Previewing your application
Within OpenDialog you can preview any Webchat application so you can test and validate the conversational experience before deploying your application.
Default conversation design view
In the Test functionality, click on Preview to interact with the preview application. If Preview is not visible, click the carrot (down arrow) next to Test.
The chatbot preview options include:
- 1 - Refresh Scenario: this refreshes the scenario, including resetting context and removing custom attributes
- 2 - Download chat transcript
- 3 - Minimize preview
The links are clickable and will take you through to the intent so that you can make any changes as required.
Preview screen
Diagnostic tools include:
- 4 - The path of the incoming intent. Links are clickable
- 5 - The path of the outgoing intent. Links are clickable
- 6 - The paths that were considered by the conversation engine
- When clicking in the Considered Path, a larger version of the considered path is displayed, and an option to view the selected path (circles with green border), the non-selected paths (circles with red border) and an explanation for both selected and rejected paths
Considered Path
Selected Path
Simulating custom attributes is possible in 7 - Set Custom Attribute. This is helpful to try out conditions on messages, components or intents.
As an example, imagine we want to show different messages to users depending on whether they are a new user or a returning user.
In the message editor, we need to set conditions on the messages to indicate which message should show depending on the value of the attribute saved against the user. To distinguish a new user of the bot from a returning user, we set the 'Attribute' to
seconds_since_last_seen and the 'Value' to be less than '0' for new users or to be greater than '0' for returning users.To test this within the preview, for a returning user, we would type in
seconds_since_last_seen to the 'Attribute' field and then '1' into the value field then click on 'Add'. The updated value is shown in the User section of the Context. 
Note: in general no further action needs to be taken to set the custom attribute. Specifically for
seconds_since_last_seen we need to refresh the whole page. Do not click Refresh Scenario as this resets the entire context, including the value we just defined. Last modified 17d ago