You can create multiple versions of your agent flows and deploy them to separate serving environments.
When you edit a flow, you are editing a draft flow. At any point, you can save a draft flow as a flow version. A flow version is an immutable snapshot of your flow data and associated agent data like intents, entities, webhooks, pages, route groups, etc.
When you save a draft flow, it is deployed to the default environment. When you create specific flow versions, you can deploy them to custom environments. You can create a variety of custom environments for:
- testing
- development
- production
- etc.
In addition, you can create environment-specific webhooks, so that you can isolate your production environment from development and testing environments.
Production traffic best practices
Always use flow versions for production traffic
A draft flow is updated every time a developer on your team makes a change. It is easy to break a draft flow unintentionally, especially if multiple people have write access to the agent. In addition, a recently edited draft flow may be inconsistent with the trained model, because training may have a delay or require manual execution.
You should always use flow versions for your production traffic. Draft flows should be tested before promoting them to production versions, and you can rollback to a previous version if any problems are discovered.
Always use environment-specific webhooks
When making updates to your agent, you often have interdependent updates to your webhook code. During development and testing of these changes, you want the following:
- To test the agent updates against the webhook code updates.
- To avoid deploying your webhook code to production until you have completed testing.
Using environment-specific webhooks achieves both of these goals.
Consider possible agent errors while changing versions
If you change a flow version in your production environment while sessions are active, it may cause agent errors for some active sessions. These errors may happen if the previous and new versions are inconsistent with each other in a way that disrupts session state. Due to this, you should plan to change versions during down-time or off-peak hours.
Load a flow version to draft
At any time, you can load a flow version to draft, so it is editable and used by the default environment.
Loading a flow version to draft can update multiple resources in an agent, including agent-level resources like intents and entities. When loading a version to draft with either the console or API, you can choose whether agent-level resources will be overwritten.
Manage flow versions
To manage your flow versions:
Console
To list the current versions for a flow:
- Open the Dialogflow CX Console.
- Choose your Google Cloud project.
- Select your agent.
- Click the Manage tab.
- Click Versions.
- The agent flows are listed. Select one.
- The versions are listed for the selected flow.
The following information is displayed for each flow:
- Display name: The version display name.
- Version ID: The ID for the version.
- NLU Type: The NLU type for the flow version.
- Creation timestamp: The date and time that the version was created.
- Status: The training status. A flow version is not ready to use until the status is marked as Ready.
To create a new flow version, click the Create button and provide the Display name and Description for the version.
To load a specific flow version as the draft flow:
- Hold the pointer over a version row.
- Click the option more_vert button.
- Click the Load to draft option.
- An option is provided to overwrite agent-level data when loading.
To delete a specific flow version:
- Hold the pointer over a version row.
- Click the option more_vert button.
- Click the Delete version option.
API
See the methods for the Version
type.
Select a protocol and version for the Version reference:
Protocol | V3 | V3beta1 |
---|---|---|
REST | Version resource | Version resource |
RPC | Version interface | Version interface |
C++ | VersionsClient | Not available |
C# | VersionsClient | Not available |
Go | VersionsClient | Not available |
Java | VersionsClient | VersionsClient |
Node.js | VersionsClient | VersionsClient |
PHP | Not available | Not available |
Python | VersionsClient | VersionsClient |
Ruby | Not available | Not available |
Compare flow versions
Once you have created flow versions, you can use the compare versions tool to see a side-by-side comparison between flow versions or the draft version. To compare versions:
Console
- Hold the pointer over a version row.
- Click the option more_vert button.
- Click the Compare versions option.
- Select another flow version or draft flow for comparison.
- A side-by-side comparison is shown.
API
See the compareVersions
method for the Version
type.
Select a protocol and version for the Version reference:
Protocol | V3 | V3beta1 |
---|---|---|
REST | Version resource | Version resource |
RPC | Version interface | Version interface |
C++ | VersionsClient | Not available |
C# | VersionsClient | Not available |
Go | VersionsClient | Not available |
Java | VersionsClient | VersionsClient |
Node.js | VersionsClient | VersionsClient |
PHP | Not available | Not available |
Python | VersionsClient | VersionsClient |
Ruby | Not available | Not available |
Manage environments
To manage your agent environments:
Console
To list the current environments for an agent:
- Open the Dialogflow CX Console.
- Choose your Google Cloud project.
- Select your agent.
- Click the Manage tab.
- Click Environments.
- The agent environments are listed.
To create a new environment, click the Create button and provide information.
To select flow versions and configure an environment, click an environment and provide information.
To view editing history of an environment, click the history history button near the right side of an environment in the list.
To copy an environment resource name that includes the environment ID, click the copy content_copy button near the right side of an environment in the list.
To delete an environment, click the delete delete button near the right side of an environment in the list.
API
See the methods for the Environment
type.
Select a protocol and version for the Environment reference:
Protocol | V3 | V3beta1 |
---|---|---|
REST | Environment resource | Environment resource |
RPC | Environment interface | Environment interface |
C++ | EnvironmentsClient | Not available |
C# | EnvironmentsClient | Not available |
Go | EnvironmentsClient | Not available |
Java | EnvironmentsClient | EnvironmentsClient |
Node.js | EnvironmentsClient | EnvironmentsClient |
PHP | Not available | Not available |
Python | EnvironmentsClient | EnvironmentsClient |
Ruby | Not available | Not available |
Specify environment for session calls
Using either the console simulator or the API, you can specify an environment when making runtime session calls. If an environment is not specified, the default environment is used.
Console
When using the console simulator, select the Test agent in environment option, then select an environment.
API
To specify an environment for detectIntent
, streamingDetectIntent
,
matchIntent
, and session entity REST calls;
alter the URL by inserting environments/environment-id
between the agent
and sessions
path parameters.
For example, the following URL uses the 6db409d7-57ac-41d7-83bd-89b8768e2745
environment ID:
https://dialogflow.googleapis.com/v3/projects/my-project-id/locations/us/agents/my-agent-id/environments/6db409d7-57ac-41d7-83bd-89b8768e2745/sessions/my-session-id:detectIntent
Specify flow versions for session calls
Using either the console simulator or the API, you can specify a set of flow versions when making runtime session calls. The selected flow versions don't necessarily need to be referenced in any environment.
Console
When using the console simulator, select the Test agent with specific flow versions option, then select flow versions.
API
To specify flow versions for detectIntent
, streamingDetectIntent
,
matchIntent
, and session entity REST calls;
provide the chosen flow versions in the query_parameters.flow_versions
field of the request.