Adding intents
Intents are the goals that your users want to accomplish, such as ordering flowers or booking a hotel. Your bot must have at least one intent.
By default, all bots contain a single built-in intent, the fallback intent. This intent is used when Amazon Lex V2 does not recognize any other intent. For example, if a user says "I want to order flowers" to a hotel booking intent, the fallback intent is triggered.
To add an intent
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Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Lex console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/lex/
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From the list of bots, choose the bot that you want to add the intent to, then from Add languages choose View languages.
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Choose the language to add the intent to, then choose Intents.
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Choose Add intent, give your intent a name, and then choose Add.
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In the intent editor, add the details of your intent.
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Conversation flow – Use the conversation flow diagram to see how a dialog with your bot might look. You can choose different sections of the conversation to jump to that section of the intent editor.
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Intent details – Give the intent a name and description to help identify the purpose of the intent. You can also see the unique identifier that Amazon Lex V2 assigned to the intent.
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Contexts – Set the input and output contexts for the intent. A context is a state variable associated with an intent. An output context is set when an intent is fulfilled. An intent with an input context can only be recognized if the context is active. An intent with no input contexts can always be recognized.
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Sample utterances – You should provide 10 or more phrases that you expect your users to use to initiate an intent. Amazon Lex V2 generalizes from these phrases to recognize that the user wants to initiate the intent.
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Initial response – The initial message sent to the user after the intent is invoked. You can provide responses, initialize values, and define the next step that Amazon Lex V2 takes to respond to the user at the beginning of the intent.
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Slots – Define the slots, or parameters, required to fulfill the intent. Each slot has a type that defines the values that can be entered in the slot. You can choose from your custom slot types, or you can choose a built-in slot type.
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Confirmation – These prompts and responses are used to confirm or decline fulfillment of the intent. The confirmation prompt asks the user to review slot values. For example, "I've booked a hotel room for Friday. Is this correct?" The declination response is sent to the user when they decline the confirmation. You can provide responses, set values, and define the next step that Amazon Lex V2 takes corresponding to a confirmation or declination response from the user.
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Fulfillment – Response sent to the user during the course of fulfillment. You can set fulfillment progress updates at the start of fulfillment and periodically while the fulfillment is in progress. For example, "I'm changing your password, this may take a few minutes" and "I'm still working on your request." Fulfillment updates are used only for streaming conversations. You can also set a post-fulfillment success message, a failure message, and a timeout message. You can send post-fulfillment messages for both streaming and regular conversations. For example, if the fulfillment succeeds, you can send "I've changed your password." If the fulfillment doesn't succeed, you can send a response with more information, such as "I couldn't change your password, contact the help desk for assistance." If the fulfillment takes longer than the configured timeout period, you can send a message informing the user, such as "Our servers are very busy right now. Try your request again later." You can provide responses, set values, and define the next step that Amazon Lex V2 takes to respond to the user.
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Closing responses – Response sent to the user after the intent is fulfilled and all other messages are played. For example, a thank you for booking a hotel room. Or it can prompt the user to start a different intent, such as, "Thank you for booking a room, would you like to book a rental car?" You can provide responses and configure follow-up next actions after fulfilling the intent and responding with the closing response.
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Code hooks – Indicate whether you are using an AWS Lambda function to initialize the intent and validate user input. You specify the Lambda function in the alias that you use to run the bot.
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Choose Save intent to save the intent.
Note
On August 17, 2022, Amazon Lex V2 released a change to the way conversations are managed with the user. This change gives you more control over the path that the user takes through the conversation. For more information, see Changes to conversation flows in Amazon Lex V2. Bots created before August 17, 2022 do not support dialog code hook messages, setting values, configuring next steps, and adding conditions.
Configuring prompts in a specific order
You can configure the bot to play messages in a predefined order by checking the box for Play messages in order. Otherwise, the bot plays the message and the variations in random order.
Ordered prompts allow the message and variations of a message group to play in order among retries. You can use alternate rephrasing of a message when an invalid response for the prompt is given by the user, or for intent confirmation. Up to two variations of the original message may be set in each slot. You can choose whether to play the messages in order or randomly.
Ordered prompt supports all four types of messages: text, custom payload response, SSML, and card group. Responses are ordered within the same message group. Different message groups are independent.
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