Rasa Buttons and Images

I’m testing Tiledesk with Rasa and when using buttons Webchat is not returning anything. Neither buttons nor images.

responses:
  utter_greet:
  - text: "Hey! How are you?"
    buttons:
    - title: "great"
      payload: "/mood_great"
    - title: "super sad"
      payload: "/mood_sad"
  utter_cheer_up:
  - text: "Here is something to cheer you up:"
    image: "https://i.imgur.com/nGF1K8f.jpg"

Hi Jerson,

We are actually developing a full RASA protocol integration to comply with buttons/images/etc. as by RASA specifications.

Meanwhile you can use our Markbot language to send buttons and images, all using the RASA “text” field. As in the following example:

utter_greet:

With Markbot you send buttons as a markdown-list syntax.

Markbot documentation: Sending images, videos, quick replies and more | Tiledesk Free Live Chat

The example above, but multiline:

Welcome to RASA Connector...!

Choose an option
* Help Center https://gethelp.tiledesk.com/
* I want an agent

It will render as a couple of messages, an image ad a couple of buttons (the first is a link-button, the second a Quick reply button)

image

To add an image use the tdImage syntax, as in the following example

image

Multiline syntax (tdImage example):

Welcome to RASA Connector...!

Choose an option
tdImage:https://i.imgur.com/nGF1K8f.jpg
* Help Center https://gethelp.tiledesk.com/
* I want an agent

RASA single line syntax:

- text: "Welcome to RASA Connector...!\n\nChoose an option\ntdImage:https://i.imgur.com/nGF1K8f.jpg\n* Help Center https://gethelp.tiledesk.com/\n* I want an agent"

We’ll send a newsletter when the RASA protocol will be fully supported.

Andrea

According to my tests the example of markdown with buttons is not working, I was able to display map, video and image but in isolation. I’ll wait for improvements in the Rasa module. Thanks!

Hi Jerson,

We just upgraded the RASA connector to support RASA native buttons and images.

Please give it a try and let me know if everything works as expected.

Actually only available in the cloud distribution.

After some testing we’ll add the feature also to the community distribution.

Andrea

Hi Andrea,

I think something went wrong, since none of my link and text buttons work anymore.

I use Markbot for this.

@andreasponziello

Also the tdImage, tdVideo and tdFrame don’t work.

Hi Jordan,

We released a new version of the Rasa chatbot with support for native RASA buttons and images (also based on your feedback in this thread, telling us that markbot was not working).

So we disabled markbot in this new release, considering rasa native support is better.

But we are open for discussion. Do you think Markbot is still useful?

Let me know

Hi @andreasponziello

For me, Markbot worked fine.

What might be useful for next time is to leave the Markbot on for a few more releases so people have a chance to convert it. Now I find out about it by accident and have to spend today to convert everything.

Regards Johan

Hi Jordan

Because you told us that markbot was not working (and because we still do not have many feedback on this RASA integration) we concluded (probably mistakenly) that native RASA support was better than markbot (that probably it’s diffuclt to understand).

We are trying to enable both (markbot and rasa native) in the next release with the option to disable Markbot is it creates problems for a particular project.

Thanks for your feedback.

Andrea

Hi @andreasponziello

It was @jersonjunior who had problems, not me.

Haha, I started having problems when Markbot was disabled.

If you want, you can always contact me to test. I think tiledesk is awesome and if I can help make it better I’m happy to do so.

Thanks for your quick response :pray:

Johan

Hi Johan,

You are right, I was totally confused :slight_smile: Thanks to be comprensive!

We are struggling to understand how to have a good “compatibility policy” between Tiledesk’s Markbot and RASA native format to support both simultaneously. I’m sorry for you guys that are rebuilding everything again and again becasue of our own issues. Just a little patience.

Anyway, just to be transparent, we think that only using “native RASA” you can’t address:

  • tdFrame (that will go completily missing in the integration)
  • Link Buttons (very useful in some cases) that we do not see RASA supports

So we think that markbot is necessary if you want full integration.

The idea is to “merge” buttons, the ones coming from RASA with those coming from markbot.
And support all the other things like tdFrame.

While there is some other problem with native RASA images, where we see RASA sending images always as separate messages, while Tiledesk is able to send the image with his description text as a single message.

Any opinion is useful.

And please consider this module as a “Beta”, we just have to evidence it in the Console in the next release :pray:

Thanks for the time spent on Tiledesk :slight_smile:

Andrea

Hi @andreasponziello

My suggestion would be to do both.

So the full rasa integration, because that’s easy for people who are familiar with Rasa. And the Markbot language, because that gives you full flexibility to develop custom replies.

Personally I would focus on Markbot, because of the flexibility to develop your own things. Take for example the facebook messenger. Facebook messenger has the “carousel” which is not something that rasa offers by default, but is possible by sending a response in json format.

By doing both you can have the best of both worlds.

I would have a use for that.

And what you point out. I am already using the tdFrame and especially the Link Buttons. I don’t want to miss those now :wink:

By the way is there any chance that Markbot will turn on again for the Rasa connector?

Regards Johan

Hi Johan

Markbot is coming really soon (a couple of days), I’m reactivating it as of your suggestions.

Just a little patience, I’m just doing some testing to ensure that one thing added (->Markbot) doesn’t ruin another already working → RASA native :slight_smile:

Thank you very much of your feedback, let’s keep in touch, we are also on Discord - if you are not already there Tiledesk

Andrea

Hi Johan,

We updated Tiledesk Cloud with a new RASA connector release.

Now the RASA connector supports both Native RASA buttons+Images+splittedMessages and Markbot (adding support for Tiledesk URL-Buttons, tdFrame, tdImage etc.). Bug fixing too.

Just connect your RASA server and let me know if it works as expected.

Andrea

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