Genesys Cloud - Main

Hello all.

I'm building a digital bot flow that uses Digital Menus with card carousels to collect a selection and store it in a flow variable. That part works. The issue is when the visitor doesn't click a card and instead types free-text - I want to capture that text and set it as a variable (and keep them in the current task) until they either finish providing inputs or type "exit."

What I'm seeing: when the user types free-text at the Digital Menu, Architect captures the text but immediately tries to match it to Knowledge (and/or intents), instead of letting me treat it as plain input. From the Resource Center, this sounds like expected behavior. I'm specifically trying to not trigger a knowledge search at all for this step and just treat the text as input. Any hidden toggle I'm missing, or is "use Ask for Slot" the only option for collecting information that I will be setting as a variable? I really like the ability to provide options in the card carousel so the options are standardized.

Thank you in advance to the Genesys geniuses!

Hello Nicole, 

I believe you are right in your understanding of our digital menu behavior. As for what you are trying to do I can think of two ways to do this. 

The first way, and recommended, is use the Ask for Slot action:

• This is the most straightforward solution for collecting free text input
• You can still present a card carousel within the Ask for Slot action
• it wont trigger knowledge searches by default
• And you will have direct control over the variable assignment. 

The second way is custom handling with the digital menu:

• If you have to use the digital menu, you could implement a custom handling approach
• Create a reusable task that runs after the digital menu
• use conditions to check if the input matches you carousel options, if it doesn't match you can store the free text input as a variable
• However, you cannot prevent the initial knowledge base query. 

Given what you are trying to do, I would recommend using the Ask for Slot action. 

Cheers, 

Hello all.

I'm building a digital bot flow that uses Digital Menus with card carousels to collect a selection and store it in a flow variable. That part works. The issue is when the visitor doesn't click a card and instead types free-text - I want to capture that text and set it as a variable (and keep them in the current task) until they either finish providing inputs or type "exit."

What I'm seeing: when the user types free-text at the Digital Menu, Architect captures the text but immediately tries to match it to Knowledge (and/or intents), instead of letting me treat it as plain input. From the Resource Center, this sounds like expected behavior. I'm specifically trying to not trigger a knowledge search at all for this step and just treat the text as input. Any hidden toggle I'm missing, or is "use Ask for Slot" the only option for collecting information that I will be setting as a variable? I really like the ability to provide options in the card carousel so the options are standardized.

Thank you in advance to the Genesys geniuses!