🖼️Modalities integration

From start to finish, set up a chat-based bot with custom modalities in minutes with NLX's Dialog Studio

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you completed the Chat assistant guide or have the following:

Checklist

You'll complete the following to successfully use a custom modality:


Step 1: Set up a Modality

Est. time to complete: ~1 minute

Modalities allow for information to be transmitted to a user that goes beyond a standard bot message. Images, audio, structured text, haptic signals, videos, and more can be modalities you may want to provide users during conversation with your AI assistant.

  • Select Settings from workspace menu > Choose Modalities tab

  • Select + Add modality

  • Enter "Video" as the name name

  • Select Schema and change the Type to Object

  • Select Properties and then + Add property

  • Enter "src" as the Field name

  • Click Create modality


Est. time to complete: ~1 minute

Navigate to one of the intents you created (see Prerequisites), then select the API conversation flow. You'll enable the Video modality you created, on an end node, and provide it with a video URL.

  • Select Intents from workspace menu > Choose one of the intents linked to your bot

  • Select the API flow card > Click on one of the end nodes

  • Select Add functionality > Choose Modalities

  • Toggle the Enable to on

  • Enter dQw4w9WgXcQ as the value for "src"

  • Click Save

🧠 Looking for more? See Construct flows


Step 3: Deploy changes

Est. time to complete: ~5 minutes

Now that you added the modality to the flow, we need to deploy those changes to your bot.

  • Click Deployment tab of bot > Select Create or Review & build

  • Wait for validation to complete > Select Create build*

  • When satisfied with a successful build, click Deploy

*After a build status appears as 🟢 Built, you may use the Test feature to test the conversation with your bot using the latest build.

🔧 Need to troubleshoot your build? See how to troubleshoot build errors


Step 4: Set up a webpage

Est. time to complete: ~10 minutes

Using the Chat SDK, you can quickly build an HTML page to test out the Video modality. You'll need to copy the bot URL and API key from the bot deployment tab.

  • Picking up from Step 3, click on the Details link next to Deployed

  • Under Setup instructions, expand the API row

  • Copy the Bot URL and API key

  • Copy the HTML file below and replace REPLACE_WITH_BOT_URL and REPLACE_WITH_API_KEY with the values you just copied

  • Save the HTML file you just edited and serve the HTML file with your preferred command line tool such as serve

<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>NLX Widget Sample HTML</title>
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  </head>
  <body>
    <script defer src="https://unpkg.com/@nlxai/chat-widget/lib/index.umd.js"></script>
    <script defer src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/htm/3.1.1/htm.js" integrity="sha512-RilD4H0wcNNxG2GvB+L1LRXCntT0zgRvRLnmGu+e9wWaLKGkPifz3Ozb6+WPsyEkTBLw6zWCwwEjs9JLL1KIHg==" crossorigin="anonymous" referrerpolicy="no-referrer"></script>
    <script>
      window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", () => {
        // EMBEDDABLE COMPONENT SETUP
        // Destructure dependencies
        const React = nlxai.chatWidget.React;
        const useConversationHandler = nlxai.chatWidget.useConversationHandler;

        // Use the https://github.com/developit/htm package as a JSX alternative
        const html = htm.bind(React.createElement);
 
        Video = ({ data }) => {
          const videoSrc = `https://www.youtube.com/embed/${data.src}`;
          return html`
            <iframe
              width="264"
              height="160"
              src=${videoSrc}
              allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
              allowFullScreen
            ></iframe>`;
        };

        const widget = nlxai.chatWidget.create({
          config: {
            botUrl: "REPLACE_WITH_BOT_URL",
            headers: {
              "nlx-api-key": "REPLACE_WITH_API_KEY"
            },
            languageCode: "en-US"
          },
          titleBar: {
            "title": "Modalities"
          },
          // CUSTOM BEHAVIOR SNIPPET
          onExpand: (conversationHandler) => {
            const checkMessages = (messages) => {
              if (messages.length === 0) {
                conversationHandler.sendWelcomeIntent();
              }
              conversationHandler.unsubscribe(checkMessages);
            };
            conversationHandler.subscribe(checkMessages);
          },
          customModalities: { Video },
          // CUSTOM BEHAVIOR SNIPPET END
          theme: {
            "primaryColor": "#2663da",
            "darkMessageColor": "#2663da",
            "lightMessageColor": "#EFEFEF",
            "white": "#FFFFFF",
            "fontFamily": "-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, \"Segoe UI\", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, \"Helvetica Neue\", sans-serif",
            "spacing": 12,
            "borderRadius": 8,
            "chatWindowMaxHeight": 640
          }
        });
      });
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Step 5: Test the modality

Finally, to test the modality you will have to either host your HTML file or serve it locally using a command line tool like serve. Once you can access the page, click on the chat widget at the bottom right of the page and converse with your bot until you reach the node in the conversation where you set the modality.

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