I watched a Google tutorial that showed how to connect a DialogFlow CX agent to a Vertex AI playbook (I think they renamed it to “agent” now). The video said to do this:
Go to the Building an Agent section
Navigate to Start Page
Click on Routes
Go to Transitions and pick playbooks
But when I try this in my own project, I can’t find the Playbooks option in the Transitions menu. Has anyone else run into this issue? Maybe the UI changed since the video was made? I’m wondering if there’s a different way to set up this connection now or if I’m missing something obvious.
Google’s moved the Playbooks feature around multiple times this year. I’ve hit this same issue on three client projects.
Check your project region first - Playbooks integration only works in certain regions. Wrong region means no option at all.
The naming changed too. “Playbooks” is now under “Tools” in some interfaces. Look for a “Tools” section in your Transitions menu.
Here’s what tripped me up - you need at least one Vertex AI agent created before DialogFlow shows connection options. No agents means empty integration menus that won’t display.
Still not seeing it? Try the new DialogFlow CX console. Google’s rolling out UI updates and the old console might not show current features.
I hit this exact problem two weeks ago on a customer service bot. It wasn’t permissions or regions - it was the agent setup itself. DialogFlow CX won’t show Playbooks unless you pick the right agent type during creation. There’s a dropdown for agent type that needs Vertex AI integration support. If you went with the basic agent type initially, you’ll need to change the settings or create a new one with advanced features turned on. Also check if your Google Cloud project has the Vertex AI Conversation API enabled - not just the general Vertex AI API. The integration needs this specific service running.
The Playbooks option may not appear if the integration permissions between DialogFlow CX and Vertex AI are not correctly configured. I encountered a similar problem last month. It’s essential to ensure that the Vertex AI API is enabled in your Google Cloud project. Additionally, verify that your service account possesses the appropriate IAM roles for both DialogFlow and Vertex AI. After correcting the permissions, refreshing the console was necessary for the Playbooks to show up in the Transitions dropdown. The UI can be quite temperamental, often hiding options until the backend is functioning properly.
same thing happened to me yesterday! playbooks vanished from my transitions menu after an update. had to enable “conversational ai” in project settings first - once that’s on, refresh dialogflow and playbooks will show up in transitions again. google keeps moving this setting around though.
yup, i had that too! make sure your project settings are right and vertex ai is activated. once you do that, the playbooks should pop up. hope that helps!