🎄 🎄 Build your Santa Holiday Assistant in a snap 🎄 🎄

We will be creating an assistant to take your orders at the Christmas drinks...

Creating an IBM Cloud Account

1. Go to this link and create an account: https://ibm.biz/BdzkM9.
2. If you already have an account, go to the same link and click Log in on the top right of the page to continue.

Provisioning a Watson Assistant instance

1. Once logged in, click on Catalog positioned on the right-hand side of the topbar.
2. Search for Assistant.
3. Under the AI Category, click on Watson Assistant.
4. Scroll down and make sure Lite Plan is selected for the free plan.
5. Click Create.
6. Click on Launch Watson Assistant.

Creating Intents 🎅 🎅

Once in the tooling, click the My first skill tile to go to the Skills section.

1. Once in the Skills section, click Create intent.

2. Name the new intent order-drink.

3. Add a description of what the intent will do. For this, let's use "User wants to order a drink.".

4. Hit Enter to create the intent.

5. Start adding a few examples of how a user would order a drink (at least 5 examples are recommended). Click Add example to add a sample line. Let's use the following lines:

   • I would like to order a gluhwein please
   • I need something to drink
   • order a wine
   • a hot chocolate would be great
   • a drink please

6. Open the Try it Out panel by clicking on the speech bubble in the upper right corner. This allows you to test how your assistant will respond.

7. Wait for the assistant to finish training, then type can I order something to drink. It should classify the intent as #order-drink. Even though you didn't train the intent on this exact sentence, Watson can still understand it.

   Note that because we haven't trained the assistant yet on how to respond, the answer is still I didn't understand. You can try rephrasing.. This will change once we will create the dialog.

8. Add a few more intents to make your assistant more robust. For this, click the button, followed by the Create Intent button. Next, create the following intents and add a few examples to each:

   • #see-menu (User wants to see what's on the menu)
   • #greetings (User greets the assistant)
   • #thanks (User thanks the assistant)

   Below the output of the finished intents:

   

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Tip: Instead of creating general intents like greetings and thanks yourself, you can also add a set of intents from the content catalog. For this, browse in the menu on the left-hand side to Content Catalog. You'll see some industry specific sets, but also a general one. Click on Add to skill to add a set to your skill.

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Creating Entities 🎄 🎄

1. In the menu on the lef-hand side, click on Entities.

2. Click Create entity and add the name drink. Press Enter to actually create the intent.

3. Turn Fuzzy Matching on if you want Watson to understand misspellings (should be on by default).

4. Add a value coffee with the synonym cafe. Click Add value to actually add the new value with its synonym.

5. Complete this section by adding some additional values that you allow your users to order and any synonyms, for example:

   • gluhwein
   • hot chocolate
   • wine
   • beer
   • cappuccino

6. Exit the page by clicking (1).

   

7. Click on System entities (2) in the Entities section and turn on @sys-number.

   

   Here is how your finished entity @drink should look:

   

Creating a Dialog 🎁 🎁

1. In the menu on the lef-hand side, click Dialog. This brings you to the dialog that was already part of the My first skill skill.
2. Click on the Welcome node if you would like to change the intro message.
3. Click Add node, and name it Greetings.
4. Add your #greetings intent as the field for If assistant recognizes.
5. Fill in a response that says something like "Hi! How can I help you today?".
6. Create two more nodes for #thanks and #see-menu and add responses.
7. Create another node and name it Order Drink.
8. To the right of the name, click on Customize.
9. Turn on Slots and hit Apply.
10. Add the intent #order-drinkto If assistant recognizes.
11. Under Check for, add the entity @drink.
12. Under If not present, ask add a question like "What would you like to drink?".
13. Click Add slot, and add a condition and prompt for @sys-number: "How many cups of $drink would you like?" (Note: the syntax $variable is short hand for accessing Context variables. Context variables allow you to pass information between your application and Watson Assistant).
14. Add in the response, "Ok, I have $number $drink coming right up!".

Below an example of the finished dialog tree with the Order Drinks node open:

🎄 🎄 🎅 🎅 CONGRATULATIONS!! 🎅 🎅 🎄 🎄

You successfully completed the lab!! Want to learn more? Try some of the following methods to bolster your Santa Holiday Assistant.

[Optional] Resetting context

If your user orders a drink and completes the flow, and they try to make another order, the values found from the first flow will still be there so they will not be able to order something else. To fix this, we need to clear the context after a successful order so the values are not stored for the next order.

1. Create a node above the Slots node Order Drinks called Order Drinks - Clear Context.

2. Set the condition to #order-drink.

3. In the Assistant responds section, click on the three button menu on the right and click on Open context editor.

4. Fill in both variables (drink and number) and set the values to null.

5. Click on the three dot menu on the right side of original Slots node Order Drinks, and select Move. Then, click the new context clearing node and move to As Child Node (So, the parent node is the context clearing node, and the slots node is the child).

6. Go to the section called Then assistant should at the bottom of the context clearing node. Select Skip user input.

7. Try it out! Without clearing the try it out panel, order a drink. Once finished, try ordering another drink and it should prompt you for the two needed variables again. Here's what the finished context clearing node will look like:

   

[Optional] Help - Digressions

Sometimes, you want an intent to be handled no matter where the user is in their flow. Think of Digressions as a global 'manage handlers': they allow you to respond to an intent even if a user is in the middle of a process flow, and then it allows them to return to their prior flow. If your user wants some help talking to the assistant anywhere in your assistant, this is a good intent to have digressions enabled.

1. Create a #help intent with examples like: "I need help".

2. Create a node below your Order Drinks node.

3. Add the condition of #help with a response like: "I can help you order a Christmas drink!! Just say 'order drink' to get started!".

4. Go into the Customize portion of the node by clicking in the upper right.

5. Click on the Digressions tab.

6. Expand Digressions can come into this node and enable Return after digressions (Digressions should be on by default, this setting allows you to handle the intent and then return back to the flow). Click Apply to complete this step.

7. Now, to test this out, we need to get in the middle of our order drink flow. But first, since it is a slot, we need to go into the Digressions tab in the Order Drinks slots node.

8. Turn on Allow digressions away while slot filling and check the option that only allows nodes with returns enabled. This will help you to control which nodes you want to allow to digress to. Finally, click Apply to complete this step.

   

9. Try it out by saying "order drink", then when asked for what kind of drink you want, say "help". You should see a response from your help node with another follow up message for the next slot filling question.