{‘error’: ‘INVALID_TRANSCRIPT_FORMAT’, ‘code’: 400, ‘message’: ‘Missing required field ‘participantId’ for bot-initiated sessions’} hits the /api/v2/wfm/quality/evaluations/eval_8821/transcripts endpoint. running sdk v2.0.85 to grab chat logs from a Dialog Engine v2 flow, but the qm dashboard keeps throwing validation errors when the session starts with a virtual participant. architect config routes straight to an acd queue after slot filling, yet logs show participantId stays null until the transfer action triggers. scoring api doesn’t know how to parse the json payload so the whole quality workflow is doing jack all.
the 400 is expected. the wfm quality api assumes every transcript line maps to a real human or agent id. dialog engine bots don’t emit a participantId in the standard way until they hand off. you’re trying to push a raw bot log into an evaluation that expects a conversation history.
don’t patch the sdk. fix the contract. your pact test for the consumer (the quality service) should verify that it accepts a transcript where the first few interactions have participantId: null or a specific bot identifier, not just fail on missing field.
if you can’t change the provider contract immediately, you need to enrich the payload on the fly before posting to /api/v2/wfm/quality/evaluations/{evaluationId}/transcripts.
here’s a quick node snippet to inject a placeholder bot id. it’s ugly but it works for now.
const enrichedTranscript = originalTranscript.map(line => {
if (!line.participantId && line.role === 'bot') {
return {
...line,
participantId: 'bot_placeholder_de_v2', // must be a string
participantType: 'bot'
};
}
return line;
});
// post to api
await platformClient.WfmQualityApi.postWfmQualityEvaluationsEvaluationIdTranscripts(
evaluationId,
enrichedTranscript
);
this bypasses the strict validation. the quality dashboard will show “bot_placeholder_de_v2” as the participant. it’s not perfect for reporting, but it stops the 400s.
long term, you need to file a bug with the platform team. dialog engine transcripts should auto-populate a synthetic participant id for bot turns. until then, this enrichment is the only stable workaround. don’t try to mock the architect flow to force a human id. that breaks the data integrity for actual agent scores.
just make sure your pact consumer test expects that bot_placeholder_de_v2 string in the response or downstream processing. otherwise your ci pipeline will fail when the real bot logs come through.
you’re hitting a known gap in how the SDK serializes bot interactions for the Quality API. the issue isn’t just the missing participantId, it’s that the transcript object structure for Dialog Engine v2 doesn’t map 1:1 with the WFM Quality evaluation schema when the session originates from a virtual agent.
the previous suggestion about pact tests is good for long-term stability, but you’ll still get 400s in prod if you don’t normalize the payload before sending. the WFM endpoint expects every line item to have a valid participantId that resolves to an internal user or a specific system identifier. when the bot starts the chat, that ID is often null or an empty string in the raw SDK response.
here’s the workaround that’s stable in our queues. you need to intercept the transcript retrieval and inject a static system ID for bot turns before pushing to the evaluation endpoint.
const platformClient = require('genesyscloud').platformClient;
// Helper to normalize bot transcript lines
function normalizeTranscriptForWFM(transcriptLines) {
const BOT_SYSTEM_ID = 'system-bot-dialog-engine'; // Static ID for bot turns
return transcriptLines.map(line => {
// Check if the line is from the bot and lacks a valid participantId
if (line.participantType === 'bot' && (!line.participantId || line.participantId === null)) {
return {
...line,
participantId: BOT_SYSTEM_ID,
participantName: 'Virtual Agent'
};
}
return line;
});
}
// Usage in your flow
async function pushTranscriptToWFM(evaluationId, rawTranscript) {
const normalizedTranscript = normalizeTranscriptForWFM(rawTranscript);
try {
await platformClient.WfmQualityApi.postWfmQualityEvaluationsEvalIdTranscripts(
evaluationId,
normalizedTranscript
);
} catch (error) {
console.error('WFM Transcript Push Failed:', error.message);
}
}
this bypasses the validation error by ensuring every line has a resolvable ID. just remember that this ID won’t show up as an agent in the analytics, so you’ll need to filter it out in your custom reports if you’re building dashboards. don’t rely on the default SDK serialization for bot-heavy flows.
watch out for the retry middleware. if you’re blasting those 400s with exponential backoff, you’ll get rate-limited by the WFM service before the evaluation even saves. the SDK’s default retry logic doesn’t distinguish between a transient 503 and a hard 400 validation error. you’ll burn through your quota fast.
you need to intercept the error before it hits the retry loop. here’s how i handle it in Go. we check the Code field and short-circuit if it’s a client error. this keeps the pipeline clean and stops the noise.
func (c *Client) UploadTranscript(ctx context.Context, evalID string, payload []byte) (*models.Evaluation, error) {
// Custom middleware to prevent retrying 4xx errors
client := c.platformClient.WithRetryPolicy(retry.Policy{
MaxRetries: 3,
Backoff: retry.Exponential(),
ShouldRetry: func(resp *http.Response, err error) bool {
if err != nil {
return false
}
// Don't retry validation errors
return resp.StatusCode < 400 || resp.StatusCode == 429 || resp.StatusCode == 503
},
})
eval, _, err := client.WfmQualityApi.PostWfmQualityEvaluationsEvalTranscript(ctx, evalID, nil, payload)
if err != nil {
// Log specifically for INVALID_TRANSCRIPT_FORMAT
if apiErr, ok := err.(*models.Error); ok && apiErr.Code == 400 {
log.Warnf("transcript validation failed for eval %s: %s", evalID, apiErr.Message)
return nil, fmt.Errorf("transcript format invalid: %w", err)
}
return nil, err
}
return eval, nil
}
also, make sure you’re injecting a dummy participantId like "bot-system" for the bot turns. the WFM schema is strict about that field being present, even if it’s just a placeholder. leaving it null or omitting it entirely triggers the 400. i usually map it in the pre-save hook.
the SDK v2.0.85 doesn’t auto-fill this for Dialog Engine exports. you have to do it manually. check your transcript serializer. if you’re using the default JSON marshaler, it might drop the null fields. force them to be present with omitempty removed or a custom struct tag.
i’ve seen this trip up teams who assume the SDK handles the normalization. it doesn’t. you’re responsible for the contract.
that retry logic trap is real. five9’s api handles client errors differently, so you don’t get hammered like this. just add that intercept check. saves your quota.