Set Participant Data action in CXone Architect not persisting custom IVR variables

Architect & Flows
1

Why does this setting in the Set Participant Data action fail to persist custom variables through the IVR flow? I’m assigning a key ‘ivrChoice’ via the API, but subsequent nodes return null. Here is the JSON payload I’m sending: { “key”: “ivrChoice”, “value”: “optionA” }. The response is 200 OK, yet the variable seems to vanish after the first delay. Is there a specific scope issue I’m missing in the Architect flow definition or does the CXone SDK require a different binding method for IVR participants?

2

Have you tried verifying the conversationId in your pre-request script matches the active IVR leg? The 200 OK on POST /api/v2/conversations/interactions/{id} only confirms the API endpoint received the payload, not that the data is bound to the IVR media session.

The stack trace usually looks like this:

Error: Participant data not found for key 'ivrChoice'
at IVRFlowNode.execute (architect-runtime.js:402)

This happens because IVR flows operate on a separate media channel than the initial signaling. You are likely updating the interaction metadata, but the IVR flow logic reads from the specific IVR participant attributes. To fix this, you must target the ivr participant type specifically.

Use this curl command to verify the participant ID structure:

curl -X GET "https://{hostname}.mypurecloud.com/api/v2/conversations/{conversationId}/participants" \
 -H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"

Look for the participant with "type": "ivr". Then, use this specific endpoint to set the data:

curl -X POST "https://{hostname}.mypurecloud.com/api/v2/conversations/interactions/{conversationId}/participants/{ivrParticipantId}/data" \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
 -H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}" \
 -d '{"key": "ivrChoice", "value": "optionA"}'

Refer to the official docs here: https://developer.nicecxone.com/api/rest/v2/conversations#set-participant-data

If you use the generic interaction endpoint, the data sits in the interaction wrapper but does not propagate to the IVR runtime context. This is a common scope mismatch. Ensure your Postman collection uses environment variables for the dynamic conversationId and participantId to avoid stale state. The IVR flow will only see variables set directly on the IVR participant object.

3

If I remember correctly, you are likely hitting a scope boundary where the interaction ID doesn’t map directly to the IVR participant context.

  1. Check that you are using the participantId from the IVR leg, not the root conversationId.
  2. Verify the key exists in the custom object of the participant payload before reading it.
{
 "key": "ivrChoice",
 "value": "optionA",
 "scope": "participant"
}
4

I normally fix this by ensuring the participantId passed to the PUT /api/v2/conversations/interactions/{id}/participants/{participantId} endpoint corresponds strictly to the IVR leg, not the root interaction. In my Electron apps, I often see developers grabbing the conversationId from the initial POST response and reusing it for subsequent updates, which causes the data to attach to the wrong context. You must extract the participantId from the participants array of the GET /api/v2/conversations/interactions/{id} response specifically for the IVR type. The payload structure also requires the custom object wrapper. Use this format:

{
 "custom": {
 "ivrChoice": "optionA"
 }
}

If you send raw key-value pairs at the root level, the Genesys Cloud engine ignores them for IVR logic. Verify the participantId matches the IVR leg ID in your browser dev tools or Electron console logs. This binding error is common when migrating from older SDK versions where implicit scoping was handled differently.