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Intro to the Voiceflow Developer Platform

Voiceflow is a no-code development platform that helps Conversational AI teams design, test, build and deploy AI Assistants using a powerful, collaborative graphic interface.

In addition to Voiceflow's no-code interface, we have exposed several APIs that allow for creation of custom workflows and solutions.

APIs

Voiceflow's APIs allow teams to build custom Solutions on-top of Voiceflow . All currently open APIs can be found on our API Reference page (API Reference).

Popular APIs include:

• Dialog API: run Assistant state management via API
• Project API: access Assistant content programmatically
• Analytics API: retrieve Assistant usage data programmatically

Guides

Guides exist to help solve particular workflow problems, such as Connecting with a Custom NLU.

How Voiceflow works for Developers

Voiceflow is a collaborative, technology-agnostic Assistant creation tool that features a powerful no-code building interface. Assistants built with Voiceflow are represented by structured JSON files called .VF files.

The below Voiceflow Assistant design is an example of what is structured using the .VF JSON file.

You can find Voiceflow's Creator tool documentation here.

Improve design-developer hand-off

Assistants built on Voiceflow effectively act as a headless CMS as the Assistant content and structure can be pulled at any moment using the Project API.

For teams with large custom Assistants on legacy NLU platforms, the design-development hand-off can be a pain due to design work being done with spreadsheets and misc flowcharts.

Voiceflow allows non-technical team-members to design, test and iterate on Assistant content while design work is represented in structured JSON for technical team-members to work with. This allows developers to programmatically pull design work into the development workflow in a structure way.

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Custom actions

You can add Custom Actions to Voiceflow's design canvas for your non-technical team-members to use and represent any functionality not natively represented in Voiceflow.

Conversation state management

Assistants built on Voiceflow offer a Dialog API which manages conversation state at runtime.

This enables developers to offload the mundane work of managing dialog state machines to the designer who creates and maintains the conversation logic with Voiceflow's graphic design interface. Developers can use the Dialog API for production use cases, or custom interface prototypes, where Voiceflow is hidden in the background.

Private cloud or premises Dialog Manager deployments are available upon request. The Dialog API can use Voiceflow's NLU, or your own 3rd party or custom NLU to resolve intents.

Offload development work

Developers can build Adapters to adapt Voiceflow's JSON structure on Import and Export to that of their current dialog manager and/or NLU platform. Once completed, development work can be offloaded to non-technical team-members who can push updates using Voiceflow's collaborative design interface (with proper permissions).

Adapters can be built for any platform as long as it supports the ingestion of structured data. This means Voiceflow can be used as a collaborative design-tool ontop of any development stack, including custom dialog managers and 3rd party NLU vendors.

Working with Voiceflow's APIs

Once an Assistant has been built on Voiceflow, there are two options for deployment:

1. Dialog API: run the Assistant's state management, and NLU through Voiceflow's Dialog API
2. Project API: pull content from the Assistant design by API, effectively using Voiceflow as a CMS

Alternatively, Voiceflow offers one-click integrations with many channels that allow for no or low-code deployment options. These are called Channel Integrations.