Overview: Editing actions

Editing a step

Within a step, you define the following things:

• A step title that describes what the step does. The step title is optional.
• Any conditions that determine whether the step is processed at run time. (By default, a step is always processed if the user input matches.)
• What the assistant says to the customer when the step is processed.
• Rules for how the customer can reply to what the assistant says (if any response is expected).
• What to do after the step finishes.

Let's edit step 1 to find out which account the customer wants to withdraw money from:

1. Click the Edit step title icon and enter the title Determine account.

2. In the Is taken field, use the default value of without conditions. This step is always required for any withdrawal.

3. In the Assistant says field, type Withdraw from which account?.

4. Click Define customer response.

   

   Because we are asking the user to select from a list of predefined choices, click Options. The Edit Response window opens.

5. In the Option 1 field, type Savings. As soon as you enter a value for option 1, a field appears for option 2.

   

   Click Option 2 and type Checking.

   Click Apply to save the customer response.

6. Now we can check that the step works like we expect. Click Preview to open the Preview pane, and type I want to withdraw money:

   

   As expected, the assistant now prompts you to select the account you want to withdraw money from.

Duplicating a step

You can duplicate a step so you don't have to re-create variable settings and customizations. Duplicating a step is helpful when you need to add a step similar to a previous step, but with minor modifications.

Complete the following steps to duplicate a step:

1. Click the Duplicate icon on the step that you want to duplicate.

   

   A step appears immediately following the step that you duplicated. This step is identical to the duplicated step and displays a blue circle in the upper right to indicate that the step is a duplicate.

   

2. Edit the information in the new step as necessary.

Adding conditional steps

Suppose our bank charges a fee for withdrawals from checking accounts, and we need to confirm that the customer understands. Our action needs to have slightly different behavior depending on which kind of account the customer selects. We can handle this using step conditions.

When a step asks for information from the user, the user's response is stored as an action variable. By referring to the action variables stored by previous steps, you can construct step conditions based on your customer's previous responses.

1. Click New step.

2. In the Step 2 is taken field, select with conditions. The Conditions section expands.

   

3. By default, a condition is automatically created based on the action variable that is stored by the previous step (Withdraw from which account?). However, by default it is checking for a value of Savings, which is not what we want. Click the value field and select Checking instead.

   

4. In the Assistant says field, type Withdrawals from checking accounts might incur a fee. Do you want to continue?

5. Click Define customer response and select Confirmation, which has the choices Yes and No.

   Click Apply to save the customer response.

6. Because we want to make sure the customer always agrees explicitly, click the Settings icon to open Customer response settings, then select Always ask for this information, regardless of earlier messages.

   

Now we need another conditional step to handle the situation where the customer decides not to continue.

1. Click New step.

2. In the Step 3 is taken field, select with conditions.

3. Edit the condition so it checks that the customer's response to step 2 was No.

   

4. In the Assistant says field, type Canceling transaction..

5. In the And then field, select End the action. If this step is executed (meaning that the customer decides not to proceed), no subsequent steps in the action are executed.

We don't need a conditional step to handle a response of Yes in step 2 because in that situation processing just continues as normal.

Getting the amount

We need one more piece of information before we can complete the customer's request: the amount of money to withdraw.

1. Click New step.

2. In the Assistant says field, type How much do you want to withdraw?.

3. Click Define customer response. We need the customer to specify a monetary amount, so select Currency.

Finishing the action

We now have all the information that we need. For our example, we're not going to implement any real logic for making a withdrawal, but we can send a final message to summarize what we're doing.

To do this summary, we need to insert action variables (representing customer responses from previous steps) into our response. At run time, these action variables are replaced with the actual values that are supplied by the customer.

1. Click New step.

2. Now we need to build a confirmation message that says "OK, we will withdraw amount from your account_type account."

   To create this response, type the text of the message in the Assistant says field, but in place of the variable values, click the Insert a variable icon to insert references to action variables:

   • For amount, select 4. How much do you want to withdraw?.
   • For account_type, select 1. Withdraw from which account?.

   

3. Because this is the last step in the action, you don't need to specify any customer response.

If you decide a step is no longer needed, you can delete it from the action. To delete a step, click the Delete icon on the tile for the step.