Slots (custom)

Provide choices and direct conversations more efficiently using custom slots with NLX

What are custom slots?

Slots are variables your AI captures to fulfill a user’s intent. Custom slots are values you define for your business. They're typically a fixed set of options that can be recognized by your NLP engine and, in chat experiences, may appear as selectable choices.

For example: “I want to book the deluxe room.” Deluxe is a slot value representing room type.

Common custom slot examples

• Yes / No

• Small / Medium / Large

• “I want to sign up” / “I want something else”

Looking for standard inputs like date, time, email, or freeform text? Those are built-in (system) slots. You don’t create them through the custom slots resource. Select a system slot when attaching slots to a flow. See: Built-in slots.

To access, click Resources in your workspace menu and choose Slots:

Requirements

• One or more values entered

• Attached to a flow for use

Values

After creating a new custom slot:

• Click + Add new value > Enter custom slot value and repeat as needed

• Click Save

Refrain from closely-named values (value 1 = Yes, value 2 = Yes, please).

Optional (expand a value):

• Choice payload: Defines a custom payload for how a value is displayed when shown as a user selection. You can insert previously set Context variables using the placeholder menu { within the field. Payloads can also be used to control sorting or order. For example, adding isLastValue ensures the value appears last in the list

Choice payload field of a custom slot value

Synonyms

Synonyms allow you to add alternate terms to a custom slot value that users are likely to provide when making a choice (e.g., a user may respond with Sure or OK instead of Yes). In these cases, synonyms can be added to expand the scope of responses that capture the same value:

• Expand a value > Select + Add synonym

• Enter one or more synonyms for the value > Click Save

Adding translations

Languages manages the translations of all values and synonyms belonging to a custom slot.

Want to know what languages are available? See Supported languages

Ensure custom slots used in flows have been translated to match the language(s) your application ultimately needs to support.

• Select Languages tab > Click + Add new language and choose from list

• Click Save

Auto-translation

• Select Manage translations next to supported language

• Choose Auto-translate all > Confirm

Manual translation

Slot settings

• Sensitive: Prevents the slot's values from being stored in conversation logs

To delete a custom Slot and all of its values, select the Delete option under Danger zone. If the Slot is attached to a flow, create a new application build and re-deploy to experience the change.