Quickstart

This article will guide you in starting with Voximplant Avatar.

Avatar is a virtual assistant based on AI and NLP, that you can integrate into a voice or text channel. To understand how avatar works, you need to learn about avatar intents and scenarios.

You can manually create an avatar or use one of the existing templates. Templates provide a ready-to-use avatar with a predefined scenario, all the necessary intents and entities, making it easy to integrate into your system.

You can also modify the template’s scenario and intents to customize your avatar.

To use a template:

1. Log in to your control panel
2. In the main menu, go to the Templates section.

3. Choose one of the avatar templates and click on it.
4. Read the avatar description and if it suits you, click the Install button.
5. Specify the avatar's settings: language, time zone, and type: chatbot or omnichannel bot.
6. Click Create.

Your avatar is ready! Once you open it, you can test the bot in the Debug mode and integrate it into your product.

To manually create an avatar, you must first create an avatar instance, then write an avatar scenario, create intents, and finally integrate it with your telephony or chat system.

Let us create a first-line support robot for a restaurant. The robot handles:

Create an avatar

Go to the Avatar section of the control panel and click the Create button. Enter your avatar name and click Create again.

Now, you have an empty avatar with predefined basic intents and a basic dialog scenario.

Set up intents

To add an intent, click the Add intent button, type “open_hours” in the modal window, and click Create:

Now, you can set up your intent by adding phrases that a user might say and default responses to those phrases.

Add 10-20 training phrases, for example:

Then, navigate to the Responses tab and add a default response: “We are open daily from 7 am to 9 pm.”

Repeat this procedure for “delivery” and “reservation” intents. So as not to have to do it manually, import all the data from this file by clicking the Import button.

When you add the data you can see the “Training required” hint.

This means that you need to retrain your neural network with the added data. So click on it and wait till the training finishes.

Your avatar is now equipped to handle natural speech, so let’s proceed with building a scenario.

Write a dialog scenario

Navigate to the Dialog scenario tab. Here, you discover the default conversation scenario that requires replacement with your own. Let’s begin with a straightforward one-state dialog.

Upon entering the state, your avatar greets the user. If the user says something that matches the list of utterances, the avatar responds with a default response defined in the UI on the previous step. If the intent is unknown, the avatar responds with “cannot get that” and continues listening.

Key points:

It’s time to test your avatar! To do this, save your scenario and click the Debug button. A dialog box will then appear.

Type some questions and check if your avatar responds accurately.

All works, but you need to add exit points to the scenario to prevent it from becoming infinite. For instance:

With these exit points, the scenario becomes a bit more intricate. Please let me know what you think should happen next.

1. Check if the entry state is entered for the first time. If yes, let your avatar greet the user; if no, let it ask if the user needs help with something else. For this purpose, use visitsCounter and increment it every time the dialog enters the state.
2. In the onUtterance handler, add a branch to handle the “no“ and “yes” intents for “can I help you with something else?“. Depending on the response, finish the dialog (by going to the final state) or continue the conversation.
3. Every time the user says something while the dialog stays in the same handler, increment utteranceCounter. When leaving the handler, reset it. So if the user says something unknown again and again without leaving the handler, this counter will grow. When it becomes equal to 3, the avatar stops the dialog.
4. The final state of the dialog causes termination. You can pass some additional information to the scenario at this state. For example, you can add a custom key – aneedRedirectionToOperator.

Enable reservations

Now that your avatar can comprehend user intentions and respond accordingly, it is time to instruct it on how to make reservations.

1. When filling out the reservation form, track the conversation context and state alongside the reservation information. To achieve this, declare the reservationForm object at the beginning of the scenario and use it to store all the collected information about the reservation.

2. Since the user can request a reservation using both phrases: “Can I book a table?” (no parameters) and “Can I book a table for two?” (people: 2), extract the date and the number of people from the first phrase in the onUtterance handler of the start state. Store this information in the reservation form.

3. In the new reservation state, construct a question for the user based on the information provided in the form. If the user fails to respond, and the weirdUtterancesInRow counter exceeds its limit, cease attempting to complete the form and return to the start state.

4. In the onUtterance handler of the reservation state, check if the requested information is given through entities. If yes, add it to the form and continue the loop. If not, increment the weirdUtterancesInRow counter to avoid getting stuck in an endless loop.

5. At the same time, the avatar can continue answering clarifying questions without stopping the form-filling process, using the intent check in the onUtterance handler.

6. In the reservationConfirm state, verify the provided information. If everything is in order, return to the start state to inquire about any additional assistance you may need.

7. The final state passes the information from the form to the scenario. Alternatively, you can send it to your CRM/backend right from the avatar scenario by calling the httpRequest method.

Now, you have a fully functional bot with a complex scenario that supports a flexible and natural flow of dialogue. Let’s integrate it with telephony.

Integrate with telephony and chat

You have two integration options:

Let’s implement the second one.

To do that:

1. Copy the code from the Integration section of your avatar.
2. Create a platform scenario and paste the code there.
3. Specify ASR and TTS options in the configuration step (select a language and voice).
4. Set everything up to handle calls via this scenario and test it.

The complete VoxEngine scenario for Avatar will look like this:

Congratulations! Now you can call your avatar and have a voice conversation with it.

Refer to the AvatarEngine and VoxEngine.VoximplantAvatar API references to create a more complex solution.