Botframework-solutions: Skill A dialog doesn't end and hence doesn't go to "Skill B" or back to "VA" after upgrading to "4.7.0"

[Edwardfelix08]

What project is affected?

VA and Skill

What language is this in?

Type Script

What happens?

The context inside the skill doesn't get cleared inside a skill and hence the control remains inside the skill and doesn't come back to VA in an VA-Skill Architect Bot.
This results into, the VA is able to identify the right Skill intent but it is not able to call the Skills's or the dialogs in the VA.

What are the steps to reproduce this issue?

Deploy the sample
VA using the "botbuilder": "^4.7.0" or the latest versions
Skill using "botbuilder-skills": "^4.4.9", using the typescript bot sdk.

What were you expecting to happen?

When the Skill A dialogs ends the bot must be able to end the conversation and clear the context to call the next requested dialog of VA or the other **Skill B'.

[VictorGrycuk]

Hi @Edwardfelix08!

We will look into this and get back at you.

[VictorGrycuk]

Hi @Edwardfelix08,

We were able to reproduce your scenario by using the BotBuilder Skill Sample and Sample Assistant in the master branch. We also tried the same steps using the next branch and the issue was not found.

To confirm whether the control was being given back to the assistant or not after the execution of the skill, we added a second sample skill and tried to call it after the execution of the first skill.

1. Deploy a Sample Virtual Assistant
2. Deploy a Sample Skill
3. Create a Sample Skill, but make sure to use different utterances, questions, and answers to difference it from the first skills, such as:
   
   
   
   • SampleResponses.json
   
   
   • sampleSkill.lu
   
   
4. After the Virtual Assistant and Skills are deployed, start them and execute the run sample dialog utterance of the first skill.
5. After completing the waterfall dialog, the control will not be given back to the Virtual Assistant. Even sending the utterance for the second skill will not work.

As can be seen in the image below, we interacted with the first skill and then tried to execute the second one (with the utterance alternative) but it was not successful.

Also, the complete event of the assistant was not reached.

We tried the same steps using the next branch, and on this branch the control was indeed given back to the Virtual Assistant:

As seen in the image above, we interacted with the first Sample Skill, and after its completion we run the second Sample Skill (again, denoted with the utterance alternative), and it was executed successfully.

Note: To use the next branch, it is necessary to build the BotBuilder Solutions and BotBuilder Skills locally, and update the package.json of both the Virtual Assistant and Skill to use the local .tgz files, as they are not released yet.

Could you please confirm us that this is the behavior that you encountered?

[Edwardfelix08]

Hi @VictorGrycuk,
Thanks for replying to us.

Could you please confirm us that this is the behavior that you encountered?
Yes it the same behavior which we encountered, and we have not tried to use the next branch.

When can we expect to this issue been resolved.

Thanks,
Edward

[VictorGrycuk]

Hi @Edwardfelix08,
The next branch has been merged with the master branch.

Please test again with the newly implemented changes and let us know if the issue persist

[marawanshalaby]

hey @VictorGrycuk , does the 4.7.2 release include this fix already or should we still build from source?

[VictorGrycuk]

Hi @marawanshalaby,

The problem has been fixed on the master branch of BotBuilder Solutions (not in [email protected]), you will have to build from source.

[marawanshalaby]

hey @VictorGrycuk , was the fix related to the change from handoff -> EndOfConversation? Because that's the only change we had to do on our skill side (without building anything from source) and it works now:

The "Hello" message is a message generated by the skill, then we send the EndOfConversation activity from the skill which terminates the skill on the VA side and then we are back interacting directly with the VA

[Edwardfelix08]

Hi @VictorGrycuk, When can we expect this to be released because we are highly dependent on this update.
We will try it out with the master branch and see if it's working fine.

Thanks,
Edward

[VictorGrycuk]

Hi @marawanshalaby,

This was solved with the modifications that were introduced with the merge of the next branch, specifically on the PR #2842 Parity to release 0.6Beta.

This PR replaced EndOfConversation for Handoff:

Prior to this PR, the Skill's mainDialog was sending a Handoff, but this caused the Virtual Assistant to throw an exception to unknown activity type:

[marawanshalaby]

hi @VictorGrycuk understood, thank you very much