#How to Skip a Message Step in Voiceflow
Good day guys, can someone please put me through?
I "workflow-ed" my agent to first collect a user's name before handling their request. But the problem is, if the user already states their request before their name, my agent still asks: "how can I help you today?"
How do I make skip this message step and process to handling the request (after collecting name) if the user already states their request before their name?
NOTE: It must ask the user's name no matter what! I just want it to skip the "how can I help you today?" step is request is already stated like in the photo above. Can someone help?
2 Replies
Here’s the simplest pattern to get the behaviour you want.
1. Capture the user’s name (and optionally any extra text they said).
2. Check if a request was already captured.
3. Only ask “How can I help you today?” when no request was found.
---
1 | Capture Step – ask for the name
• Prompt: “Hi {{first_name}}, what’s your name?”
• Entities to capture: – Name (required) → save to
– Request (optional) → save to
• create a simple free-text custom entity or switch the Capture Step to Entire user reply and save it to
no-request → connect to a second Capture step (or a simple Text+Capture pair) that asks “How can I help you today?” and saves the answer to
• Condition Step: https://docs.voiceflow.com/docs/condition-step
• Entities to capture: – Name (required) → save to
{user_name}– Request (optional) → save to
{user_request}• create a simple free-text custom entity or switch the Capture Step to Entire user reply and save it to
{user_request}.
• Leave Automatically reprompt off for the Request entity so the step never nags for it – it’s only filled when the user happens to include it.
• Turn on Listen for other triggers (optional but keeps the assistant flexible).
Result after this step:
• {user_name} is always filled.
• {user_request} is either filled (user already asked something) or empty.
---
2 | Condition Step – decide to skip or ask
Drag a Condition step right after the Capture.
Choose Business Logic and use the builder (or expression):
---
3 | Branch outcomes
request-found → go straight to the part of your flow that handles the request.no-request → connect to a second Capture step (or a simple Text+Capture pair) that asks “How can I help you today?” and saves the answer to
{user_request}.
---
That’s it – the assistant will:
1. Always ask for the user’s name.
2. Skip the “How can I help you today?” question whenever the user’s first utterance already contained their request.
Docs that may help while you build:
• Capture Step: https://docs.voiceflow.com/docs/capture-step• Condition Step: https://docs.voiceflow.com/docs/condition-step
Here's the logic I created in the Condition Block, is this correct?
IF 'users_request' == true
→ Jump straight to handling the request (using stored
users_request)
ELSE
→ Ask: “How may I help you today?”