LogoLogo
  • GETTING STARTED
    • Welcome to the NLX platform
    • How NLX works
    • Guides
      • Analytics dashboard
      • Chat
      • Generative Journey (Slots)
      • Model Context Protocol
      • Voice
      • Voice+ script
      • Touchpoint components
        • Carousel modality
        • Video modality
    • Terms & concepts
    • Generative AI
    • Developer
  • Build
    • Workspace setup
    • Flows
      • Intro to flows & variables
      • The Canvas
      • Flow settings
      • Nodes
      • Flow appearance
    • Resources
      • Actions
        • Implementation
        • Request model
      • Analytics tags
      • Context variables
      • Data requests
        • Implementation
        • Response model
        • Request model
      • Knowledge bases
        • Ingest content
        • Add metadata (beta)
        • Apply KB
      • Lifecycle hooks
        • Implementation
      • Modalities
      • Secrets
      • Slots (custom)
        • Adding values
        • Translating slots
      • Voice+ scripts
        • Add + download script
        • Deploy script + install SDK
        • Create Voice+ flow
    • Integrations
      • Channels
        • Alexa
        • Amazon Chime SDK
        • Amazon Connect
        • AWS End User Messaging SMS
        • AWS End User Messaging Social
        • Bandwidth
        • Genesys
        • Twilio
        • Zendesk Sunshine
      • LLM services
        • Amazon Bedrock
        • Anthropic
        • Azure OpenAI
        • Cerebras
        • Cohere
        • Google Vertex AI
        • Groq
        • NVIDIA
        • OpenAI
        • xAI
      • NLP
        • Amazon Lex
        • Google Dialogflow
        • Google Dialogflow CX
        • Custom NLP
    • Translations
  • Deploy & test
    • Applications
      • Attach flows
      • Assign default behavior
      • Add channels
        • API
          • REST API
        • Alexa
        • Amazon Chime SDK
        • Amazon Connect
        • AWS End User Messaging SMS
        • AWS End User Messaging Social
        • Genesys
        • Genesys SMS
        • Messenger
        • Microsoft Teams
        • Slack
        • SMS via Bandwidth
        • Twilio SMS
        • Twilio Voice
        • WhatsApp via Twilio
        • Zendesk Sunshine
      • Deploy
      • Optional: Set lifecycle
      • Optional: Set languages
    • Test
      • Test a conversation
      • Automated tests
      • Test an external integration
  • Analyze
    • Conversations
    • Analytics
      • Creating dashboards
      • Formulas & multi-metrics
      • Canvas analytics
    • Training
  • Workspace Settings
    • Escalation channels
    • Resource tags
    • Audit
  • Admin
    • Access control
      • Roles & permissions
    • Notifications
    • FAQ
    • Contact support
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • What are flow settings?
  • Add/duplicate flow
  • AI settings
  • AI description
  • Training phrases
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP)
  • Attached slots
  • Custom vs built-in slots
  • Languages
  • Managing translations
  • Versions
  1. Build
  2. Flows

Flow settings

Learn to easily configure settings of your intent and its flow in your NLX workspace

Last updated 18 days ago

What are flow settings?

Each flow created in your NLX workspace has crucial settings for workflow construction, customer intent recognition, and LLM training before building and deploying an application that will use the flow.

A flow's Settings setup provides options for adding advanced AI support, training data, using slot variables, and assigning languages for translation.


Add/duplicate flow

  • Select Flows from workspace menu > Choose New flow option

  • Provide a name (no spaces or special characters) > Click Create flow > Click Save

To duplicate an existing flow, choose the Settings icon within the flow's Canvas toolbar > Click the Advanced tab > Choose Duplicate flow. As flows cannot be renamed, you may duplicate an existing flow and provide the clone the desired name.

To delete a flow, select the gear icon (Settings) within your flow's Canvas. Choose the Advanced tab > Select Delete flow option and confirm. If the intent flow is attached to an application(s), create a to experience the change.


AI settings

AI settings is where you can provide necessary data for LLMs to recognize customer intent and invoke the correct flow, or to support integrating your flow as a service with an LLM through .

AI description

The AI description field is required for LLMs to understand the purpose and context of a flow so it understands when to invoke the flow.

  • Select gear icon (Settings) within your flow's toolbar

  • From the AI settings tab, enter a concise description explaining the purpose of the flow (e.g., Provide a restaurant recommendation) into the AI description field

Training phrases

Training phrases comprise samples of what users might say to your conversational AI application that in turn invokes a flow to satisfy their intent. AI models (NLP and LLM) become trained on these samples to better identify customer intent and invoke the appropriate flow.

For an OrderRoomService flow, training phrases such as 'Order something to eat,’ 'I want room service’ or ‘Can I order food to my room?’ helps AI recognize that similar expressions from a user should invoke that flow.

The minimum number of training phrases recommended is 5, but providing a strong variety of user expressions results in better performance.

  • Select gear icon (Settings) within your flow's toolbar

  • Click AI settings tab > Enable Training phrases toggle

  • Select + Add new training phrase

  • When done adding phrases, click Save on the Canvas

Optional:

  • Skip translation (expand a phrase to view setting): Toggled OFF by default. Enable this in multi-language situations where the phrase would not make sense when translated into another language.

  • Upload/Download: Allows for a JSON or CSV to be ingested or downloaded with training phrase data. Tap the CSV/JSON button beside the Download link to swap formats

Want to create your training data in record time? Use the Generate using AI feature:

  • Create a sample set of at least 1 training phrase to allow the AI to learn and expand on phrases with similar characteristics

  • Click Save

  • Select Generate using AI to create phrases in batches of five

  • Modify before or after adding the phrases to your pool

  • Repeat the process as needed (recommended pool size: 5-30)

Predicting what users might say to in order for the right flow to be invoked is a challenging task. Users may say a lot or say very little when explaining what they want to accomplish.

Length

To start, keep training phrases short. AI models are able to identify filler words , misspellings, uncapitalized words, and politeness from user utterances, so no need to worry about creating multiple variations to account for them:

Leverage slots

Slots help you capture dynamic info that determine the parameters to a user's request or choice. Small/medium/large or yes/no are common examples. Introducing slots into training phrases can reduce creating different intents that would have similar training phrases or prevent the need for drafting multiple variations of a single training phrase:

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Variables required for the flow to work that should be extracted by the LLM in conversation and passed along to NLX are set up first in the flow's Settings.

For example, if a flow is to provide restaurant recommendations to a user, the structured MCP schema could contain the variables cuisine and location that are captured by an LLM and passed along to NLX:

  • Select gear icon (Settings) within your flow's toolbar

  • Click AI settings tab > Enable MCP toggle

  • Provide a unique and concise input name (no spaces or special characters)

  • Enter the input schema containing necessary variable(s) that will be set and passed along by the LLM interfacing with a user

  • Expand each property variable defined in your MCP input schema > Expand their settings > Enter a brief description in the property's Description field for the LLM to understand the purpose and context of each (e.g., location property might have the accompanying description for a restaurant recommendation flow: The location where you want to find a restaurant)

  • Click Save

On any node of the flow, enter an open curly brace { and reference the MCP input variable you want to use as an output in messaging, payload fields, Split node conditions, etc:


Attached slots

If a user wishes to book a stay at your resort, you might use slots to resolve the check-in date, check-out date, number of guests, name of guest, and so on.

Slots must be attached to a flow to be used within its training phrases or within Canvas nodes.

  • Select gear icon (Settings) within your flow's Canvas toolbar

  • Click Attached slots tab > Select +Attach new slot

  • Choose slot(s) from the dropdown (organized by Custom then Built-in types in your workspace)

  • Provide a name for the slot to be referenced when in use

  • Click Save

Optional:

  • Sensitive (expand an attached slot to view setting): Toggled OFF by default. There may be cases where a user's selection may reveal personally identifiable information (PII). For user privacy, you can enable the Sensitive setting so user input for this slot is not stored in NLX conversation logs

Custom vs built-in slots

Examples:

  • Yes / No

  • Small / Medium / Large

  • I want to signup / I want something else

Built-in slots have standardized values that may be large or infinite in range or abstract:

Built-in slot type
Use

NLX.Country

When a user response should be any country

NLX.Date

When a user response will use words to represent a date. Converts words to standard ISO-8601 format. Recognizes words such as "now" or "today" to mean the complete date of the current day. Input such as "this week" or "next week" will map to the first day of the week. ISO-8601 format begins its week on Monday and ends on Sunday. Input such as "next month" maps to the last day of the following month

NLX.Duration

When a user response should be words that represent duration (e.g., "two days," "30 seconds"). Converts words into numeric duration

NLX.Email

When a user response should involve words and characters to represent an email address. Supports additional characters such as underscores, hyphens, periods, and plus signs

NLX.FirstName

When a user response should use a word to represent a first name

NLX.LastName

When a user response should use a word to represent a last name

NLX.Number

When a user response should only use numeric words. Converts words to digits

NLX.Ordinal

When a user response should use ordinal words (e.g., "first" or "1st") to represent ordinal position

NLX.AlphaNumeric

When a user response may use a combination of letters and numbers

NLX.PhoneNumber

When a user response should use numeric words to represent a phone number. Converts them to a numeric string

NLX.Text

When a user response may consist of any words or characters

NLX.Time

NLX.Url

When a user response should use words to represent a URL. Converts them to standard URL format

NLX.City

When a user response should be any global city

NLX.USCity

When a user response should be a United States city

NLX.USState

When a user response should be a United States state


Languages

Languages lists all languages assigned to your flow, allowing for easy management of translations to any messaging contained within the flow and/or training phrases.

  • Select gear icon (Settings) within your flow's Canvas toolbar

  • Click Languages tab > Select +Add new language

  • Choose language(s) from dropdown

  • Click Save

Managing translations

  • Select Manage translations next to a supported language

  • Choose Auto-translate all > Confirm

  • Select Manage translations next to supported language

  • Type translation for each training phrase

  • Click Save

Optional:

  • Expand training phrase > Mark as translated overrides auto-translation

  • Expand training phrase > Skip translation if you do not want the phrase translated or no proper translation exists

To apply optional settings to all phrases, use the Mark all as translated or Skip all translations links above the list.


Versions

You may easily restore or view past versions of a saved flow:

  • Select gear icon (Settings) within your flow's Canvas toolbar

  • Click Versions tab > Choose version to preview

Restoring a version of a flow restores nodes patterns on the Canvas as well as the flow's settings from the previous save state.

If assigning a flow to one of the or if a flow is to be invoked through redirect nodes in other flows (not invoked by a user's utterance), keep Training phrases toggle disabled.

Saved changes do not take effect with applications that are already deployed. To experience changes to training data with applications in production, create a .

Enable training: Toggled ON by default. If disabled, prevents users from being routed to the flow via intent recognition. Useful if the situation requires users only be navigated to the flow through deliberate in other flows, or if the flow is set to a on the application. Essentially, this prevents the flow from being invoked by a user

Generate using AI: Quickly generate your training dataset

If you have you'd like to reference in generated training phrases, include them in your sample set first.

Take a deep dive on organizing intent flows and developing training data with .

place an order for room service

would like to order room service

Can I please place an order for room service for my family this evening?

would like a {size} pizza

look up {accountType} account balance

look up savings account balance; look up checking account balance, etc.

Check out our complete guide on setting up .

allows you to expose your NLX workflow(s) to a supported Large Language Model (LLM), allowing the LLM to follow and execute a service or task defined in any flow. In this way, NLX acts as the MCP Server, while the LLM becomes the MCP Client.

Be sure to also include an and turn on the on an application that will use MCP-enabled flow(s).

Slots capture parameters from user responses and are deemed required information for completing a process outlined in a flow. The majority of user nodes in a flow are likely to be made up of or that resolve these parameters while your conversational AI guides a user through a self-service task.

Examples (expand an attached slot to view setting): Add sample phrases that users may provide (e.g., for the built-in NLX.Time slot, you might add "7 pm," "7:00pm" or "7 in the evening" as examples for use with the node)

Custom slots have values that are small in range, are customizable to your use case, and may also be visible choices for user selection in chat (text-based) applications. Custom slots are created within your workspace using the .

When a user response should use words that represent time. Converts them to standard time format. You may use to parse information in flow, if needed

Need a list of available languages? See

When new languages are added via , they may be applied globally to resources in your NLX workspace. However, you may add/remove languages at the flow level to override your workspace's language settings.

✔️
✔️
❌
✔️
✔️
❌
application's default behaviors
new build and redeploy
our favorite best practices
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Slots resource
Translations
with AI
slots
new build and re-deploy
Model Context Protocol
default behavior
AI description for the flow
redirects
User choice nodes
Generative Journey nodes
Generative Journey
the Define node
MCP interface setting
MCP input schema
MCP variable (cuisine) being passed to a custom API payload and referenced in a Basic node message
Attached slots tab of flow Settings
Languages tab of flow Settings
Versions tab of a flow Settings
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Supported languages