just before the “Ask a Question” task. In this “Execute Code”, I created a function that return for me an array that contains the days of the week. In this function, I exclude the actual day of the week. See the code below :

    var daysOfWeek = [{day:"Segunda", parsedDay: "segunda", value: 1},{day:"Terça", parsedDay: "terça", value: 2},   {day:"Quarta", parsedDay: "quarta", value: 3},{day:"Quinta", parsedDay: "quinta", value: 4},{day:"Sexta", parsedDay: "sexta", value: 5},{day:"Sabado", parsedDay: "sabado", value: 6}]

var today = new Date().getDay();

daysOfWeek = daysOfWeek.filter(function(obj){
    return obj.value !== today;
});

resolve(daysOfWeek);

And then, in the “Ask a Question” task, I set the choices like this :
{{executeCode.result__0__day}}
{{executeCode.result__1__day}}
{{executeCode.result__2__day}}
…

This way resolve my problems : I offer to user select a day of the week excluding the actual day.

I think that I can’t use Date & Time Handling here because the users are brazilians, so they will type in portuguese.

Thank you,

Bob

[DanielBeckett]

The code service is a useful way of dealing with a lot of problems

Thanks for sharing that with the community, I’m sure others will find it useful.