Use built-in slot types in a bot flow

Architect bots support two slot types: built-in slots and custom slots. Built-in slots define how the bot recognizes and handles data in the slot. Built-in slots eliminates the need to create enumeration values for commonly used slot data such as date, time, and duration.

Incorporate built-in slots when you create a slot from the Natural Language Understanding menu. To make it easy to use common slots, you can create a slot with your preferred name and then map it to a slot type from Architect’s built-in library. The slot that you create includes the configuration of the built-in slot type.

Note: You can edit a built-in slot type, but you cannot delete it.

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.
  • Used only with Ask for Slot actions. Does not fill slots during Ask for Intent actions.
  • Cannot be used to detect intents or utterance mapping. Does not provide a NO_HINT syntax to customer.
  • Ensures that numbers and single letters are accurately identified (the "o" in "Stratocaster" is a letter and not a zero).

Add a built-in slot to your bot flow

To add a built-in slot to your bot flow, follow these steps:

  1. Under Natural Language Understanding, click Slots.
  2. From the Intents page, click the Slots tab.
  3. Click Add Slot.
  4. Provide a meaningful name for the slot.
  5. Under Slot Type, click Existing.
  6. From the list, select an existing slot type.
  7. Click Save.

Click the image to enlarge.

Natural Language Understanding - Existing slots

Modify a slot

To modify slot information, from the Slot menu, select a slot and click Edit .

Delete a slot

To delete a slot, from the Slot menu, select a slot and click Delete .