Have you ever want to build your action with Actions on Google but got overwhelmed with several required technologies? There are various steps in different services Actions on Google, Dialogflow, Firebase in documentation and inexperienced user could be confused. Don’t worry, I had the same problem. But as you get deeper, you’ll find that every service in this process makes sense.
- Actions on Google — developer platform that lets you extend Google Assistant with your own actions
- Dialogflow — platform for natural language understanding (NLU), which helps with building actions suitable for humans
- Firebase — development platform which gives you ability to build rich responses (besides other things) using your favorite programming language
I’ve talked about rich responses — what does this means? Using Dialogflow you can create textual responses, which suffices in many cases, but if you want something more, you must use different way.
In fact, with rich responses you can build your own responses based on your logic. In addition you can use visual components like Suggestion chips, Images and so on.
For easier start with building actions with these responses, I’ve build a project Actions on Google TypeScript template available on GitHub. Read the documentation and step by step you’ll build simple Silly Name Maker action which uses rich responses. After that, you can modify it and built your own action.
Try it now. I’ll be glad for your feedback! Issues and/or pull requests on GitHub are welcome. Thank you!
