Is there a way to get the bot to start the conversation rather than waiting for the user to enter input?

Getting Started with Rasa
1

Hi. With all the Rasa stories in the examples (incl in the videos) the intents require the user to start the conversation eg.“Hi” with a greet intent.

Is there a way to get the bot to utter something first when Rasa shell first loads up?

Thanks.

2

@Jmg007 On start the SessionStart Event (see Events) is executed. It calls the ActionSessionStart. You can customize this action (see Rasa SDK) to utter something when the bot starts.

3

Hi @Tanja ,

I was also trying to get this to work. Do you have a working example for this?

I tried this on telegram , but dosn’t work.

Do you have a working example for this? Below is my actions.py file. I have added the class ActionSessionStart. I have also included - action_session_start in my domain.yml

from typing import Any, Text, Dict, List
    from rasa_sdk import Action, Tracker
    from rasa_sdk.executor import CollectingDispatcher
    from rasa_sdk.forms import FormAction
    from rasa_sdk.events import SlotSet, SessionStarted, ActionExecuted, EventType



class ActionSessionStart(Action):
def name(self) -> Text:
    return "action_session_start"  # This name function returns the name of the custom action.Here is is action_session_start

@staticmethod
def fetch_slots(tracker: Tracker) -> List[EventType]:
    """Collect slots that contain the user's name and phone number."""

    slots = []

    for key in ("name", "email", "pincode", "mobnumber"):
        value = tracker.get_slot(key)
        if value is not None:  # this is how to check if slot value is filled or not.
            slots.append(SlotSet(key=key, value=value))

    return slots

def apply_to(self, tracker: "DialogueStateTracker") -> None:
    # noinspection PyProtectedMember
    tracker._reset()
    
async def run(
        self,
        dispatcher: CollectingDispatcher,
        tracker: Tracker,
        domain: Dict[Text, Any],
) -> List[EventType]:

    # the session should begin with a `session_started` event
    events = [SessionStarted()]
    #
    # # any slots that should be carried over should come after the
    # # `session_started` event
    # events.extend(self.fetch_slots(tracker))
    #
    # # an `action_listen` should be added at the end as a user message follows
    dispatcher.utter_message(template="utter_greet_ask")
    events.append(ActionExecuted("action_listen"))
    #

    return events

But Still it dosn’t seem to start the conversation with utter_ask_greet

I ran the command rasa run actions -p 5002 in one terminal and rasa run in another.

Using ngrok to connect to telegram.( ngrok is running in port 5005, so earlier I got error as action server can’t be started.) All telegram configutations are done and set up the bot in telegram as well.

Here are my logs…

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image1124×138 29.2 KB

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image1815×282 80.9 KB

I can’t seem to figure it out…Could you please help :slight_smile:?

Hey @Jmg007 , did you get it to work ??

4

I realized the above issue is actually a feature of Rasa Here.

I couldn’t really figure out how to implement it .

Guess it’s the default behaviour Rasa had in place taking security into consideration.:slight_smile:

Works fine now.