Handling unexpected input in forms using multiple steps

Rasa Open Source
1

Handling unexpected input from user while a form is running is mentioned in rasa docs here- Handling Unexpected Input

However, it only works when there is just one response back to the user and the form continues. I can’t figure out a way to handle an unexpected input, when resolving it requires multiple to and fro messages. This is because requested_slot in the active form is not null and hence any message sent by the bot is always followed by a message asking for the requested_slot value.

Is there a way that asking for filling the next slot can be delayed for some time?

2

For example, here is the example of handling unexpected input in the rasa docs

- story: number of people interjection
  steps:
  - intent: request_restaurant
  - action: restaurant_form
  - active_loop: restaurant_form
  - slot_was_set:
    - requested_slot: num_people
  - intent: explain
  - action: utter_explain_num_people
  - action: restaurant_form

After the explain intent, I am designing a situation where the bot is responding as you can either tell me now or when you arrive. Do you want to tell now?, using the intent tell_now_or_later. The user responds with intents yes or no. If yes is received, the form will continue or else it will not.

When I create the story for the yes case like this, it doesn’t work as it’s asking for the requested_slot immediately after tell_now_or_later

- story: number of people interjection
  steps:
  - intent: request_restaurant
  - action: restaurant_form
  - active_loop: restaurant_form
  - slot_was_set:
    - requested_slot: num_people
  - intent: explain
  - action: tell_now_or_later
  - intent: yes
  - action: restaurant_form

Any idea how to resolve this?

3

Hi @shalabhsingh ! This is strange. It should work as expected. Two suggestions:

  1. You can try out the formbot example (rasa/examples/formbot at main · RasaHQ/rasa · GitHub). The stories over there resemble almost exactly to what you want to do. I just tried it out and it works perfectly there.

  2. What does your configuration look like? Specifically for TEDPolicy.

4

Hi @dakshvar22, thanks for your reply.

My policy looks like this-

policies:
   - name: AugmentedMemoizationPolicy
     max_history: 3
   - name: TEDPolicy
     max_history: 5
     epochs: 20
     constrain_similarities: true
   - name: RulePolicy

I will try out the formbot as well and respond back here. I think my issue might well be because of conflict with some other stories (a rule/story is getting higher precedence over this one). Is there any way to check which stories are being considered by rasa and the selection process? I tried rasa shell --debug but didn’t help.