Rules

Rules teach your bot A software application that handles customer interactions in place of a live human agent. how to respond to messages Anything a contact says in a bot interaction, whether question or statement, written or spoken. that are the same in every context. Every time the bot recognizes the intent associated with that rule, it responds the same way. Rules are useful situations such as:

Single-turn interactions with fixed responses: What are your hours? What is your address?
Conversation building blocks: Greetings, goodbyes, thank-yous, and transitions; simple yes/no questions; and acknowledgments. CXone Bot Builder comes with default intents The meaning or purpose behind what a contact says/types; what the contact wants to communicate or accomplish and rules Used to define bot's response to messages that don't change with context. for common building blocks. These include greetings, handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent requests, and more.
FAQs: Questions that customers often ask your bot.
Insults and classic bot challenges: Are you a real person? Is this a bot?
Interruptions: Questions or topic changes from the contact that interrupt the bot while it's attempting to fill slots Entity extracted from contact's message and saved for use in bot responses. Similar to a variable. for a form.

Before you add a new rule, be sure you have created the intent for the rule, if it doesn't exist already.

Glossary

Concept	Definition	Example	What the Bot Does
Utterance	Anything a contact says in an interaction. Sometimes called a message.	"I lost my password." "What is my balance?" "Are you a bot?"	The bot uses Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to analyze each contact utterance to determine its meaning, or intent.
Intent	What the contact wants to communicate or accomplish. Every message the contact sends has an intent.	"I lost my password" has the intent of "reset password". "Hello" has the intent of "greeting".	The bot analyzes a contact's message using NLU This process expands on Natural Language Processing (NLP) to make decisions or take action based on what it understands. to determine the intent. Once it knows that, it can respond with a message of its own. You configure the response you want the bot to use for each intent.
Entity	A defined piece of information in a contact's message.	Person or product name, phone number, account number, location, and so on.	The bot uses NLU to identify entities in a contact's message. Entities help the bot understand what the contact's message means.
Slot	An entity extracted from a contact's message and saved for use in bot responses. Similar to a variable.	Creating a slot for contact name lets the bot use that name in responses during an interaction, making it more personal.	When configured to do so, the bot extracts an entity from a contact message and saves it in a slot. You can have the bot use this information later in the conversation.
Rule	Defines a bot's response to messages that don't change meaning with context.	Single-turn interactions with fixed responses: What are your hours? What is your address? Conversation building blocks: Greetings, good-byes, thank yous and transitions; simple yes/no questions; and acknowledgments. CXone Bot Builder comes with default intents and rules for several of these, including greetings, handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent requests, and more. FAQs Insults and classic bot challenges	Rules are one of two ways you can configure how the bot responds to an intent. Rules are useful for certain kinds of intents, but not all intents.
Story	Trains a bot to handle an interaction based on message intent and conversational context.	In an interaction about a forgotten password, the bot would respond to, "How do I do that?" in one way. If the interaction were about creating a new account, the response would be quite different even though in both cases the contact is using the same words with the same intent – to get more information.	Stories are the second of two ways you can configure how the bot responds to an intent. Stories teach the bot how to use the context of the conversation to respond appropriately.
Bot Action	Anything a bot says or does while handling an interaction.	In an interaction about a forgotten password, the bot responds by sending the link to the password reset FAQ on the website. When a contact expresses frustration, such as "I don't understand! It's not working!!!" the bot responds with "I'm sorry. Would you like me to transfer you to a human agent?" When the contact says yes, the bot initiates the transfer.	Actions are the options you have when defining how you want the bot to respond to each intent. They give you the flexibility to configure each response to achieve the outcome that meets the contact's needs.

Rules vs Stories

Rules are one method of teaching your bot to respond to contact utterances What a contact says or types.. The other method is to create stories. Stories allow you to teach your bot how to respond in the context of the conversation. When context matters to understand what the contact wants, use a story. If context doesn't matter and the contact's utterance means the same thing all the time, use a rule.

For example, if the contact says "What are your hours," the bot probably doesn't need any context and you can use a rule. But if the contact says "How do I do that," the bot needs to understand the context of the message. What the contact asked earlier in the conversation will help the bot understand how to respond appropriately, so you should use a story.

Conditions

You can define specific conditions that must be met in order for the rule to be used. This allows you to have the bot follow a rule in certain circumstances. This is helpful if you want the bot to respond to the same message in different ways, depending on some criteria.

You can choose from the following types of conditions:

Active Form: The rule only triggers when the specific form or forms are active.
Slot Value: The rule only triggers when the specified slot or slots have the configured value.