Virtual Agents engage end-users primarily using a conversational interface that typically includes an exchange of a series of messages. But oftentimes, there is a need to gather information from the end-user to proceed further. Examples include providing delivery address while interacting with an eCommerce agent, details of an issue while reporting to ITSM agent, opportunity details while creating a CRM opportunity, capturing customer details to create a bank account, etc.

In a standard Dialog Task, this scenario is designed by placing a series of Entity Nodes connected back-to-back and the user is asked for values for each of these entities sequentially, which is quite tedious and frustrating. Instead, an interactive User Interface for easy and efficient capture of all the information from the user will be ideal.

Kore.ai’s Digital Form caters to such requirements by providing a range of input fields required for capturing the required details from end-users. After the users complete the form, the input is submitted to the virtual agent to proceed with the task at hand.

In this document, we discuss the features and implementation of Digital Forms in the Kore.ai Bots platform. To jump to a use case example for a step-by-step implementation of a Digital Form click here.

Form Creation

A Digital Form includes a definition and various components to capture user input.

To create forms, follow the below steps:

1. Under the Build top menu, select Digital Skills.
2. Click Digital Forms > Create New.
3. On the New Form page, enter
   • Name of the Form
   • Display Name for the Form
   • Description of the Form
4. Form Security – enable Secure Form Data to redact form data from the Bot Context, Debug Logs, Service Calls, Agent Transfer, and the Bot Kit. Once enabled, the platform will replace the user input with a unique random system-generated alphanumeric value in all the modules.
5. Click Save & Proceed.

Components Addition

• You can drag and drop the components available on the left pane to the canvas and configure their properties to build the form. For details of the components & their properties, see below.
• You can search for a given component, scroll through the list.
• View in a grid format.

Form Actions

From the Forms Listing page, you can:

• Create New Form, as seen above.
• Edit Form, see below.
• Use the Branding option to customize the form, see here.
• Test the form, see here.
• Delete the form.

Edit

You can use the Edit option from the form listing to edit the form. Following actions are performed on the Form in edit mode:

• Component Listing is used to selecting and adding components to the Form by simple drag and drop action.
• Use View Toggler to switch between Desktop View and Mobile View.
• Use the Handle Bar against each of the components to change its location by a simple drag and drop action;
• Use Form Actions to:
  • Test the form to see the preview of the Digital Form in the Bot Builder.
  • Delete the Form.
  • Change the Form Settings like name, display name, and description.
• Use the Component Actions to access the Settings, Duplicate, and Delete the component.
• You can change the components’ properties from the Component Settings popup:
  • Use the Component Docker to dock/undock the settings pane to the screen.
  • Use the Component Selector to navigate through the components on the Form.

Branding

Use the Branding option to change the look and feel of the form to reflect your organization’s standards. An instant preview gives you an idea of how the form would look with the new colors and you have the option to Save or Restore Default scheme.

Test

Test the form to see a preview

Form Invocation

Following are the ways a Digital form can be invoked:

1. From a Task: You may include a form as a component in a dialog task for defining the task. The dialog task offers Form Experience and the usual Conversation Experience for filling the form data. You can choose the preference based on the channel of interaction or any other criteria based on your requirements.
2. From a UI flow: You can add a Digital Form to a pane and choose a dialog task to trigger when the form is submitted from the pane.

In the following sections, we discuss each of the above invocation processes.

From Tasks

Digital Forms are used inside Dialog Tasks for capturing user inputs through a Form Node.

To invoke form from a dialog task, follow the below steps:

1. Create/open the dialog from where you want to invoke the Digital Form.
2. Click the + icon next to the node where you want to add the Form.
3. Select the Digital Form option and then the form from the list. You can choose to add a Digital Form directly or use an existing Form Node.
4. You are prompted to select the Form Experience, it can be:
   
   • Only Form UI – This creates a Form Node and associates it with the Digital Form selected. This is the default option.
     
   • Both Form UI and Conversation Experience – This further prompts you to choose a channel. When a user is using one of the selected channels they are presented with a Form UI, the rest of the channel users get a conversation experience.
     This option creates:
     • A Logic Node to determine the transitions to the Form Node and the Sub-dialog Node based on the channels selected.
     • A Form Node for the Digital Form, same as was generated for the Only Form UI above.
     • A Sub-dialog Node to capture the required entities (as defined in the Digital Form using components) for the conversational experience. See below for the mapping.A Group encompassing the following nodes (see here for details). This grouping can be renamed and/or deleted.
       
5. You can set the Properties for each of the nodes added.
   • The Form Node (see here for details).
     Of special interest are the following Component Properties:
     • Submit Message – Message displayed to the end-user on successful submission of the form
     • Web/Mobile SDK Form Behavior – Using this option you can either have the form displayed inline the chat window or open on a full page.
   • Logic Node, in case of the conversation experience flow, can also be configured (see here for details)
     Of special interest are the following:
     • Manage Context Variables is used to create and set values for the context variables. Remember to use the full path of the variable in the key field ie. context.BotUserSession.<variable_name>
     • We strongly urge you not to make changes to the connection settings as this affects the bot performance.
   • Sub-dialog Node is configured as normal (see here for details)
     Of special interest are the following:
     • Use the Entity Post-assignment to capture the user input.
     • In case you modify the sub-dialog or the source form, you are presented with an option to Regenerate Dialog. This ensures that the changes are reflected in the task without having to rebuild the entire task. Be aware that the changes are reflected in all places this sub-dialog is used.

     

6. The user input can be accessed as follows:
   • Form component values are accessed (see here for details) using {{context.forms.<form_name>.<component_name>}}
   • In the case of the sub-dialog, the variables used in the post-assignment settings as {{context.<variable_name>}}
7. You can continue with the Dialog Task as per your business needs. For example, you can use the Form Component values as input to a Service Node to update the data or use the Script Node to process it further. If you are using the conversation experience too, remember to connect the auto-generated sub-dialog to the process flow.

From Panels

Digital Forms are rendered in Digital Views by configuring Widgets & Panels, see here for more on Digital Views.

To invoke form using Widgets and Panels, follow the below steps:

1. Create a widget to invoke the Digital Form from Build -> Digital Skills -> Digital Views option.
   1. Enter the name.
   2. Select Digital Forms as Source.
   3. Add Form by selecting from the drop-down list.
   4. Select the Dialog to Invoke on Submit from the drop-down list.
      Note that while a Digital Form is used to define multiple Widgets and also add to multiple panels, it will be associated with the single Dialog Task across all Widgets and Panels.
   5. Save the widget.
      
2. Add Widget to an existing panel or create a new panel.
   You can add a form directly to a panel, it creates a widget by default.
3. You can Test the panel.
4. Follow the steps given here to publish and host the panels.

Process Flow

When the end-user initiates the dialog and reaches the node connecting to the Form node, the following events take place. Depending upon the experience selected at design time and the channel of invocation, the following is the flow:

• Form experience:
  • A link to the form is presented to the user
    Note that for synchronous WebHook channel, instead of a link the complete form definition is sent click here for more details.
    
  • Clicking the link opens the form in either full-screen or inline mode, based on the selection. Special notes about the link:
    • The link is active only for a certain duration of time, it becomes inactive after that.
    • Even within the active period, it can be used only a limited number of times.
  • End-user can fill in the values for the components/fields.
    
  • Every form comes with a default Submit button. This validates the form entries, prompts for any missing values.
    
  • Once the form is validated and submitted, the values are available in the context variable and accessed using the following code: context.forms.<form_name>.<component_name>
    Here we are capturing the user entry and displaying it using a message node.
    
• Conversation Experience:
  • From the channel of operation, the end-user is prompted to enter values for every component in the form.
  • The values are available in the sub-dialog context and are captured using Entity Post Assignment as mentioned above.
  • Following is the user experience in Conversation mode
    

Exceptions

When exceptions are encountered during the dialog execution with a Form Node, they are handled as follows:

Panel Flow

Users can access the form using Panels & Widgets. The experience is the same as for the Process Flow with Form experience.

Once the form is validated and submitted, the values are available in the context variable and accessed using the following code: context.forms.<form_name>.<component_name>

The following is the experience:

Bot Management

Publish

The publishing flow for a bot with Digital Forms has the following special cases:

• As with any bot, the Digital Forms exist in the following states:
  • In-development when a form is created.
  • Awaiting approval when a form is submitted to Publish and the request is waiting for the admin to take action.
  • Rejected when the Publish request is rejected by the admin.
  • Published when the Publish request is approved by the admin.
  • Suspended when a published form is suspended by the admin.
• The following validations are performed before a Publish request is processed:
  • A Dialog Task that contains a Digital Form can be published only if:
    • The corresponding Digital Form is already published, or
    • The corresponding Digital Form is also selected for publishing.
  • A Digital Form that is configured to trigger a Dialog Task is published only if:
    • The corresponding Dialog Task is already published, or
    • The corresponding Dialog Task is selected for publishing.
  • While the dependencies are published together, chances are that all the dependencies might not be available at run-time, in such cases:
    • If the Dialog Task is in a published state, but the Digital Form is not in a published state this triggers:
      • The Task Failure Event and the corresponding behavior is invoked or
      • A relevant Standard Response is displayed and
      • Logged as Failed Task in Analytics.
    • Digital Form is in a published state, but the Dialog Task is not available then on Form submission, the end-user is presented with the Form’s Error Message.

Import/Export

Bot Export

• Option to export Digital Forms in In-development and Published copies are available.
• Digital Forms can be selected/deselected from the Bot Export page under the Bot Tasks category.
• Choose the option to Include dependent dialogs to export Dialog Tasks that are integrated with the selected Digital Forms to define widgets. Note that this does not include the Sub-dialog Tasks generated using Digital Forms.
• Complete information of each of the selected forms are available in the export file and this includes:
  • Fields
  • Field properties
  • Form integrations

Bot Import

• Digital Forms are included in the full and incremental import of the bot.
• For Full Import:
  • As with all other bot components, the full import replaces the entire Digital Forms and form details in the bot.
• For Incremental Import:
  • You can choose to include/exclude the Digital Forms in the import.
  • This import fully replaces the Digital Forms that are common to the import file and the bot.
  • Additional forms in the file are imported into the bot.
  • Additional forms in the bot are retained.
  • Post import, any invalid Digital Form integration details are disassociated with the corresponding forms.

Component Details

Components List

Following is a list of available components. For details on the properties of each component, see below

Component	Description	Sample
Basic
	Text Field – used for single-line input.
	Text Area – used for multi-line entry
	Number – used for numerical entries
	Radio Button – used as a selection option from a given list
	Dropdown – Used as a selection option from a given list; can be multi-select
	Checkbox – Used for multi-select option from a given list
	Date – Used for date entries, gives a date picker for the user to choose the date.
	Date & Time – Used for date & time entries, give a date and time picker for the user to choose the date and time. Use the Date component and set the Time option to yes; choose from 12- or 24-hour format
	Phone Number – Used for phone number entries, allows the user to choose the country code.
	Email – Used for email address entries, validates for xxx@uuu.com format
	Toggle – Used for switching between two values, ideal for yes/no type of inputs
	Address – Used for address entries
	URL – Used for web URL entries, validates for xxx.com format
	Range Slider – Value selection between specified min and max values; can be represented as a percentage
Advanced
	Button – Used as a clickable component to submit, or reset, or open an external URL the form. Choose from Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Ghost, or Danger.
	Label – Used to display a static text box, no action required from the user
	Protip – Used to mark important information for the end-user, no user action required.
	Note – Used to mark information for the end-user, no user action required.

Component Properties

The following are the properties that can be set for each of the components.

Note: Not all the properties are valid for all the components, refer to the property matrix for the mapping:

Component Mappings

Properties

Basic

Advanced

Dialog Node

The following mapping gives the type of entities included in the sub-dialog when it is auto-generated from a Digital Form.

Context Object

The following mapping gives the context object to capture the component value along with a sample context object.

Prefill Form

You can specify data that can be used to pre-populate the form fields. Platform will check for the availability of any form prefill information before lauching the form. If any information is available, then the corresponding fields in the form are pre-populated before presenting the form to the user. The values can be static or from a context object.

You can specify pre-fill form data using the following context object: context.prefillForms.
You can use the following in Javascript to populate the above-mentioned context object:

context.prefillForms = {
  <form_name>: {
     fields: {
        <form_field1>: "<value1>",
        <form_field2>: <context.session.....>,
        <form_array_field2>: [
             <array_value1&gt,
             <array_value2&gt,
        ],
     },
  },
};

Limitations

• Digital Forms will not work as expected on the following channels:
  • Amazon Alexa
  • Cisco Jabber
  • Google Assistant
  • IVR Voice
  • Twilio Voice

  You are advised to choose the Conversation Experience for these channels.

• Digital Forms created in the parent bot are not inherited into Smart Bots.
• The Digital Forms functionality is not applicable for Universal Bots.