Slots

A Slot is a specific piece of information that can be derived from an utterance and mapped to an entity.

What are slots?

Dialog Engine is designed to parse an utterance provided by the user and identify their intent. Dialog Engine uses a process called slot filling to identify pieces of information and maps them to corresponding entities. Each mapping of an intent to a discrete piece of information is termed a slot. Based on the slots identified and mapped, the bot can continue the conversation with the user.

Suppose the input is: I want to book two rooms. This utterance allows the bot to identify a single entity: number of rooms required. And the bot might respond up with follow-up questions.

Slot filling allows collecting multiple pieces of information about the user's intent. Consider, I want to book two rooms for three nights starting tomorrow. The bot identifies slots mentioned in the conversation: two rooms, three nights, and tomorrow and maps them accordingly to the corresponding entities.

Dialog Engine supports two types of slots:

• A built-in predefined slot type available in Dialog Engine
• Custom slot types defined in the Slot Types screen.

Predefined Slot Types

There are four built-in slot types available by default in Dialog Engine:

• de:datetime : maps any date and time values.
• de:amountOfMoney : maps any amount values.
• de:duration : maps any duration type values.
• de:number : maps any numeric values.

Add a slot

You can add slots to an utterance in two ways: from the Slots tab or from the Utterance tab.

• From the Slots tab, click Add Slot.
• Enter a name to identify the slot.
• Select an entity for the slot name. You can choose from a predefined slot type or any custom slot type.
• Check Slot Required if you want this slot to be mandatory in the utterance.
• Enter the prompt to be displayed to the user. Add more prompts, if needed.
• Click Save.

To add slots from the Utterance tab, select and click a word or phrase that will be extracted as a slot value and select Add New Slot.

Add a custom slot type

• Click Add Slot Type from the Slot Types page. or click Add Slot Type in the left pane.
• Enter a name for the custom slot type and click Save.
• Type a value for the custom entity and press Enter.
• Add more entity values as needed.

Map a slot

After you define slots, you can map specific words to corresponding entities, and Dialog Engine will pick up those slot values.

• In the Utterances tab, double-click a specific word/phrase in an utterance.
• Choose a slot name from the Select Slot menu. The selected word/phrase is now indicated as a slot value by a colored underline for the phrase.
• Click Save to save the changes to your bot.

Modify a slot's information

You can modify any of the slot information by selecting a slot from the Slots tab and clicking the Edit button.

Delete a slot

You can delete a slot by selecting a slot from the Slots tab and clicking the Delete button.