How to forward from RootDialog to LuisDialog in Bot Framework

Question

I\'m creating a bot for FAQ . When bot start conversations send a PromptDialog with 2 options: english, french.

I want to forward the dialog to EnglishLuis when user

Answer 1

This is how I would have implemented your method for calling the different dialogs. I tend to use dependency injection of dialogs so I don't have to constantly new them up.

private async Task CallDialog(IDialogContext context, IAwaitable<string> result)
{
    //These two variables will be exactly the same, you only need one     
    //var selectedMenu = await result;
    var message = await result;
    switch (selectedMenu)
    {
        case EnglishMenu:
            // Forward the context to the new LuisDialog to bring it to the top of the stack.  
            // This will also send your message to it so it gets processed there.
            await context.Forward<object>(new EnglishLuis(), ResumeAfterDialog, message , CancellationToken.None);
            break;
        case FrenchMenu:
             await context.Forward<object>(new HotelDialog(location), ResumeAfterDialog, message , CancellationToken.None);
            break;
        case QAMenu:
             await context.Forward<object>(new LuisCallDialog(), ResumeAfterDialog, message , CancellationToken.None);
            context.Call(new LuisCallDialog(),ResumeAfterDialog);
            break;
    }

}

There is an issue in your EnglishLuis dialog where you are using:

context.Wait(this.MessageReceived);
context.Done(true);

The issue is that both of these lines will execute when it passes through the dialog. The context.Done will cause this dialog to leave the stack so you'll end up going to the previous dialog instead, which clashes with the fact you're trying to wait for a response.

There shouldn't really be a context.Done in your luis dialog unless you want to go back to the previous Dialog. So if you're choosing to use context.Done either put it in the resumeAfter method with an appropriate condition or under a single intent for exiting this part of your program.

You didn't include a stack trace, but something that can cause issues when using Luis is if you're using one from a region other than the US. In which case you need to set the properties accordingly where the domain points to the right Luis service.

public EnglishLuis(ConstructorParameters parameters) 
    : base(new LuisService(new LuisModelAttribute(
        "<AppId>",
        "<SubscriptionKey>",
        domain: "westeurope.api.cognitive.microsoft.com")))
    {
        // Constructor Stuff...
    }

Answer 2

First, doing

context.Wait(this.MessageReceived);
context.Done(true);

it's wrong. You need to choose: or you wait for a new message in the EnglishDialog or you end the EnglishDialog (with Done)

Then, you are trying to send a string in the context.Forward and you need to forward an IMessageActivity. And I suspect you want to send the original message, so you will need to save that in global variable before continuing with the prompt. Try with:

var newMessage = context.MakeMessage();
newMessage.Text = this.originalMessageText //the variable that contains the text of the original message that you will have to save at MessageReceiveAsync
await context.Forward(new EnglishLuis(), ResumeAfterDialog, newMessage, CancellationToken.None);


MessageReceivedAsync in RootDialog should looks like:

 private async Task MessageReceiveAsync(IDialogContext context, IAwaitable<IMessageActivity> result)
    {
        var reply = await result;
        if (reply.Text.ToLower().Contains("help"))
        {
            await context.PostAsync("You can implement help menu here");
        }
        else
        {
            this.originalMessage = reply.Text;
            await ShowMainmenu(context);
        }
    }