Use Slots in Bot Responses

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.

Use Slots as Variables in Bot Responses

You use slots as variables in bot responses in your dialogues Bot stories and rules in CXone Bot Builder. . When the bot shows the response to the contact, it replaces the variable with the slot's value.

You can use slots as variables in any response action that you can add your own text to.

In CXone, click the app selector and select Bot Builder.
Click the bot you want to work with.
Click Dialogues in the left icon menu.
On the Stories, Rules, or Fallback tab, click the dialogue you want to work with.
Locate the bot action you want to add a slot variable to, or add a new bot action.
Click in the field in the bot action where you want to add the slot variable and add any other text that you want to be in the response.
Type an open curly bracket ( { ). A list of available slots appears in a drop-down menu. You can continue typing the slot name or select a slot from the list. Add a closing curly bracket after the name ( } ).

In the following image, two slots are used as variables in the note displayed for the agent when the bot hands an interaction over. When the agent views the interaction, they might see a message such as "Winnie Le Pooh needs human help. They want to know their account balance."

View image
When you're finished making changes, click Train and Stage to update your bot model Version of a bot that has been trained and staged to test this change.

Use Slots as Conditions in Bot Responses

You can use slots as conditions in bot responses. This allows you to have the bot make decisions based on criteria that occur during the interaction, such as something the contact says.

You can also use slots as conditions to define when the bot should follow a certain rule Used to define bot's response to messages that don't change with context..

In CXone, click the app selector and select Bot Builder.
Click the bot you want to work with.
Click Dialogues in the left icon menu.
On the Stories, Rules, or Fallback tab, click the dialogue you want to work with.
Hover the cursor over the plus sign + on the left until it changes to a bot icon and the bot actions menu appears.
Click Slot Condition.
Select the name of the Slot that you want to use as a condition in this rule Used to define bot's response to messages that don't change with context., story Used to train bot for interaction handling based on intent and context, or fallback A plain text alternative sent when the destination doesn't support rich media..
Enter the Value that the slot must contain for the bot to follow the path described in this dialogue.
Add one or more bot actions to define what you want the bot to do when the specified slot's value equals the Value you defined.
Click Train and Stage to train your bot on the updated story, rule, or fallback.