Chapter 1: Introduction & Conceptual Overview

Most of this training will be hands-on, meaning we'll cover topics in the context of the
product rather than spending time discussing system components more abstractly.
The assumption here is that you already understand the value of conversational
automation and know the why of chatbots and voicebots. At this point, you're more
interested in the how. But some conceptual understanding is valuable, and you may
want to refer back to this video as you go through the other training materials to see
how your understanding has improved.

This overview will briefly cover the key building blocks of automated conversations and
give you some concepts to look out for as we make our way through the rest of the
training.

And here they are, we'll talk about Endpoints, Intents, Slots, Flows, and Extensions.

Endpoints are where conversations begin. Conversations can start over voice or chat
channels. For voice channels, Cognigy works with major telephony and contact center
applications to allow users to call a contact center and have their interaction handled
solely through an automated Agent. For chat channels, Cognigy connects to a variety
of Endpoints from a Webchat on your website, to SMS, to Facebook Messenger and
internal channels like Teams, Slack, and Skype for Business.

When Cognigy receives an input from a user, it's processed by our industry-leading
language AI. The Natural Language Understanding engine that takes a free form user
input and determines the user's intention.

The NLU has two components: Slots and Intents. Let's take Slots first. Slots are
categories of words that add meaning to a user utterance. For example, if a user says,
I would like to order a veggie pizza with extra cheese or I ordered a pizza with my
account Derek@cognigy.com an hour ago. Cognigy can identify that pizza is a "Food",
cheese is a "Topping", Derek@cognigy.com is an "e-mail", and an hour ago is a
"Duration".

Slots is a term of art in NLU discussion. But just think of it as a category. If I say pizza
is a Slot match for food. I mean that pizza is a match for the food category. This is
important because the NLU may know that the user wants to order something, but it
needs to figure out what specifically the user wants, "A pizza with extra cheese". Some
Slot types will be domain-specific, like pizza and all the possible toppings it cvould
have. Other Slots are more conceptual or pattern-based, like dates, emails, durations,
or temperatures. Dates, for example, can be expressed as tomorrow, Friday, the
twenty-third, or next week, and they all mean the same thing. These conceptual or
pattern-based Slots are built into Cognigy. The domain-specific ones may be unique
to your business, whether you're an airline, an auto parts manufacturer, a
pharmaceutical company, or a pizza restaurant. You have product names and
business processes that are particular to you.

Another ingredient and arguably the main ingredient of NLU is Intents. An Intent
reflects what the user means. The main idea of their sentence. If the user says, I would
like to order a veggie pizza with extra cheese, the main idea is that they want to "order
a pizza". If the user is asking why their order hasn't arrived yet, the main idea is that
they're "making a complaint". For many, Intent detection is at the heart of
conversational automation. When a user calls your contact center, they ask a question
and you can't predict what they might say. Detecting a user's intent, even when they're
expressing themselves in ways you might not have anticipated is key to fulfilling on a
user's request. In short, if you don't understand the user's question, you can't give a
good answer. Detecting the user's Intent and identifying Slot matches helps Cognigy
guide the user to a helpful response. We respond to users in Flows. You might hear
terms like fulfillment or dialog management as other ways of describing Flows. At heart,
the idea is now that we know what the user wants, how do we fulfill on their request?
Responding to the user may involve simply providing information. So if the user says,
"Do you have vegetarian pizza?" You may just respond: Yes, we have both
"vegetarian" and "vegan pizza" options. Sometimes the response may include a follow-
up question. If the user says, "What are your restaurant hours"? I might ask, which
locations are you asking about? Conversational automation is most powerful when it's
accessing data from other systems or helping users perform actions. So if a user says,
"I want to order a veggie pizza", the bot understands their Intent and places an order
in an order management system. If the user says, "Can you add a bottle of water to
my order", the system can find the user's order and add an additional item to it.

Cognigy ships with a wide range of pre-built connectors to common enterprise systems
and automation platforms. We also make it straightforward to build integrations to
systems we haven't heard of yet, like a homegrown system for managing pizza orders.
We call these connectors Extensions. To recap, if my friend Laura wants to order a
pizza, she starts off in a Channel like a Webchat or a phone call. Cognigy understands
her Intent to place an order and it understands the components of her order, like the
"type of pizza" and its "toppings". Cognigy then formulates an answer and adds
dynamic information like the total price for her order and sends a response. In
conversational automation terms, Laura starts the conversation on an Endpoint.
Cognigy figures out her Intent and the relevant Slot matches. In the Flow, Cognigy
manages the response and uses Extensions to retrieve data from systems of record.

The goal of this foundation's training is to provide a hands-on walkthrough of each of

these topic areas. We won't cover Extensions in the foundation course, but we'll cover
Endpoints, Intents, Slots, and Flows in some detail over the coming videos. By the end
of this course, you should be able to build a basic Flow that can identify Intents and
Slot matches and be published to an Endpoint. I'm looking forward to sharing the
Cognigy.AI platform with you