activate-dialog.md

copyright	lastupdated	subcollection
years 2018, 2024	2024-12-03	watson-assistant

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Activating dialog and migrating skills

{: #activate-dialog}

To use an existing dialog skill, you need to activate the dialog feature in your assistant. Then you can upload your existing skill.

Activating dialog

{: #activate-dialog-activating}

To activate the dialog feature:

1. Create or open an assistant where you want to use a dialog as the primary conversation with users.

2. Open Assistant settings .

3. Click Activate dialog.

   {: caption="Activate dialog" caption-side="bottom"}

4. In the confirmation that displays, click Activate dialog again.

   {: caption="Activate dialog" caption-side="bottom"}

Once you activate the dialog feature, it takes precedence over actions. You can use actions to supplement a dialog-based conversation, but the dialog drives the conversation with users to match their requests. For more information, see Calling actions from a dialog.

Migrating existing skills

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Once the dialog feature is activated, you can start a new dialog conversation from scratch if you want. But, you probably have an existing dialog skill that you want to migrate into {{site.data.keyword.conversationshort}}.

To migrate an existing dialog skill:

1. Use the classic experience to download your dialog skill in JSON format.

2. In {{site.data.keyword.conversationshort}}, open the Dialog page.

3. In Options, choose Upload / Download.

   {: caption="Upload dialog" caption-side="bottom"}

4. On the Upload tab, upload the JSON file for your dialog skill.