New Conversation on /restart in Rasa X

Hi,

I’m currently preparing the first iteration of CDD, where the chatbot is exposed to test users via the share link from Rasa X. While this might be uncommon in real frontends, in this scenario it is very likely that people are going to restart the conversation a few times to try different things. Now what happens in the Rasa X conversations tab is, that all of those attempts are stored in a single conversation.

That is not what I want for several reasons, mainly that the tagging would not make a lot of sense anymore, e.g. I tag the feedback a user gives the bot in the end (1-5 stars). If all the conversation attempts are stored in a single conversation in Rasa X, there is no way to properly evaluate that.

My first attempt to solving that was to override the /restart mapping to action_session_start, but unfortunately that did not make a difference. Is there any other way to start a new conversation (not just reset history and slots, but real new conversation id), maybe with a custom action?

Thanks in Advance!

Hi @Vale_Boca. I think the easiest way would be to clear local storage in the browser. This will result in a new conversation. You could also have them initiate different browser sessions (e.g. private mode or switching browsers)

First of all thanks for the answer.

I will definitely not let my test users go in incognito or switch browsers all the time. Is there really no way to do that from a custom action?

If anyone else encounters this problem: I think my workaround will be to override the action_reset to not only reset the conversation, but also all slots. Then the conversations will still be merged in Rasa X, so I will have to find another way to analyze the results, e.g. exporting them and splitting them on the action_restart event. Then still tags will be useless, but since the whole conversation is in the events, it will be possible to restore.

If there is a better way, please tell me :smiley:

@Vale_Boca The conversation id determines the conversation, which for share your bot is determined by the browser. The easiest way in my opinion would be to instruct test users to open devtools in their browser and click the Clear site data button in between conversations.

I don’t think you could do it with a custom action. Maybe you could try changing the conversation id?

I don’t want to bother the test users with that stuff.

How would you approach changing the conversation id?

Just wanted to let you know, that I am facing the same problem. I am conducting a user study and can not expect all users to find that button to clear the cache. I would really prefer them to be able to have three separate conversations. I will let you know in case I find a solution.

@Vale_Boca @Taufred I don’t think test users should be bothered with having to send a restart message either. Maybe we could have the restart button in share your bot start a new conversation id instead of just restarting the conversation. What do you two think of that?

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That’d be grand! How would we go about implementing something like this?

@Taufred It would be something that the Rasa team has to implement in Rasa X. Do you see any instances where you would want a test user to restart a conversation but not start a conversation with a new id?

T.b.h. I do not. I think that is only really relevant for interactive learning, which is not done by test users. But to be safe, wouldn’t it be possible to implement two separate buttons, one reloading with a new conversation id (“Start a new conversation”) and one restarting the conversation (“Restart this conversation”)?

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@tyd @Taufred Thats what I was aiming for with the custom action, since the restart button just sends ‘/restart’. Anyway it kinda makes sense, that this has to be done client-side. So in the end this would be a feature request for Rasa X. Could you create the issue?

@Vale_Boca @Taufred Thanks for your input! I created an issue for it :slight_smile:

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Hi Tyd!

Where can I find the issue you’ve created?

I certainly like this proposed feature and want to follow the issue.

Hi @HermanH. It is in the private Rasa X repo, so you can’t track it unless you are on the Rasa team. It is not on the near term roadmap yet

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Hi @tyd,

are there any news on this. I would like to share the bot with clients and the lack of a possibility to reset and clear the conversation makes it unuseable.

Thank you in advance,

Sören