The document discusses best practices for building high-quality apps for the Google Assistant using Dialogflow. It covers topics such as defining intents, testing in simulators, setting up Actions on Google integration, and avoiding antipatterns. The presentation emphasizes following guidelines, such as giving greetings and farewells, handling errors properly, and avoiding leaving the microphone open without a prompt.

1. Building High-Quality Apps for
Google Assistant
Peter Friese
Developer Advocate, Google
@peterfriese

2. Building High-Quality Apps for Google Assistant
Hello and welcome to this
session on "Building high
quality apps for the Google
Assistant"!

3. Building High-Quality Apps for Google Assistant
Hello and welcome to this
session on "Building high
quality apps for the Google
Assistant"!
I am the Google Assistant, and I could not be more
excited to be here with you today to tell you
everything about Actions on Google and Dialogflow.

4. Building High-Quality Apps for Google Assistant
I am the Google Assistant, and I could not be more
excited to be here with you today to tell you
everything about Actions on Google and Dialogflow.
But first, let me introduce my assistant: Peter
Friese!

5. Peter, why don't you introduce yourself?
Building High-Quality Apps for Google Assistant
But first, let me introduce my assistant: Peter
Friese!
Let’s give him a warm round of applause!

6. Peter, why don't you introduce yourself?
Building High-Quality Apps for Google Assistant
…

7. Peter, why don't you introduce yourself?
Building High-Quality Apps for Google Assistant
…
Ich spreche viele verschiedene Sprachen!

8. Meet the Assistant
Ask it questions. Tell it to do things. It’s your own
personal Google, always ready to help

9. Ready to
help across
400M+ devices

10. Built on cutting edge Google tech
Payments
Location & Context awareness
Knowledge Graph
Identity
Structured Data Markup
Natural Language Understanding
Machine Learning
Individual speech recognition

11. Voice Typing Tap Google Lens

12. A growing
audience:
Devices

13. A growing
audience:
Languages
JapaneseGerman
FR French CA French
Korean
UK English AU English CA English
US English
Italian Spanish BR Portuguese
LATAM Spanish IN English
Russian
Hindi Thai
Indonesian
Danish
Norwegian
Swedish Dutch

14. UI options
enable new
use cases

15. Building for the Google Assistant
Building an app in less than 5 minutes

16. Demo!

17. How does it work?

18. Step 1: Create a new project

19. Step 1: Create a new project

20. Step 1: Create a new project

21. Step 2: Define Intents

22. Step 2: Define Intents

23. Step 2: Define Intents

24. Step 2: Define Intents

25. Step 3: Test in simulator

26. Step 3: Test in Dialogflow simulator

27. Step 4: Set up Actions on Google Integration

28. Step 4: Set up Actions on Google Integration

29. Step 5: Test in Actions on Google Simulator

30. Step 5: Test on Device

31. Demo!

32. • New Intent: “I am hungry”
• Return predefined answers
• Add Entities for kinds of food
Demo!

33. Antipatterns

35. How can we avoid antipatterns?

36. ^
KEEP
CALM
AND
READ THE
FANTASTIC
MANUAL

37. Design Resources: g.co/dev/ActionsDesign

38. Focus on the user and all
else will follow.
Ten Things
https://www.google.com/about/philosophy.html

39. Think outside the box

40. ✘ ✔
Think outside the box … literally

41. Best Practices

42. Best Practices
for Google
Assistant
apps
Must-do
Recommended
Additional

43. • Invocation Name
• Greeting / Exit
• Error Handling
• Repeating
• The open mic issue
Best Practices - Must Do

44. Invocation Name
OK Google, talk to …
OK Google, speak to …
OK Google, ask … to …
Explicit triggers
OK Google, order a … Implicit triggers

45. Invocation Name - Explicit triggers
Invocation name
At least two words

46. Invocation Name - Implicit triggers
Choose intents

47. Greetings - Don’t be a bore!
Hello, and welcome to …
Hello! This is … ! Glad to see you.
Welcome to …
These will be
cycled

48. Greetings - Return Visitors
Hello, and welcome to Do It Already. I can tell you about your
due tasks or add a new task to the list. What would you like to
do?
Welcome back to Do It Already! You’ve got three due tasks
today. Here is the first one:
“Deliver a kick-ass talk at MobileTechCon.”
Now get cracking!

49. Greetings - Return Visitors
function welcome(app: DialogflowApp) {
if (app.getLastSeen()) {
app.ask("Welcome back to Do It Already!")
}
else {
app.ask(strings.welcome())
}
}

50. Exit / Farewell
Goodbye!
Goodbye, come back soon!
actions_intent_CANCEL

51. Error Handling
What’s the priority for this task?
…
⚡ No input
What’s the priority for this task?
Gobbledygook
⚡ No match

52. Error Handling
What’s the priority for this task?
…
What’s the priority for this task?
Gobbledygook
• Always be helpful
• Try to get the conversation
back on track
• Be progressively more
helpful and provide more
detail / hints
• Give up after 3 attempts

53. Error Handling - Strategies
Rapid reprompt • “What was that?”
• “Say that again?”
Reframe the question • “What time is this for” —> “Sorry, what time?”
• “For when?” —> “What time would you like to
book this for?
Ask another way • “If it helps, we can do this one piece at a time.”
Be ready for questions
about the question
• “I have your name and email from your account,
so now all I need is your phone number.”
Be proactive • I could put you down for 6 for now, does that
work?
• Do you want to finish this later?

54. Replay information at the user’s request
It seems like the flight to San
Francisco is the 7:05am flight via
London Heathrow. Would you like
to book it now?
Sorry, can you say that again?

55. Replay information
It seems like the flight to San
Francisco is the 7:05am flight via
London Heathrow. Would you like
to book it now?
Sorry, can you say that again?
• Keep track of the last
messages the app sent
• Implement a repeat intent
• Prefix the last message
with a randomised repeat
string

56. Replay information
const REPEAT_PREFIX: [
“Sorry, I said “,
“Let me repeat that.”
];
function repeat (app) {
let repeatPrefix = promptFetch.getRepeatPrefix();
app.ask(repeatPrefix + app.data.lastPrompt,
app.data.lastNoInputPrompts);
}

57. The open microphone issue

58. The open microphone issue
function areWeThereYet(app) {
const response = “We will arrive very soon. Promised.”
app.ask(response);
}
function quit(app) {
const response = “It has been nice talking with you.”
app.tell(response);
}
Microphone closed
Microphone open No prompt 😱

59. The open microphone issue
app.ask();
app.tell();
The conversation will go on, and your
message needs to end with a prompt
The conversation will end after
this turn. Don’t include a prompt.

60. • Support multiple languages
• Use Rich Responses
Best practices - Recommended

61. Support multiple languages

62. Use Rich Responses
Speech bubble

63. Use Rich Responses
Suggestion chips

64. Use Rich Responses
Basic cards

65. Use Rich Responses
Carousel

66. Use Rich Responses
List

67. • Use follow-up intents
• Check out the sample agents
Dialogflow-specific

68. Title TextDo not misuse Entities
✘
✘

69. Title TextUse Follow-up Intents instead
✔

70. Title TextRe-use ready solutions

71. Key take-aways
Google Assistant is more
than just smart speakers
Building Assistant Actions is
really easy with Dialogflow
Close the mic, Dude!
Read the docs and follow
our guidelines

72. Thank you!
Peter Friese
Developer Advocate, Google
@peterfriese

73. How to stay in touch
dialogflow.com/
github.com/dialogflow
tag: dialogflow
Actions on Google actions.google.com
github.com/actions-on-google
tag: actions-on-google
Peter Friese
Developer Advocate, Google
@peterfriese

74. The End.