Conversation Transformer

1. Overview

Transformers transforms the previous xMessage from the user to one that needs to be sent next. It is essentially a microservice that based on the previous user action, returns a new xMessage that will then be shown to the user. This also enables conversion from one type

All inbound messages pass through a transformer. If a transformer is not assigned, then a null transformer is assigned to the xMessage. Since the current implementation of MessageRosa is only in Java, currently there is a limitation on the number of languages you can build the transformer on which right now is just Java.

Simply put a transformer looks something like this

1.1 Responsibilities

  • Acts as a state machine and converts messages from one state to another.
  • Used to transform messages
  • Applies conversational logic (constraints or input format)

1.2 List of transformers

  • Form transformer
  • Menu transformer
  • PDF transformer

2. Creating your own Transformer

All transformers are named as <Action>Transformer; for example PDFTransformer will create generate a PDF from the previous XMessage and convert it to an XMessage. Adapters should extend TransformerProvider. Thus, it needs to implement the following methods:

  • public XMessage transform(XMessage nextMsg) //Takes in XMessage and return the next message.

All transformers with the above implementation will be valid. An example adapter can be found here.

3. Properties of a transformer

  • Transformers could call external services and wait for resposes from them to process message. These transformers are called call-only transformer. An example of this transformer is the PDF service transformer which calls the PDF service to check the status of queue of previous message and responds with a response containing PDF for the user.
  • All transformers need to be registered. All unregistered transformers will not be acted upon. This is what essentially adds a topic to broker on which the messages are pushed. Also this requires some basic config of the max time a transformer could take to process the message.
  • Scaling of transformers is done horizontally but the broker needs to know the number so tha partitions can be reconfigured.
  • Since it's part of a state machine. If the transformer is stuck it needs communicate to the Orchestrator to that it can be escalate.

4. FAQs

To be updated based on incoming feedback. Feel free to write into tech@samagragovernance.in in case you have questions, feedback or want to know more!

Coming Soon

  • RASA based transformer.