Slots and slot types overview

Slots are the specific pieces of information from an utterance to help understand the customer’s intent. For example, consider the utterance, “I want to book two rooms.” This utterance allows the bot to identify a specific piece of information or slot: rooms needed.

After the bot identifies a slot, it maps the slot to a slot type. A slot type defines how the bot processes the information available in the identified slot. Make sure that you map each slot to a slot type. Slot types help the bot define the information that the bot looks for when trying to find a slot in the utterance. A slot type must include at least one value.

In the previous utterance, the slot is “rooms needed,” and the slot maps to a number slot type. While this article relates to Genesys Dialog Engine Bot Flows and Genesys Digital Bot Flows, this video describes how slots and slot types work in Genesys Dialog Engine Bot Flows:

Global slot availability

Administrators and contact center managers can access any slot from any intent. Because slots are not bound to specific intents, they are accessible to multiple intents. This enhancement improves efficiency and reduces the effort to build bot flows. 

You can access any slot from any intent. Slots are not bound to specific intents. The ability to access slots from multiple intents improves efficiency and reduces the effort needed to build bot flows. For example, previously if you wanted to reference a customer’s account number from the Check Account and Close Account intents, you had to create an Account slot within each Intent. You can also use slots without an intent. This feature is useful when you must perform identification and verification in self-service bots. For example, you can ask for the customer’s account number and PIN up front, before asking for their intent.

Also, if you created slots before the global slot availability, existing slots that share names merge, making them unique and easier to reference.

Slot types

Architect bots support two slot types: built-in slots and custom slots.

Slot type supportability

When you work with slot types, consider the following supported capabilities:

• Slot types: Up to 500 per flow
• Slots (entities) associated with a single slot type: Up to 10 per flow
• List slot type: Up to 50 per flow
• Regex slot type: Up to 20 per flow

Built-in slot types

You can create slots with built-in slot types when you create a slot from the Natural Language Understanding menu.

For more information, see Use built-in slot types in a bot flow.

Custom slot types

A custom slot type allows you to define slot types and use them to map slots. For example, you can create a location slot to denote cities for your travel bot. You can define a custom slot type and use that location slot to map locations in your utterances.

Architect supports five custom slot types:

• an AI-powered type with Virtual Agent
• a list type
• a dynamic list type
• a regular expression (regex) type
• a timeslot type

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Add a slot type to your bot flow from the Slot Types menu

1. Under Natural Language Understanding, click Slot Types.
2. Click Slot Type. The Add Slot Type dialog box opens.
3. Provide a meaningful name for the slot type and then click Save.
4. Under Slot Type, to create a slot and slot type in parallel, select one of the available slot types:
   • List. List slot types match items in a list.
   • Dynamic List. Dynamic slot types are configurable.
   • Regular Expression. RexEx slot types match a sequence of characters.
   • Timeslot. Timeslot slot types are configurable.
   • AI Powered. AI powered slot types, when you enable Virtual Agent, leverage AI to understand and categorize input.
5. If you chose List, then under Slot Type Value enter a value and click Add. Repeat this step to add more values.
6. If you chose Dynamic List, follow these steps and create collection values:
   1. Click Edit Collection. 
   2. In the dialog box that appears, click String.
   3. Under Values, enter a string value to associate with the slot type.
   4. Complete the remaining fields by associating synonyms and labels, as necessary.
7. If you chose Regular Expression, enter an expression and click Add. Repeat this step to add more expressions, which Architect evaluates from top to bottom.
8. If you chose Timeslot, follow these steps and create collection values:
   1. Click Edit Collection. 
   2. In the dialog box that appears, click Timeslot in the Literal mode or add an expression in the Expression mode.
   3. After adding the required values, click Close.
9. If you enable Virtual Agent and chose AI Powered, then under Format, follow one of these steps:
   1. Choose Free-form. This type indicates to the bot to expect a long answer, rather than set digits.
      1. Under Description, provide a detailed prompt of the information you want to collect. For example, “The capital cities of Europe,” or “A person’s first and last name.”
      2. Click Example.
      3. Under Example Utterance, provide a potential utterance that the bot might expect. For example, “I once visited Paris,” or “My name is John Doe.”
      4. Under Expected Value, enter the value that the bot should recognize. For example, “Paris,” or “John Doe.”
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   2. Choose Letter-number combination and under Length, set the expected character length of the slot. For example, the number of numbers and characters in your membership ID.
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   3. Choose Numeric sequence and under Length, set the expected character length of the slot. For example, a 4-digit PIN number.
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10. Click Save.

Add a slot to your bot flow from the Slots menu

1. Under Natural Language Understanding, click Slots.
2. Click Add Slot.
3. Provide a meaningful name for the slot.
4. Under Slot Type, to create a slot and slot type in parallel, select one of the available slot types:
   • Existing. Includes existing custom slot types or built-in slot types.
   • New AI Powered. When you enable Virtual Agent, AI Powered slots use artificial intelligence to understand and categorize input.
   • New List. List slot types match items in a list.
   • New RegEx. RexEx slot types match a sequence of characters.
   • New Dynamic. Dynamic slot types are configurable.
   • New Timeslot. Timeslot slot types are configurable.
5. If you chose Existing, click Select and choose an existing custom slot type or a built-in slot type.
6. If you chose New AI Powered, New List, New RegEx, New Dynamic, New Timeslot, or AI Powered, enter a slot type name. 
7. Click Save.

Architect returns a message to confirm that the new slot was created and, for New AI Powered, New List, New RegEx, New Timeslot, and New Dynamic, that the slot type was created.

Add values to your slot types

To add values to your slot types, see the following article according to your slot type:

• Use built-in slot types in a bot flow
• Use AI Powered slot types in a bot flow
• Use custom list slot types in a bot flow
• Use custom dynamic list slot types in a bot flow
• Use custom regular expression slot types in a bot flow
• Use custom timeslot types in a bot flow

Parallel slot and slot types example

In this example, the bot author wants to add slots and slot types for drum kit manufacturers.