[FEATURE] Option to keep dialogflow session alive while user is in a handed-off session

[dlassalle]

When enabled, this feature would tell the app to maintain its session with Dialogflow.

Dialogflow has a default session timeout of 20 minutes, meaning if a user spends >20min in another department and then returns to the bot, Dialogflow would create a new session/sessionID for it and lose any contexts associated with the original chat.

One option to achieve this, is to document an innocuous event like session_maintenance, and have an intent in Dialogflow that accepts it but doesn't have a text response.

When the user closes the widget and terminates the chat, the app can stop maintaining the session and send the chat terminated event #19 (its probably best to cap the maintenance at some configurable max time, like 2 hours, to prevent runaway maintenance processes)

[murtaza98]

Hello @dlassalle,

I think in order to implement this behavior, the app needs to have access to setInterval() or some Scheduler API kind of feature. However, currently, that isn't possible(Ref issue) .

Is there any other way we could implement this? any ideas?

[dlassalle]

a possible workaround of the scheduler API

• keep track of when the last interaction with dialogflow was
• on every message send/recieve, If has been less than 20 minutes, send a session_maintenance event
  ?

[murtaza98]

on every message send/recieve, If has been less than 20 minutes, send a session_maintenance event

On every message sent we are already sending a request to the detectIntent endpoint. So if it has been less than 20 minutes, Dialogflow should automatically reset the session timer. Sending the session_maintenance event here would be unnecessary.

[dlassalle]

On every message sent we are already sending a request to the detectIntent endpoint.

Is this true even after we handoff to a different department?

[kush9903]

@murtaza98 can u help in handoff to rc using Dialogflow in python
mail id = rishisrinivasraju@gmail.com

[murtaza98]

Yeah Sure @kush9903 .

We already have a handoff feature within this app itself so I'm not sure y r u planning to use python.

Could u share some more info about this? Like what's your requirement and what r u planning to achieve?

Feel free to contact me on my email: murtaza.patrawala@rocket.chat