Slots and slot types overview - Genesys Cloud Resource Center
Slots and slot types overview
AI-generated summary
Genesys Cloud's slot system provides a comprehensive framework for extracting and processing customer information through slots and slot types, supporting up to 500 slot types per flow. Slots represent specific pieces of information extracted from customer utterances, while slot types define how the bot processes that information. The platform features global slot accessibility across multiple intents, eliminating the need to recreate slots for each intent and improving bot flow construction efficiency.
The system supports two categories of slot types: built-in and custom. Built-in slot types include currency (amountOfMoney), date, number, time, and general string input (any), each converting natural language inputs into standardized formats. Custom slot types include AI-powered Virtual Agent slots, list types, dynamic list types, regular expressions, and timeslot types, allowing developers to define domain-specific data capture.
AI-powered Virtual Agent slots enable sophisticated multi-turn conversations supporting free-form responses and flexible information collection. These slots leverage the Virtual Agent's large language model to capture multiple entities in any order across multiple conversation turns, supporting numeric, alphanumeric, and free-form inputs with synonyms and examples to improve conversational naturalness. Format options include Free-form for long answers, Letter-number combinations with configurable character length, and Numeric sequences for PIN-like inputs.
List slot types manage predefined sets with synonym recognition, while dynamic list slots fetch values during conversations through data actions, useful for large or user-specific datasets. Regular expression (regex) slot types identify complex patterns in utterances, and timeslot slot types manage predefined time slots using Timeslot Collection variables retrieved from third-party calendar providers via data actions.
Technical limitations include a maximum of 10 slots per slot type, 50 list slot types per flow, and 20 regex slot types per flow. Implementation involves accessing Architect through the Admin menu and configuring slots under Natural Language Understanding, with the ability to create slots independently or simultaneously with slot types. The system supports multiple languages and enables natural conversation flows with integration capabilities to third-party services, allowing users to map slots to utterances through the Intents section for comprehensive natural language processing in bot interactions.
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.
Architect includes the following built-in slot types by default:
NLU slot type
Architect data type
User input examples
Resolved format examples
Notes
builtin:amountOfMoney
Currency
“$30.23” or “forty dollars”
30.23|USD
40.00|USD
Converts words that indicate currency into a numeric amount of money.
builtin:date
Date
“June 15” or “next Tuesday”
2021-06-15
When passing date values into or out of a bot flow, make sure that you pass the value as a string in extended ISO-8601 format. For example, 2021-02-16.
builtin:number
Decimal
“23” or “three point five”
23.0
3.5
Converts numeric words ("five") into digits (such as "5").
This feature does not currently support ordinal numbers (first, second, etc.).
builtin:time
Time
“3 p.m.” or “three-thirty p.m.”
15:00:00.000
15:30:00.000
Converts words that indicate time ("four in the morning", "two p m") into a time value ("04:00", "14:00").
builtin:any
String
"Stratocaster"
Stratocaster
Captures as a slot value any user input that does not match a specific regex pattern.
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
Note: If you use natural language understanding (NLU) with regular expressions, then the NLU configuration may impact your results.
If you enable Virtual Agent, you can create generative, AI-powered slot types for Virtual Agent when you create a slot from the Natural Language Understanding menu. The large language model (LLM) helps Virtual Agent administrators and flow authors to capture and collect multiple slots in any order, capture slots over multiple turns, and make it easier for the bot to understand when customers perform tasks that are more complex for the bot, such as spell out their name.
With Virtual Agent, you can use numeric, alphanumeric, or free-form AI-powered slots and slot types to improve conversational bot behavior. Free-form slots allow you to add synonyms and examples to help the bot recognize multiple words and phrases for the same slot. These AI-powered options allow you to configure your bot so that conversations between the bot and participant more closely align with human conversations. For more information, see About Genesys Virtual Agent.
If your custom slot type data is a set of predefined words in the utterance, say like location names, use the list slot type. List slot types help you define the set of words that the bot must recognize to capture a slot.
You can also add synonyms for a slot type so that Architect can recognize multiple words and phrases for the same slot. For example, a slot type value of New York can have the synonyms: Big Apple or NYC. These synonyms allow the bot to understand that when the user says NYC, it maps to New York.
If you do not know the allowed slot values when you create the bot flow, configure a dynamic list in your bot flow. Then use a data action or another source to retrieve the values during the bot conversation and store them in a string collection variable.
Dynamic lists are helpful if your bot contains many values for a slot type and you do not want to configure them manually and individually within Genesys Dialog Engine Bot Flows or Genesys Digital Bot Flows. These dynamic lists are also useful in cases where slot values are dynamic for each user.
You can use regular expressions (regex or regexp) to identify patterns within utterances that match to a specific sequence of characters. If your bot has to identify a complex content in the utterance, a regex pattern is more useful in defining the slot type. For example, if you want to match flight codes for your travel bot, you must know the flight number for handling any cancellations. The regex pattern, ^[A-Z]{2}\d{3,4}$ matches any phrase in the utterance that matches this pattern as a flight number. For more information, see Use custom regular expression slot types in a bot flow and Regular expression language quick reference.
Note: If you use natural language understanding (NLU) with regular expressions, then the NLU configuration may impact your results.
If your custom slot type data is a set of predefined time slots that you want your bot to send to a user, use the Timeslot type slots. Architect uses the Timeslot Collection variable to capture the list of time slots.
You can add custom datetime values to the collection variable directly or you can also use a Call Data Action to retrieve calendar events from a third-party calendar event provider.
Under Natural Language Understanding, click Slot Types.
ClickSlot Type. The Add Slot Type dialog box opens.
Provide a meaningful name for the slot type and then click Save.
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.
If you chose List, then under Slot Type Value enter a value and click Add. Repeat this step to add more values.
If you chose Dynamic List, follow these steps and create collection values:
Click Edit Collection.
In the dialog box that appears, click String.
Under Values, enter a string value to associate with the slot type.
Complete the remaining fields by associating synonyms and labels, as necessary.
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.
If you chose Timeslot, follow these steps and create collection values:
Click Edit Collection.
In the dialog box that appears, click Timeslot in the Literal mode or add an expression in the Expression mode.
After adding the required values, click Close.
If you enable Virtual Agent and chose AI Powered, then under Format, follow one of these steps:
Choose Free-form. This type indicates to the bot to expect a long answer, rather than set digits.
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.”
Click Example.
Under Example Utterance, provide a potential utterance that the bot might expect. For example, “I once visited Paris,” or “My name is John Doe.”
Under Expected Value, enter the value that the bot should recognize. For example, “Paris,” or “John Doe.”
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.
Choose Numeric sequence and under Length, set the expected character length of the slot. For example, a 4-digit PIN number.
Under Natural Language Understanding, click Slots.
ClickAdd Slot.
Provide a meaningful name for the slot.
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.
If you chose Existing, click Select and choose an existing custom slot type or a built-in slot type.
If you chose New AI Powered, New List, New RegEx, New Dynamic, New Timeslot, or AI Powered, enter a slot type name.
From the Engine list, select the speech-to-text (STT) engine that the system uses to collect the selected slot value from the bot participant when the flow runs.
From the Grammar list, select the grammar that the system uses to collect the selected slot value from the bot participant when the flow runs.
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: