Einstein Bot apex causes 'close chat' message intermittently

Question

I wrote a simple InvocableMethod to increment the amount of times an Einstein chatbot answers a users message. This works sometimes, very inconsistently. Sometimes it fails right away when I call a dialog that calls the apex class. Other times it will allow me to pass through the dialog with the apex 2 or 3 times. I think it has to do with the bot reusing variables without clearing them, but I am hoping someone here can give me a better answer.

It seems to only work when I pass strings and convert to integer, seems the bot can only work with strings:

public class ResponsesInput {
    @InvocableVariable(required=false)
    public String numOfResponses = '';
}

public class ResponsesOutput {
    @InvocableVariable(required=false)
    public String botResponses = '';
}


@InvocableMethod(label='Increment Bot Response')
public static List<ResponsesOutput> incrementBotResponse(List<ResponsesInput> responsesInput) {
    system.debug(responsesInput);
    //Get the # of responses from the input
    Integer existingResponses;
    for (ResponsesInput respInput : responsesInput) {
        if(!String.isBlank(respInput.numOfResponses)){
            existingResponses = Integer.valueOf(respInput.numOfResponses);
        }else{
            existingResponses = 0;
        }
    }

    //Increment # of responses and return to bot
    List<ResponsesOutput> outputParameters = new List<ResponsesOutput>();
    ResponsesOutput outputParameter = new ResponsesOutput();
    Integer outPutNumOfResponses = existingResponses + 1;
    outputParameter.botResponses = String.valueOf(outPutNumOfResponses);
    outputParameters.add(outputParameter);

    return outputParameters;
}

Here is the call to the dialog to start the class because I want it to return to this dialog when complete:

Here is the actual dialog that calls this class:

Answer 1

I would assume that you're right about variable cleaning. Clear them out like this before entering the action: