Error "Empty speech response"

Asked 27/1, 2018 at 4:28 Answered 4/3, 2019 at 13:51

Solved actions-on-google dialogflow-es google-assistant-sdk

I tried to connect DialogFlow and Actions on Google, so I created some intents, connected the services, added explicit and implicit invocations etc, but when I try the bot in the simulator https://console.actions.google.com/project/[projectId]/simulator/ it always gives me the error:

"Failed to parse Dialogflow response into AppResponse, exception thrown with message: Empty speech response"

even tough inputType was "KEYBOARD".

What I tried so far:

I did set "Response from this tab will be sent to the Google Assistant integration" in Dialog Flow (do you have to set it for every single intent?), but I don't see any extra setting for speech.
I disabled the second language, first I had also intents in German
I also turned off the Fullfillment Webhook (implemented in API v1 and then also v2) with no change
I only found this user with the same problem https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/dialogflow/xYjKlz31yW0;context-place=topicsearchin/dialogflow/Empty$20speech$20response but no resolution.
the fulfillment checkbox is checked at the intents
The bot works fine when I use it through "Try it now" on the very right in Dialog Flow or in the Web Demo https://bot.dialogflow.com/994dda8b-4849-4a8a-ab24-c0cd03b5f420

Unfortunately the docs don't say anything about this error. Any ideas?

Here a screenshot of the error on the Actions integration:

This is the full debug output:

{
  "agentToAssistantDebug": {
    "agentToAssistantJson": {
      "message": "Failed to parse Dialogflow response into AppResponse, exception thrown with message: Empty speech response",
      "apiResponse": {
        "id": "c12e1389-e887-49d4-b399-a332188ca946",
        "timestamp": "2018-01-27T03:55:30.931Z",
        "lang": "en-us",
        "result": {},
        "status": {
          "code": 200,
          "errorType": "success"
        },
        "sessionId": "1517025330705"
      }
    }
  },
  "assistantToAgentDebug": {
    "assistantToAgentJson": {
      "user": {
        "userId": "USER_ID",
        "locale": "en-US",
        "lastSeen": "2018-01-27T03:55:03Z"
      },
      "conversation": {
        "conversationId": "1517025330705",
        "type": "NEW"
      },
      "inputs": [
        {
          "intent": "actions.intent.MAIN",
          "rawInputs": [
            {
              "inputType": "KEYBOARD",
              "query": "Talk to Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "surface": {
        "capabilities": [
          {
            "name": "actions.capability.MEDIA_RESPONSE_AUDIO"
          },
          {
            "name": "actions.capability.WEB_BROWSER"
          },
          {
            "name": "actions.capability.AUDIO_OUTPUT"
          },
          {
            "name": "actions.capability.SCREEN_OUTPUT"
          }
        ]
      },
      "isInSandbox": true,
      "availableSurfaces": [
        {
          "capabilities": [
            {
              "name": "actions.capability.AUDIO_OUTPUT"
            },
            {
              "name": "actions.capability.SCREEN_OUTPUT"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    "curlCommand": "curl -v 'https://api.api.ai/api/integrations/google?token=TOKEN' -H 'Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8' -H 'Google-Actions-API-Version: 2' -H 'Authorization: AUTH_TOKEN'  -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-Cloud-Functions/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)' -X POST -d '{\"user\":{\"userId\":\"USER_ID\",\"locale\":\"en-US\",\"lastSeen\":\"2018-01-27T03:55:03Z\"},\"conversation\":{\"conversationId\":\"1517025330705\",\"type\":\"NEW\"},\"inputs\":[{\"intent\":\"actions.intent.MAIN\",\"rawInputs\":[{\"inputType\":\"KEYBOARD\",\"query\":\"Talk to Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot\"}]}],\"surface\":{\"capabilities\":[{\"name\":\"actions.capability.MEDIA_RESPONSE_AUDIO\"},{\"name\":\"actions.capability.WEB_BROWSER\"},{\"name\":\"actions.capability.AUDIO_OUTPUT\"},{\"name\":\"actions.capability.SCREEN_OUTPUT\"}]},\"isInSandbox\":true,\"availableSurfaces\":[{\"capabilities\":[{\"name\":\"actions.capability.AUDIO_OUTPUT\"},{\"name\":\"actions.capability.SCREEN_OUTPUT\"}]}]}'"
  },
  "sharedDebugInfo": [
    {
      "name": "ResponseValidation",
      "subDebugEntry": [
        {
          "debugInfo": "API Version 2: Failed to parse JSON response string with 'INVALID_ARGUMENT' error: \": Cannot find field.\".",
          "name": "UnparseableJsonResponse"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Also "debugInfo" sounds like an internal problem:

"API Version 2: Failed to parse JSON response string with 'INVALID_ARGUMENT' error: \": Cannot find field.\"."

Here a screenshot of the welcome intent:

ps. It took me AGES to figure out, what

"Query pattern is missing for custom intent"

means - so I just document it here: In Dialog Flow - Intent - "User says" you have to DOUBLE CLICK on a word in the text input field when you want to set it as query parameter - which seems to be required for Actions on Google.

Phosphorous answered 27/1, 2018 at 4:28 Comment(6)

Can you update your question to include a screen shot of the welcome Intent? Do you have the fulfillment checkbox checked for the Intent? If so, can you also update the question to include the JSON that you are returning from the webhook and what Dialogflow version you're using? – Rhodes 27/1, 2018 at 5:14

As the one who posted as per your link, I had a different error message ('Cannot find field') than you - see also #48158917 And this was thanks to @Rhodes who is kind enough to add a comment above. – Pancreatin 27/1, 2018 at 18:28

I've seen this error when a failure happens on my webhook and I never get to return any text, or there's some other text issue. – Mcnamee 27/1, 2018 at 18:55

@prisoner I updated my question (screenshots and what I tried). The problem also occurs when I disable the Fulfillment webhook. I also tried v1 and v2, – Phosphorous 29/1, 2018 at 21:12

Ok, good. Can you also include a screenshot that includes having the "Response -> Default" tab selected? When you had the fulfillment webhook configured, what was the JSON you were sending back? – Rhodes 29/1, 2018 at 21:45

@Rhodes in the "Response -> Default" secion I just have some texts - the default texts from Dialog Flow itself. As I said before, the webhook is working within Dialog Flow itself. imgur.com/a/Ri3zu In V1 I respond with JSON {"speech":"blabla", "displayText":"blabla"} which works fine in Dialog Flow e.g. in the Web Demo bot.dialogflow.com/994dda8b-4849-4a8a-ab24-c0cd03b5f420 – Phosphorous 29/1, 2018 at 22:16

-5

The Actions on Google support helped me fix this problem:

I needed to add a text as Default Response to the intent used for Explicit Invocation.

Phosphorous answered 30/1, 2018 at 14:14 Comment(3)

what did that look like? – Colicweed 4/6, 2018 at 14:51

Yes. That got rid of the error. But it always gives the default response and not the custom msg from my index.js – Jackstraws 11/6, 2018 at 15:35

please add the full response to your question where did you add it and what was the field name that you added – Vocal 6/7, 2018 at 10:55

This happened to me. If this happens for an Intent you just added in the Dialogflow console and you are using Webhook fulfillment for the action, check the intent's fulfillment settings and ensure that the Webhook fulfillment slider is on. Evidently new intents don't automatically get webhook fulfillment: you have to opt each one in piecemeal (or at least, that was my experience).

Consumedly answered 20/8, 2018 at 20:49 Comment(1)

I did that, however, I am still getting "empty response". This is inspite of the fact that from my webhook server running on my machine, it shows a 200 status. – Chauchaucer 1/12, 2020 at 12:4

I experienced this situation too. My problem was that I used a SimpleResponse in my fulfillment index.js without referencing to it. So the solution for me was to add SimpleResponse like this in index.js:

const {dialogflow, SimpleResponse} = require('actions-on-google');

So, always check if you aren't using any dependencies without including it in your js-file. Probably not the most common cause of the problem, but it can be.

Tightrope answered 4/3, 2019 at 13:51 Comment(0)

I got this when running through the codelabs tutorial (https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/actions-1/index.html#4) and didn't name my intent the same name as it is referenced in the webhook script:

Bonnee answered 15/2, 2019 at 19:43 Comment(0)

I came across this error when trying to develop my own WebHook. I first verified that my code was called by looking into the Nginx log, after which I knew there was a problem in my JSON output because I based my output on outdated examples.

The (up-to-date) documentation for both V1 and V2 of the API can be found here: https://dialogflow.com/docs/fulfillment/how-it-works

This example response for v2 of the dialogflow webhook API helped me to resolve this error:

{
  "payload": {
    "google": {
      "expectUserResponse": true,
      "richResponse": {
        "items": [
          {
            "simpleResponse": {
              "textToSpeech": "this is a simple response"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Source: https://github.com/dialogflow/fulfillment-webhook-json/blob/master/responses/v2/ActionsOnGoogle/RichResponses/SimpleResponse.json

You can find more examples in the official github repository linked above.

Hamster answered 18/1, 2019 at 15:13 Comment(0)

Another possibility is if you have a text response (even an empty one) like so:

Then you need to click the trash can next to the response to clear it out to use the webhook.

Bonnee answered 20/2, 2019 at 16:47 Comment(0)

-5