Can't easily update DialogflowCX "Default start flow" or "Default welcome intent"

[mmurakowski-verily]

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Description

When you create a Dialogflow CX Agent, it automatically creates a DF CX Flow for you; this is the Agent.startFlow; the API docs say "A start flow will be automatically created when the agent is created, and can only be deleted by deleting the agent". Other docs say it'll have "the following flow ID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" i.e. Agent.startFlow will always be projects/<project-id>/locations/<location-id>/agents/<agent-id>/flows/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

You cannot easily manage this resource in terraform. You have to import it. You know what the terraform import command would look like. You can easily write the import block:

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_agent" "agent" {
  ...
}

import {
  id = google_dialogflow_cx_agent.agent.start_flow
  to = google_dialogflow_cx_flow.default-start-flow
}

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_flow" "default-start-flow" {
  parent = google_dialogflow_cx_agent.agent.id
  ...
}

UNFORTUNATELY, the import block is still pretty dumb; if you write that completely reasonable looking terraform, it errors with

│ Error: Invalid import id argument
│ 
│   on main.tf line 209, in import:
│  209:   id = google_dialogflow_cx_agent.agent.start_flow
│ 
│ The import block "id" argument depends on resource attributes that cannot be determined until apply, so Terraform cannot plan to import this resource.

i.e. there's no one-terraform apply way of managing an Agent + the default start flow. You have to break it into two steps (step 1: apply the agent creation; step 2: import). That's annoying.

Also, even if terraform improves the import block, you're not allowed to delete a default start flow; GCP gives you an error. That's annoying too if you want to remove resources or stop managing stuff.

Same situation for the Default welcome intent, just swap out "intent" for "flow" above.

I wasn't able to find a feature request against terraform itself for improving the import block behavior.

New or Affected Resource(s)

• google_dialogflow_cx_flow
• google_dialogflow_cx_intent

Potential Terraform Configuration (implemented in GoogleCloudPlatform/magic-modules#9336)

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_flow" "default-start-flow" {
  is_default_start_flow = true
  ...
}

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_intent" "default-welcome-intent" {
  is_default_welcome_intent = true
  ...
}

Make the is_defult_X fields immutable + not written to the REST API. If they're true, prevent the resource from being created (http POST) or destroyed (http DELETE) and just set the ID to {parent}/flows/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 or {parent}/intents/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.

Potential Terraform Configuration (implemented in GoogleCloudPlatform/magic-modules#9359)

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_flow" "default-start-flow" {
  name = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
  ...
}

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_intent" "default-welcome-intent" {
  name = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
  ...
}

Make the name property settable, immutable, and default-from-API. If it's set by the user, PATCH instead of POST and prevent DELETEs.

Potential Terraform Configuration (not implemented yet)

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_default_start_flow" "default-start-flow" {
  ...
}

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_default_welcome_intent" "default-welcome-intent" {
  ...
}

resource "google_dialogflow_cx_default_negative_intent" "default-negative-intent" {
  ...
}

Make three new resources that are hyper-specialized copy-pastes of the existing flow + intent resources. Don't let them POST or DELETE cloud resources.

References

• #0000

b/307909166

[melinath]

sounds like we'd be going for a "acquire at create time" flow here.

[greese-insight]

100% with this, I am needing to modify the transition routes (and route groups), and while it is annoying to have to split the work, it's even more annoying that destroy commands don't work. Need to create a new data.dialogflow_cx_default_start_flow element or similar (in fact, we need all the data elements).