Conversation Trace

Conversation Trace is a powerful tool that allows you to track and analyze every flow and step the bot follows when interacting with users. By providing a detailed, tree-structured view of all actions—both visible and silent—such as GPT prompts, actions, and integration tasks, Conversation Trace offers a deep understanding of how the bot processes user requests.

This tool is invaluable for optimizing bot performance, as it helps you identify issues, troubleshoot effectively, and gain insights into the bot’s decision-making process throughout a conversation.

Note:  This feature is available in DRUID 7.17 and higher and requires Connector Host Upgrade.

Benefits of Using Conversation Trace

  • Enhanced Transparency: Visualize both user-facing and behind-the-scenes steps to understand how each bot decision is made. This allows you to track the exact path the bot takes to generate a response.
  • Visibility into Silent Actions: Gain insight into actions the bot takes behind the scenes, such as API calls or integrations, which are often crucial for diagnosing problems.
  • Faster Debugging: Centralized access to flow logs and detailed timestamps speeds up troubleshooting and issue resolution.
  • Nearly Real-Time Insights: Use insights from the conversation trace to adjust flows, reduce response time gaps, and improve bot performance.
  • Seamless Integration: Debugging tools, logs, and flow diagrams work together, streamlining the process of managing and optimizing your bot.
Note:  Conversation Trace is not real-time. It is based on conversation history, which may be delayed by 20 seconds to 1 minute, depending on the DRUID environment you are using.

How to Access the Conversation Trace

To view the Conversation Trace for a specific conversation:

  1. Go to Conversation History.
  2. Select Group by conversation.
  3. Click the desired conversation. By default, the Conversation Transcript appears.
  4. To switch to the trace, select the Conversation Trace tab.

The trace uses dedicated icons and colors, making it easy to track each flow, step and action:

You can expand or collapse the conversation trace as suits your needs.

Key Features of Conversation Trace

  • Tree-View Visualization: The Conversation Trace presents a clear tree view of each step and flow, using dedicated icons and colors for easy navigation.

  • Timestamps and Countdown: Each step card shows the time taken for the bot to move from one step to the next. A countdown starts at 0.0 seconds immediately after the user’s question, allowing you to assess the timing of each interaction.

  • Total Runtime: At the end of the conversation (or above the next user question), you can view the total runtime, which shows how much time elapsed between the user’s question and the bot’s response. This helps you optimize response times and address any latency issues.

Debugging Flow Steps Using the Flow Diagram

The Conversation Trace integrates seamlessly with the Flow diagram, allowing you to debug flow steps with ease:

  1. In the Conversation Trace, click the Details icon next to the step.

  2. The Flow log will appear. Click on the flow step to open the Flow debugging view in a new browser window.

    3. The left pane contains debugging tools, and the right pane displays the flow diagram.

  3. Click on the Trace tab to view the conversation trace. The trace focuses on the flow step you selected, with the conversation path marked by green arrows.

The conversation trace helps you analyze:

  • Whether the steps executed successfully.
  • Timestamps and countdowns for each flow step and integration.
  • Detailed logs for flow steps and integrations, accessible by clicking the corresponding Details icon.

Adjusting Flow Steps Based on Conversation Trace

With the Conversation Trace, you can easily track what happened during a conversation. Use the Flow diagram mode for more detailed information, then adjust the flow step configurations in the right-side editor to fit your needs.

Once you identify issues or areas for improvement, you can easily update flow steps. Follow these steps:

  1. Open the chat window by clicking the chat icon in the Actions menu.
  2. Type user messages and wait 20 seconds to 1 minute, depending on your DRUID environment.
  3. Click the refresh icon in the Debugging tools pane.
  4. Click the desired step to see the flow in the Flow diagram.
  5. Close the chat window.
  6. Make the necessary flow steps updates.
  7. Continue reviewing the conversation trace and the flow diagram.

Viewing Detailed Conversation Insights

For more comprehensive insights into chat activity, in the Debugging pane, click the Insights tab.

This tab provides an overview of the conversation, including data from the ChatActivityData entity and a list of activity events triggered during the chat.