Instead of showing a form to the user inside Tenjin, the bot should ask the user one question at a time. A holiday request form instead becomes a flow in the bot like this example of a holiday request:
Ok, I need a few details for your holiday request. |
What is the start date of your holiday? |
25-01-2021 |
How many days off do you require? |
5 |
What is the reason for your time off? |
Holiday abroad. |
Ok, I have submitted your holiday request. |
This is the standard for how a "form" works in a chatbot. Forms are a UX pattern for applications not chatbots. Forms are not supported by most chat clients and long forms are a poor experience even in those which do.
This pattern instead makes the bot seem more intelligent. It maintains the conversational flow (ie keeps the user engaged with it instead of feeling like a new interface has appeared inline).
This pattern works in all clients but can be extended with some enrichments in clients that support them. E.g. it might be possible to provide a date picker in teams for date "fields".
As copied from Azure DevOps story 2976:-
This will get prioritized in the upcoming sprints.
As mentioned if this is designed as a flow in admin, then a future enhancement could be to allow conditional logic based on the answer. This would allow a different question to be asked depending on the previous response; so in front office parlance dependant fields.