Integrating Dialog Engine

In release 9.0, integration of Intelligent Automation with Dialog Engine allows a user to use natural language when responding, even entering multiple pieces of information in a single response. From the customer response, Dialog Engine infers the relevant information contained in that response, enabling some subsequent Menu and Question blocks in the call flow to be skipped, because the information has already been captured. The result of this is a successful conversation that is shorter than that of the directed-dialog approach.

This page describes how to integrate with Dialog Engine to improve communication with your customers.

How it works

Dialog Engine works in the background while Intelligent Automation communicates directly with the customer. Here's how:

1. Intelligent Automation asks an open-ended question (For example, What can I help you with?)
2. The user provides a natural language response (For example, What will the weather be like in London on Saturday?).
3. Intelligent Automation receives the response and passes it along to Dialog Engine.
4. Dialog Engine responds, as follows:
   • If Dialog Engine needs more information to understand the request, it responds to Intelligent Automation with follow-up questions. (For example, For what city?).
   • If Dialog Engine has all the information it needs, it sends Intelligent Automation the Intent and associated Slots (In the Weather example, the Intent could be Weather and the Slots could be weatherLocation and weatherDate).
5. When Intelligent Automation receives and reads the Intents and Slots, it directs the interaction according to the configured application.

The following demonstrates a Natural Language chat session with Dialog Engine running in the background:

How to integrate with Dialog Engine

To complete a Dialog Engine integration, complete the following steps:

1. Configure Default Server Settings
2. Configure Dialog Engine Settings
3. Map Intents to modules
4. Map Slots to questions

Configure Default Server Settings

To begin the integration process, go to Administration > Default Server Settings in the Intelligent Automation user interface and configure the following:

• DialogEngine.JOPv2.BaseURL - The URL to the Dialog Engine API.
• DialogEngine.JOPv2.Password - The Dialog Engine Client Secret password.
• DialogEngine.JOPv2.TimeoutMillis - The length of time (in milliseconds) that Intelligent Automation waits for a response from Dialog Engine before throwing an error.
• DialogEngine.JOPv2.Username - The Dialog Engine Client ID.
• DialogEngine.Provider - The default plugin. Enter JOPv2.

Important

If you do not have access to these settings, contact your Genesys representative.

Configure Dialog Engine Settings

Once you have configured the Default Server Settings, open a Natural Language Menu module and click the DialogEngine Settings tab. This page will display the Client ID and Client Secret password configured on the Default Server Settings page. You can use these credentials or override them for this application.

Map Intents to modules

Intelligent Automation reads all Intents, Utterances, and Slots associated with a domain and then displays that information on the Intents List page for the Natural Language Menu module. This is where you'll map each Intent to a module.

To map an Intent to a module, simply select a module from the Intelligent Automation Module to Trigger menu for the Intent. Intelligent Automation will then automatically update the application's callflow accordingly.

Map Slots to questions

In Dialog Engine, an Intent contains Slots, which are key pieces of information you need to extract from the end user to process a request. For example, if a user wants the weather forecast, you would need to know two key pieces of information before providing a weather forecast - city and date. These would be considered Slots in Dialog Engine.

For each Intent, you should have an associated module containing questions that will extract the right information from the customer. For the Weather example, you would have a Weather Questions module, which contains two questions: For what city and For what date? Both of these questions relate to the weatherLocation and weatherDate Slots in Dialog Engine.

Once you have created this module in Intelligent Automation, you need to map it to its associated Slots, as follows:

1. Open the module that is linked to Intent.
2. For each Question block in that module for which you would expect to have a slot, open the block and go to Question Options.
3. Check the Store Answer as a Variable checkbox and enter the Slot name (weatherLocation).

When a chat or voice session reaches one of those Question blocks, it first checks if that slot has been sent to Intelligent Automation from Dialog Engine. In that case, Intelligent Automation uses that as the answer to the question. Otherwise, Intelligent Automation asks the question and waits for a response.