Slot Types and Examples

Slots are key/value pairs that function as your bot's A software application that handles customer interactions in place of a live human agent. memory. You can use them to personalize interactions between bots and contacts. You can also use them in other areas of Digital Experience.

This page describes the details the different slot types.

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.

Text Slots

Text Slots
Description	Text slots hold text information. This includes numeric characters that don't need to be treated as numbers, such as a telephone or account number. A text slot can influence the bot's behavior simply by being empty or filled. The exact value of the slot doesn't affect the conversation. You can use the information as a variable in a story Used to train bot for interaction handling based on intent and context. With additional scripting, you can add the information to your CRM Third-party systems that manage such things as contacts, sales information, support details, and case histories. or use the slot's value to pull additional data from your CRM.
Use	Text slots can: Use the From Entity, From Intent, or From Message filling methods. Be custom slots. Be used in forms. Influence the bot's behavior. Be restricted by intent or form. Hold a different value depending on the intent the bot predicts. Values can be mapped to intents.
Dialogue Influence	If you set Influence Dialogue to On, your bot can behave differently depending on the slot's content. For example, if the bot asks the contact to provide the office location, it can act differently based on whether the contact does so. It cannot act differently for the Phoenix office versus the Prague office. If you want the bot's actions to changed based on the content of the slot, you must create a custom text slot. Additional configuration will also be needed.
Examples	The bot could ask for the contact's first name, and you could then use that value as a variable in other bot actions throughout the conversation. The bot statement, "Which office do you work in?" can let you report on something based on location. In the planning example, Akela added this statement so she could see how many users needed help with password resets by office. An appointment scheduling bot might say, "I can send your new patient forms now if you provide your email address." The email address could then be passed to an automated job to send the forms. A customer service bot might say, "Can I have your account number, please?" The slot could trigger an API call to your CRM that passes the value of the slot and then returns the account status based on the account number. This information could then be provided to the bot, or to a live agent. The bot might also ask, "What would you like us to call you?". This information could be extracted to a custom text slot, used throughout the conversation, and stored in the customer's record for other types of interactions. In each example, the bot could respond with a different action depending on whether the slot value was populated. Separate configuration would be needed to act on the content of the slot.

Number Slots

Number Slots
Description	Number slots hold numeric information that needs to be treated as numbers and not text. This type of slot can influence the bot's behavior. The exact value of the slot can change how the bot responds. You can set upper and lower limits for acceptable numbers. If the value that fills the slot is outside those bounds, the bot's behavior is different. You must train the bot to respond based on values that are in and out of the defined range.
Use	Number slots can: Use the From Entity or From Intent filling methods. Be custom slots. Have minimum and maximum acceptable values. Values outside that range trigger different behavior from the bot. Be used in forms. Influence the bot's behavior. Be restricted by intent or form. Hold a different value depending on the intent the bot predicts. Values can be mapped to intents.
Dialogue Influence	If you set Influence Dialogue to On, the bot's behavior can change depending on the value in the slot: Values below the minimum are treated as the minimum. Values above the maximum are treated as the maximum. In other words, if you set Min Value to 1 and Max Value to 5, the bot can behave differently for each of the values 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Examples	A medical triage bot could ask, "What is the patient's temperature?" The slot can be set with a minimum value of 97 and a maximum value of 100. The bot can respond differently for patients with a very low temperature (97 degrees or less), a normal temperature (97.1 to 99 degrees), or a high temperature (100 degrees or more). A restaurant reservations bot could ask, "How many in your party?" The slot could be set with a minimum value of 1 and a maximum value of 8. The bot can respond differently for each number in that range, perhaps by offering a table to parties with fewer than four members, a booth for four to seven members, and declining a reservation for parties of eight or more. A banking bot might offer different incentives to contacts based on the total value of their accounts. The account values are pulled from the bank's internal system and saved to a custom slot. You could create a custom number slot that is populated with any past-due balance from the contact's account. The bot could then attempt to collect the balance or handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent the call so a live agent could do so. For these last two examples, additional configuration would be required to pull the information from your CRM Third-party systems that manage such things as contacts, sales information, support details, and case histories. or accounting system.

Categorical Slots

categorical Slots
Description	Categorical slots hold a defined set of text information. This type of slot can influence the bot's behavior. Depending on which of the defined values fills the slot, the bot can provide a different response. The bot would typically provide these values as choices to the contact. The default value of Other is automatically added to the values you define.
Use	Categorical slots can: Use the From Entity or From Intent filling methods. Be custom slots. Be used in forms. Influence the bot's behavior. Be restricted by intent or form. Hold a different value depending on the intent the bot predicts. Values can be mapped to intents.
Dialogue Influence	If you set Influence Dialogue to On, the bot's behavior can change depending on the value in the slot. Any values not specified in the Values field are treated as Other.
Examples	An order-taking bot might ask, "Do you want a small, medium, large, or extra-large pizza?" After the contact enters one of these values, the bot can respond differently based on the size. If the contact enters "Individual" or another value not on the list, the bot can ask for a correction before proceeding. A bot used for hotel reservations might ask, "Do you want a smoking or non-smoking room?" and then pass the contact's response to the reservations system. A survey bot could ask the contact to rate their experience as excellent, good, fair, or poor. A fair or poor response could then trigger a request for more information, which could be saved in a text slot. A reservations bot might offer several open dinner times to a contact. The available times are pulled from an internal calendar resource and saved in a custom slot.

Boolean Slots

Boolean Slots
Description	Boolean slots hold true or false values. This type of slot can influence the bot's behavior based on whether it's empty, or if its value is true or false.
Use	Boolean slots can: Use the From Entity or From Intent filling methods. Be custom slots. Be used in forms. Influence the bot's behavior. Be restricted by intent or form. Hold a different value depending on the intent the bot predicts. Values can be mapped to intents.
Dialogue Influence	If you set Influence Dialogue to On, the bot's behavior can change depending on whether the slot is set to True, set to False, or is Empty. An empty slot does not automatically act as a False value. You can train the bot to recognize "yes" as true and "no" as false.
Examples	An order-taking bot might ask, "Do you have any coupons today?" An answer of False might result in the bot finishing the order, while an answer of True might require a handover Any contact message that should trigger transfer to a live agent for processing the discount. Instead of using a categorical slot, the hotel reservations bot might ask, "Do you want a smoking room?" and then treat a False response as a request for a non-smoking room. If the contact does not respond, the bot could explain that a preference is required to proceed with the reservation. A technical support bot could ask, "Have you tried rebooting your system?" It could then ask the contact to reboot if the answer is True, or proceed to the next step if the answer is False.

Any Value Slots

Any Value Slots
Description	The any value slots can hold other types of values, including lists or JSON. This type of slot cannot affect the bot's behavior. Any value slots might a good choice if you are gathering data from the contact The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center. that you want to use in other systems.
Origin	Can be a custom slot or an entity A piece of information gathered from the contact's messages during conversations with a bot. extracted from a contact's message.
Dialogue Influence	Slots with the Any type cannot be used to influence the dialogue between bot and contact.
Examples	You might want a customer service bot to gather data about the contact's clothing sizes. You could use a text slot, but you don't know for sure how the contact will state the size since different sizing systems are used around the world. An Any slot could hold the information in whatever way the contact expresses it.