Building a Connector

Connectors are used to convert a Voiceflow project into a format that can be used in other platforms. To build a connector, you will need to extract the relevant data from a Voiceflow project (.vf file) and transform it into the desired format.

📘

Recommended reading

1. Voiceflow Project Data Structure: Link
2. Project API: Link

Sample Connector

Find the sample Voiceflow to Dialogflow ES exporter here. This is a starter template which you can build upon to best suit your conversation design system between Voiceflow and Dialogflow ES.

Overview

This repo contains a set of functions that allow for exporting a Dialogflow ES agent from a Voiceflow project. The process involves reading the project data, parsing the data, and then generating the Dialogflow ES agent.

Usage

Create a Voiceflow project that has intent events and output steps following it (speak or text steps).
Export the Voiceflow project as a .vf file.

You can leave this file where convenient (~/Desktop, ~/Downloads, ~/Documents, etc.).

Node.js and Yarn are required.

On the root level of this repository,

1. Run yarn install to install the dependencies
2. Run yarn build to compile the tool
3. Run yarn start [PATH TO FILE], or yarn start to convert a project.vf file stored in this directory

[PATH TO FILE] is where the .vf file was saved earlier.
If the file was called project.vf was on my Desktop, it would be yarn start ~/Desktop/project.vf

This will produce a .zip file with the same name (ex. project.vf -> project.zip).
This file contains a DFES export containing entities, intents, and their responses.

Files

index.ts

This file is the main entry point for the script. It reads the project data, parses it, and generates the Dialogflow agent.

intent.ts

This file contains functions related to converting Voiceflow intents to Dialogflow intents.

types.ts

This file contains type definitions used throughout the project.

diagram.ts

This file contains functions related to reading and processing the Voiceflow diagram.

entity.ts

This file contains a mapping of Voiceflow entities to Dialogflow entities.

zip.ts

This file contains functions related to generating the zip file containing the Dialogflow intents.

utils.ts

This file contains utility functions used throughout the project.

Noteworthy functions

main()

The main function of the project. It reads the JSON file, converts the Voiceflow intents and entities into their Dialogflow ES equivalents, and then creates a Dialogflow ES agent using these converted intents and entities.

voiceflowToDFESIntent()

This function converts a Voiceflow intent into its Dialogflow ES equivalent.

generateDFESUtterancesForIntent()

This function generates Dialogflow ES utterances for a given Voiceflow intent.

voiceflowToDFESEntity()

This function converts a Voiceflow entity into its Dialogflow ES equivalent.

getDFESSlotType()

This function returns the Dialogflow ES slot type for a given Voiceflow slot.

sanitizeResourceName()

This function sanitizes a resource name to remove any invalid characters.