Dialogue Management headlines latest release

Voiceflow's new editors make it easier to create dynamic conversations through improved slot and intent management, prompts, and more.

🔎 To view the entire changelog for this release along with accompanying video tutorials, please visit:
Voiceflow Docs: February 4th, 2020 Release


Voiceflow users can expect to see a brand new dialogue management system with the release of our revamped editors this week. This feature introduces a standardized dialogue management interface that adheres to conventional conversational practices. This allows for the creation of truly conversational experiences while also streamlining our building process.

To learn more about what dialogue management is and why it's important when designing a VUI, check out this video from our friend at Amazon and fellow Voiceflow community member - Paul Cutsinger:

Why did we build out this feature? 

At its core, conversational design is creating a dialogue between a computer and a person in a manner that mimics natural human interaction. A major focus of our editors redesign is to encourage our users to build beyond happy paths, and instead create true conversational systems that can gather multiple pieces of information during a single response. This allows for flexible, multi-layered conversations to take place, just as they would in everyday life.

With Dialogue Management, building dynamic conversations is more intuitive than ever. Our new editors (specifically the choice and intent blocks) showcase a newly designed interface built upon the interaction model - which uses intents, slots and utterances to fulfil a user's spoken request. This enables you to collect several inputs from a user without needing to account for the order in which they give those pieces of information. Additionally, we've added slot prompts, response utterances and slot confirmations to help further qualify a user's response.

With our new slot and intent management system, you can now create and manage them more efficiency. We made it possible to create slots directly inside an 'utterance' text box (within the editor). You can also edit existing slots by opening up the variables tab in the left-hand nav.

Any changes to your slot properties are now updated across your entire project as well, so you can focus on building out the best possible voice experience rather than on tedious, repeatable tasks. You can also color code individual slots to help keep you organized.

We believe these changes will inspire genuine conversational experiences while allowing users to build in a faster, more methodical manner.

Additional changes to support our users

Intent names can now contain any character for better readability. Please be aware that they will get auto-corrected to ADC/Platform specific requirements.

The SSML editor has now been integrated within the block editor for ease-of-use. With our new drop-down menu, you can instantly create SSML tags without having to type them out. This makes it easier to build more natural-sounding conversations on the fly.


The Display Block has been simplified while still maintaining a customizable pattern. Feel free to now directly drop images such as splash screens on multi-modal devices or upload your JSON in the advanced tab to add custom functionality using APL.


We've moved account linking out of the settings menu and into the block bar (left pull-out menu) for easier access. The functionality and process at which you link 3rd party accounts to your project remain the same with an updated UI for ease-of-access.

The new combine block has been outfitted with its very own editor to allow for ease-of-access when selecting any block nested within.

Please be aware that the Choice block will now be labelled Choice (old), and will only be available within the spotlight search (spacebar hotkey). The block formerly known as the Interaction block will now be labelled as the Choice block.

Outlined above are some of the major changes implemented during this release. To view a more comprehensive list, please visit: Voiceflow Docs: February 4th, 2020 Release

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