An intent represents the intention of the user. In Cuneiform, we use intents to map different intentions of the user to a set of actions that is to be taken by the application.

For example, in our ChessHelper sample, application, the user may have several intentions, some of which include getting to know the goal of a chess game, learning how to set up a chess board, etc.

Intents may optionally have arguments called slots.

In Cuneiform, an intent consist of three main properties.

1. Initiative
2. Sample Utterances
3. Slots

Cuneiform supports three types of initiatives.

• User Initiative - the conversation pertaining to the intent is initiated by the user.
• System Initiative - the conversation pertaining to the intent is initiated by the system/ application.
• Mixed Initiative - the conversation pertaining to the intent may be initiated by the system or the user.

User Initiative Intents

A user initiative intent is an intent triggered by the user interacting with the system. For example, in our ChessHelper sample, if the user wanted wants to know how to set up a chess board, the SetupIntent is to be triggered.

In this case, it makes sense that the user requests this information from the system rather than the system unexpectedly providing the information to the user. As a result, it is recommended that we set such intents as User Initiative.

System Initiative Intents

System initiative intents are initiated by the application when an event is triggered. An example of this would be a sort of weather application which may provide warning notifications to the user when a dangerous type of weather is forecasted.

Mixed Initiative Intents

Mixed initiative intents my be triggered by the user, or the system. When an application is created, a WelcomeIntent is provided by default. A good example of the WelcomeIntent being used as a mixed initiative would be a chat bot on a website, which may either welcome the user when he/she initiates the conversation, or after a few minutes when the user has browsed through the site, so as not to disturb the user immediately after visiting the site.

Sample Utterances are are a set of likely spoken phrases mapped to intents. When an intent is created, we must provide a list of utterances that users would say to trigger the intent.

For example,for an intent to get an overview of a game of chess (OverviewIntent), we may use utterances such as:

When the users are interacting with the system through an intent, they may pass along certain pieces of data along with their utterances. These data could be used to process the user's request and assist them in achieving their goal. These sets of information are known as slots.

Consider an intent for booking a ticket for an airline (BookTicketIntent). In this case, you may use utterances such as:

Once you have written a few utterances, note that the words or phrases that represent variable information. These will become the intent's slots. For example, in the utterances provided above, the variables are highlighted in red.

Create a slot for each of such words or phrases, and replace the original word with the slot name in curly brackets ({ }).

1. In the Slots section, click on the Create Slot button.
2. Provide a slot name (eg: toCity).
3. Select the slot type.
4. Provide possible slot values.
5. Click Done.

Considering the example above, we have created the slot for {toCity} as shown in the example below. In this case, the airline which is developing the application must provide all the cities it is offering flights to.

After the slots have been created, the intent for the above example may look as follows. The edit button () can be clicked an the slot data can be altered. If you want to delete any created slot, it can be done so by clicking the delete button ().

More information about the slot properties can be found below.

Slot Type

As of right now, Cuneiform supports three slot types

1. Custom
2. Datetime
3. Number

Custom slot types provide us with the option to provide custom values for slots. For example, for {toCity}, we are able to provide custom values of the cities in which the airline is offering flights to.

Datetime lets us use slot slots where specific dates and times can be provided. In the above example, {travelDate} would represent a slot with a Datetime type. These slot types can hold values for utterances like:

To learn how to utilize Datetime slot types using DateTime objects in the Cuneiform Development Environment, you may like to look into DateTime System Operations.

Number slot types allows us to process information on numerical values users communicate with the system. These support utterances such as:

Slot Values

Slot values are provided for slots of Custom type. For such slots, Cuneiform allows the developer to provide as many slots as they want. For each slot, the developer may also provide synonyms. Synonyms are useful when a certain slot value is identified by many names.

For example, in our ChessHelper sample, there is an intent where the user may ask the system to provide information about a given chess piece (PieceIntent). In such cases, the user may use words such as "king", "queen", "rook", etc. to provide the slot value for a chess piece. However, in certain cases some people may refer to certain pieces by other names. For example, some refer to the "rook" as "castle", and "knight" as "horse". In such cases, synonyms can be provided to reduce confusion as well as to avoid code duplication in the development process.

Creating slot values

When creating slot values, you may need to get used to using your tab and enter keys a lot!

1. Click on the slot value text box.
2. Enter the slot value.
   If you want to add synonyms to the value,
   1. Press the tab key and the cursor moves to the synonyms text box.
   2. Type the synonym.
   3. Press the tab key to add the synonym to the value.
      
   If you wish to add another synonym to the slot value, repeat the above process.
3. Press the enter/ return key to add the value to the slot.
Repeat the same process to add another value to the slot.

In the next section, we will get to learn more about conversation graphs in Cuneiform, and how they work.