Guidelines for actions used with outbound dialing rules

Special considerations apply when defining the success schema of a data action that returns data to an outbound dialing rule.

Nest output properties

When constructing its output contact (success schema), it is imperative to nest properties when necessary. If an output field from /execute is a complex object, the corresponding property in the schema should be a nested schema, and not a string that assumes “flattened” output. Outbound already uses ?flatten=true to flatten output.

Un-nested property example

{
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema#",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "data.my data field": {
      "type": "string",
    }
  }
}

The above example specifies a “data.my data field” in the success schema of a data action. The resulting action won’t work if it used by an outbound dialing data action rule. Outbound will be unable to find the field in the /actions/{actionId}/execute response. It will skip calls with a result of ININ-OUTBOUND-RULE-ERROR-SKIPPED.

To avoid this problem, make “my data field” a nested property of the “data” field:

Properly nested example

{
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema#",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "data": {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "my data field": {
          "type": "string"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

In general, your output schema should have the same structure as the properties you care about getting back from the /execute request.

Consider this simple object, and how the output schema returns it:

A simple object

{
  "foo": {
    "bat": "bar"
  }
}

Output schema of simple object

{
 "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema#",
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
   "foo": {
     "type": "string"
   }
 }
}

To make this compatible with Outbound, modify simple object’s output schema to nest the property:

Properly nested simple object

{
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema#",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "foo": {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "bat": {
          "type": "string"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

This schema will return:

{
  "foo": {
    "bat": "bar"
  }
}

Required fields

If there are fields that your data action requires, mark those fields as required in the success schema.

{
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema#",
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "contact_id",
    "phone_number"
  ],
  "properties": {
   ...
    },