This article gives you an overview of what Conditional Blocks are and how to set it up with examples.

What are Conditional Blocks?

Conditional Blocks are the way to personalize messages in your dialogue flows based on a certain condition, or in this case, parameter. How it works is that we set a parameter to be checked, as well as conditions that check for one or more parameter values based on the selected operator.

Example

In the example above, we are sending different messages to customers based on their location.

To set this up:

Add "Get Visitor Info" action in Settings > Actions, in Ultimate's Dashboard.
Add a conditional block in the dialogue flow of the intent of your choice and enter the parameter you want to use. We are using Country in this example.
Create different conditional paths by adding conditions. In the example above we have Germany and Japan as the conditions using operator Is, and a fallback path using operator Else.
- You can also add another condition right after the other to check for other parameters to make your messages more sophisticated. For example device type.

❗ Note that the system checks the conditions from left to right - just like other parts of our Dialogue Builder. Which is why the fallback condition, or the broadest condition you have, should always be on the furthest right.

Parameters

Parameters can come from three sources:

CRM platform
Session data
Backend integration

CRM platform

CRM platforms typically store chat visitor information such as name, email, location, etc. This information can be fetched from your CRM platform and saved as parameters to use for Conditional Blocks.

To fetch the information from your CRM platform, add an action to get visitor information on the Chat Started event. This means the information will be collected for every new conversation and applied to all dialogues in your bot.

Session data

Session data refers to the information chat visitors offer during a chat session with the Virtual Agent. At almost every point in any dialogue flow, as well as any reply, you can create custom actions to fetch session data and save it as a parameter.

Content Entities are considered session data params as well and the name of each content entity is a parameter. Any data captured via content entities is stored as session data until two hours after chat inactivity.

Backend integration

This means if you have custom API integration built with us, the bot can fetch any information from your back office system to create personalized dialogues flow based on your needs.

To learn more, get in touch with your Customer Success Manager or submit a request.

Operators

is / is not - Use this for single values. e.g. Country is Germany
in / not in - Use this for multiple values, separated by comma. This acts as an OR condition. e.g. Country in Germany, Japan, Finland
includes / doesn't include - Use this for arrays of values.
exists - Use this to check if a parameter exists in the session. e.g. Email Exists.
does not exist - This is triggered when the value expected for the parameter is empty. e.g. country: '' , null or completely undefined.
starts with / doesn't start with - Use this for single string values. e.g. Country starts with united
Else - The fallback. This should always be added as the last condition.

Parameter values

Each parameter can carry none, one or more values. Meaning for parameter Country, the values could be:

None - , null
One - Germany
Many - Germany, Japan, Finland

It's important to understand what are the possible scenarios when outlining the conditional blocks, especially if you are using API-returned values.