Dialogflow Chatbot: A Quick Beginner’s Guide

Intents

An intent represents what the user wants.

Example:

1. “Book a ticket” → BookTicketIntent
2. “What’s the weather?” → WeatherIntent

Entities

Entities extract specific information from user messages.

Examples:

1. Dates
2. Locations
3. Ticket types

If a user says:

“Book a flight to London tomorrow”
Dialogflow extracts:

1. Location: London
2. Date: tomorrow

Fulfillment

1. Fulfillment connects the chatbot to backend APIs or databases.
2. This is where you write server-side code (Node.js, Python, etc.) to fetch data or perform actions.

Step 1: Create a Dialogflow Agent

1. Visit the Dialogflow console
2. Create a new agent
3. Set language & timezone
4. Link Google Project

Step 2: Add Your Intents

Example intents:

1. Greeting
2. FAQ
3. Booking
4. Support Request

Provide example training phrases like:

1. “Hi”
2. “Hello”
3. “Good morning”

Dialogflow automatically learns variations.

Step 3: Add Entities

For a booking chatbot, create entities such as:

1. @location
2. @date
3. @service
4. @category

Step 4: Enable Fulfillment

Here’s a Python webhook example for Dialogflow ES using Flask:

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/webhook', methods=['POST'])
def webhook():
    req = request.get_json()
    intent = req['queryResult']['intent']['displayName']

    if intent == 'WeatherIntent':
        city = req['queryResult']['parameters'].get('geo-city')
        reply = f"The weather in {city} is sunny today."
        return jsonify({'fulfillmentText': reply})

    return jsonify({'fulfillmentText': "I'm not sure, please try again."})

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(port=5000, debug=True)

How to Connect It

1. Deploy this script (using ngrok or cloud hosting).
2. Paste the URL under Fulfillment → Webhook URL in Dialogflow.
3. Enable webhook for specific intents.

Step 5: Test and Deploy the Chatbot

Dialogflow offers a built-in test console.
Then deploy the bot to:

1. Website via Dialogflow Messenger
2. WhatsApp (Twilio)
3. Messenger
4. Slack