Building a Chatbot with Amazon Lex

Intents

An intent is what the user is trying to achieve in their conversation with the chatbot. For example, checking a bank account balance; booking a flight; ordering food.

I created my first intent, WelcomeIntent, to welcome a user when they say hello.

Part 2 — WelcomeIntent

Configuring FallbackIntent

FallbackIntent is a default intent in every chatbot that gets triggered when it does not understand what the user sent (users’ request)

I wanted to configure FallbackIntent so the user will know the bot does not understand their request instead of the default response which is hard to understand.

Slots

Slots are pieces of information that a chatbot needs to complete a user’s request. They are like blanks that need to be filled in a form.

Here, I created a custom slot type to get the user’s bank account type

This slot type has restricted slot values, which means that only the values specified will count as a valid accountType.

Connecting slots with intents

I associated my custom slot with CheckBalance, which is to check the balance in the specified account type.

In your left hand navigation panel, head back to Intents..

Choose Add intent, then Add empty intent..

Enter CheckBalance as your intent name.

Choose Add..

Enter the following description in the Intent details panel: Intent to check the balance in the specified account type..

Scroll down to Sample utterances..

Switch to Plain Text and paste in the following utterances:

What's the balance in my account?

Check my account balance

What's the balance in my {accountType} account?

How much do I have in {accountType} ?

I want to check the balance

Can you help me with account balance?

Balance in {accountType

You might remember that we mentioned the CheckBalance intent should also check for the user’s birthday… let’s create a Slot for the birth date!. Choose Add slot.. Use these values for your next slot:. Name: dateOfBirth. Slot type: AMAZON.Date. Prompts: For verification purposes, what is your date of birth?

Choose Save intent.. Choose Build — shall we answer some questions while you wait? 👀

now we are testing: