Design the Slots for Your Skill
What are slots and slot types are
A slot type defines variable information in your sample utterances. Slots make your life easier when writing sample utterances by allowing interchangeable information to be accepted as input for a sample utterance. This means you only have to write out the sample utterance once rather than multiple times for every potential input. Additionally, you can use this information to customize the responses that the skill gives. For example, a {PizzaType} slot may contain a list of pizzas (e.g. “pepperoni”, “hawaiian”, “vegetarian”, etc.) and be tied to a “PizzaSlot” within your skill. Using the sample utterance “i want a {PizzaSlot}”, you can cover a wide range of user input using just one sample utterance. See the “Custom Slots” section below for a detailed example of how to implement slots in your skill.
The design guide has been split into two sections for this subject matter:
- Design the Custom Slots for Your Skill Slots created by you to cover variable portions of sample utterances.
- Tips for Using the Built-in Slots for Your Skill Slot types built and maintained by Amazon including catalogs of values that cover a particular theme or topic, for example cities or countries. Built-in slot types include list slot types; number, date, and time slot types; and phrase slot types.
Last updated: Nov 28, 2023