Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2026 09:10
From: George Ganahl
Subject: Session.ActiveIntent
Jones, sounds like it's acting like a LIFO buffer (the way they designed it) so an Intent stays in the buffer until the system thinks it is dealt with...once dealt with it goes and gets the next Intent in the buffer which is older than the one just dealt with.
As far as how it works based on the design...the behavior is logical. I'm thinking the design is not ideal...but they can rightfully argue that it is behaving "as designed", which pushes you to a workaround and an Idea to try and get the design changed. You've probably been in this circle before...
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George Ganahl GCCX-AI, GCP, GCD
Technical Adoption Champion
Genesys
Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2026 20:35
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Session.ActiveIntent
@Steven Alix - Check out the response support/developers gave me, my response, and their final response. See if it makes any sense to you, because I still don't think it's a very efficient or reliable way for that built-in variable to work.
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"Our service team has confirmed, that the Session.ActiveIntent acts like a stack of intent names, with the variable value always showing the most recent active intent. A bot can have active intents on top of other active intents, depending on how the flow is configured (you can imagine intent paths nested within other intent paths).
It seems that the first intent matched is LiveAgent [the conversation exits the Ask for Intent block] and then within the next Ask For Intent Path (where the caller is asked one more time to provide an intent just to be sure), the Billing intent is then matched and this becomes the 'active' intent, but LiveAgent is never actually completed (since the flow is still in that relevant intent path i.e. active).
Once the Billing intent path is completed, this then is the first completed intent in the session. LiveAgent is still active at this point. (Session. variables are read-only. They are only set by the system i.e. the bot.)
The Session.ActiveIntent variable was read in at the beginning, but there was no action to set the Session.LastCompletedIntent variable. When it skipped from the Reusable Task 659 MainMenu to Reusable Task 5052 BasicMenu, there is no logic added to set up the next overwrite of the Session.ActiveIntent variable. The flow cannot set it to NOT_SET at that point, so it reverted back to LiveAgent.
The reported behavior is not a reversion necessarily; the LiveAgent intent never completed. To work around this, the you would need to set the intent properly in 'Reusable Task 659 MainMenu' before exiting. That should resolve the issue and help setting the correct intent, but this would require some testing and modification of the flow to allow for that."
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My response:
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So if I understand correctly, you're saying we must either:
- Use a Set Intent block to manually set the Intent to the same exact Intent Session.ActiveIntent is set at or
- Let the conversation exit the Ask for Intent block so the Session.ActiveIntent clears naturally and then determine what to do with the conversation outside the Ask for Intent block?
Both of those seem like far too extra much work for something that should be pretty straightforward. When the conversation is in the Ask for Intent block, it makes sense for the Session.ActiveIntent to be set to whatever the active intent is--which it does. However, if it exits the Ask for Intent block for any reason (in our case it jumps through two completely different reusable tasks and then hits a brand new Ask for Intent block), Session.ActiveIntent should clear out, become the Session.LastCompletedIntent, and life goes on without looking back. Why would (or what good design practice is being demonstrated where) the developers let Session.ActiveIntntent go backwards when a brand new intent takes its place?
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Support/Dev's final response:
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You are correct in your understanding of the situation. Unfortunately, as our team has confirmed, the reported behavior aligns with the expected behavior of the built-in variable, you might have to use the a) or b) option to resolve the problem in your bot flow.
However, I can understand if you would wish for this to be improved to work in a more efficient way, and due to this, I would advise you to submit an idea to our ideas page. Should this receive enough traction and be approved by our team then it will be implemented in the near future. For more information on this please see https://genesyscloud.ideas.aha.io/portal_session/new.
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Guess I'm off to open an idea as well as manually add Set Intent blocks within each of the intents within the Ask for Intent block 🙄
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Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
Original Message:
Sent: 12-29-2025 14:39
From: Steven Alix
Subject: Session.ActiveIntent
I checked our support portal and we did not open a ticket yet. It's possible we'll try something else with the engineers building this flow.
Feels bug-like though.
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Steve Alix
EDCi
Original Message:
Sent: 12-29-2025 12:05
From: Brian Jones
Subject: Session.ActiveIntent
@Steven Alix - Literally just ran into this exact same issue (Session.ActiveIntent randomly reverts to a previous intent). Did you figure out what was happening or open a ticket with Support, and if so, what did they say?
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Brian T. Jones | Ascension | Senior Specialist - Technology
Original Message:
Sent: 12-10-2025 13:14
From: Steven Alix
Subject: Session.ActiveIntent
I have a bot flow that will not update and maintain the session.activeintent as the new intents are collected throughout the flow. Has anyone had issues with the intent switching back to a prior one. The example is I call in and say that I want to speak with a rep, which is an intent. I go down that path and the Intent sets as Speak to a rep, later I am asked why else I'm calling and that intent is captured as make an appointment. I can see in the execution data that Session.ActiveIntent is set to Speak to a rep, then I see the built in variable change to Appointment and then we then we get to the Exit Bot Block and it switches back to Speak to a rep. It won't stay updated to the new ActiveIntent. Seems like it's a bug, but I am concerned this is how it works.
#ArchitectandDesign
#ConversationalAI(Bots,VirtualAgent,etc.)
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Steve Alix
EDCi
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