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As a Flow Studio designer, you would want the user to fill an HTML form, or ask for the user to log-in, or send a carousel while executing the Flow studio. In such cases, you can use the Custom Control in the Flow Studio to literally come out of the Flow Studio flow and execute your business logic using a function node in the Experience Designer.

If you want to continue the Flow Studio flow after executing the Custom Control, you have to connect the output from the function node to the Flow Manager node in the Experience Designer as shown in the screenshot below.

When execution reaches a Flow Studio Flow's Custom control, Orbita directs the response to the 3rd pin of the Flow Manager node in Experience Designer. (See Flow Manager Node documentation for more information.)

When you drag the Custom control to the Flow Studio canvas, you can see a name field and the control's ID. In Experience Designer, developers can write code that executes when the Custom control is reached.

As a Flow Studio designer, you must make a note of the Custom control's ID and the Name displayed on the dialog.

The value of the control ID and Name are available in the msg object atmsg.payload.session.attributes.orbitaSession.flowInfo.controlId and msg.payload.session.attributes.orbitaSession.flowInfo.controlName respectively.

Using Custom Control ID for hook data

Below is a sample script evaluating the Custom control ID and dispatching accordingly.

var controlId = msg.payload.session.attributes.orbitaSession.flowInfo.controlId;
switch(controlId) 
{
    case "727728496933425673":
         return [msg, null];
    case "697728492533472789":
         return [null, msg];
// etc
}

This process can be used to perform a simple calculation, or dispatch control to an entirely separate Flow Studio Flow or survey.

See the following video for a detailed explanation.

Using a Custom Control Name for hook data

You can also configure your logic for a Custom Control based on its Name.

A Hook event lets you use the name of the Custom Control (in the Flow studio) to call whichever function is registered with that name in Experience Designer.

You can use the Hook events if you have reusable functions in your conversation flow.

Setting up Hook Event

  1. In Experience Designer, design a flow as shown.

  2. The Hook-Data function node contains the below code to enable the hook to fire the custom logic based on the Custom Control Name.

    try {
        const _ = global.get('lodash');
            controlId = msg.payload.session.attributes.orbitaSession.flowInfo.controlId,
            controlName = msg.payload.session.attributes.orbitaSession.flowInfo.controlName,
            hookName = controlName.indexOf(":") > - 1 ? controlName.substr(0, controlName.indexOf(":")) : controlName,
            args = controlName.indexOf(":") > -1 ?
                [msg,
                 ...controlName.substr(controlName.indexOf(":") + 1).split("|")
                    .map(arg => arg.trim())
                    .filter(arg => !!arg)
                    .map(arg => arg === "null" ? null : arg)] :
                [msg];
        msg.payload.externalHook = {
            data: hookName
        }
        if (hookName) {
            const hook = global.get("hooks")[hookName];
    
            msg.hookResult = {
                hookFound: !!hook
            };
            
            
            if (hook) {
                hook.apply(null, args);
            } else {
                msg.hookResult.executionSuccess = false;
                msg.hookResult.error = `Could not find hook '${hookName}'`;
            
                node.warn(`Could not find hook '${hookName}'`);
            
                return msg;
            }
        }
        
    } catch (error) {
        msg.hookResult.executionSuccess = false;
        msg.hookResult.error = error;
        
        node.warn(`Error executing hook`);
        node.error(error);
        
        return msg;
    }

  3. To set up the Hook Events, you need to initialize the hooks. The Settings / Hooks Initialize function node is used to register the hook condition so that the Hook-Data function knows what to do with it.

    const settings = global.get("settings") || {};
    settings.emptyString = '';
    global.set("settings", settings);
    
    const hooks = global.get("hooks");
    global.set("hooks", hooks || {});
    
    return msg;

  4. You will register your Hook Event with an Inject node. All the Inject nodes in this flow have the same configuration.

  5. When the Custom control named HTMLDirective gets called in Flow studio, the function node named HTML form Hook will be called.

    global.get("hooks").HTMLDirective = msg => {
        node.send(msg);
    };

  6. The next function node calls the HTML form and it is subsequently connected back to the Flow Manager node to continue the conversation flow.

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