Flow Builder — Start
In the "Start" step, you can configure how your flow will be triggered. There are four primary methods for starting the flow:
- Automatically by LLM based on flow description
- Using predicted user intents
- Based on a certain condition
- With links or calls from other flows
Flow description
The flow description serves as the default trigger mechanism. The system utilizes the flow description, ongoing conversation, and contextual cues to determine when to start a flow automatically by LLM. For this routing to work properly, it's crucial to write clear and distinct descriptions. See our guidelines on how to write concise and clear descriptions.
NLU triggers
NLU triggers allow you to use predicted user intents to start a flow. You can start the flow based on multiple user intents and configure a confidence threshold for each one. We recommend using a confidence threshold calculated by dividing 1 by the total number of intents in the model. However, it's essential to experiment with different confidence thresholds to find the optimal setting for your scenario.
Links / Calls
This section displays all the flows where your current flow is linked or called from, so you can see the specific cases in which it will be started. You can go to each of these parent flows to remove those links if needed.
Flow guards
Flow guards allow you to set certain conditions for starting a flow. By default, there are no flow guards, but you can set either of the following two types:
When the "Start the flow exclusively via 'Link' or 'Call a flow and return'" setting is enabled, the flow can only be started through linking or calling from other flows.
The "Start the flow only if specific conditions are met" allows you to set specific conditions under which a flow can be started. For example, the flow will only be initiated if the user is authenticated and their email is verified.
If the flow has active Links/Calls and NLU triggers, the flow guard can only be triggered after these have been executed. The order of execution for flow triggers and guards is as follows:
- Direct links/calls to the flow are executed first.
- NLU triggers go next: Specific intent trigger messages, such as
/initialize_conversation, will "force start" a flow for a targeted intent right after links. - Flow guards follow.
- Flow description is referenced last in the execution order.