Entities

Teneo comes with a collection of pre-built Entities that you may use in your flows. However, sometimes we need to create custom entities for our bot. This is the case for the different kinds of coffee types that are served at Longberry Baristas. In the following section, we will walk you through the creation of this custom entity.

Create an 'Entity' folder

Before we create our entities, it might be a good idea to create a folder that we can use to store them. This is not required, but as a solution grows, folders help to structure your Teneo assets. To create the folder, proceed as follows:

1. Make sure none of the folders on the left are selected, by clicking in the gray area below the folders in the 'Explore' section.
2. Click the 'Folder' icon in the 'New' group in the ribbon.
3. Give your folder a name, for example, Language Objects and hit Enter.

Create a 'Coffees served' entity

Let's create the entity for recognizing the different kinds of coffees that are served at Longberry baristas. In Teneo, an entity can either contain words, phrases or language objects. Generally speaking, language objects are usually lists of synonyms or thematically related words, which are used to recognize the wide variety of user inputs. This means that language objects ensure a broader coverage, including the plural forms, declinations, and synonyms of the words compared to just using words or phrases. In other words, we do not have to specify every form or synonym of a word to get great coverage. For example, the language object '%AMERICANO.NN.LEX' will not only recognize "Americano", but also the plural form "Americanos".

The entity that we are creating in this section will contain both language objects and words like brewed coffee (singular) and brewed coffees (plural). Since no language object covers the different forms of ‘brewed coffee’ we have to specify them ourselves in the entity. It would be a good idea to create a language object that covers both singular and plural forms of ‘brewed coffee’, and then use that language object as an entry in the entity instead. However, we will skip this step for now...

This is how we go about it:

1. In your main solution window, select the 'Language Objects' folder and click 'Entity' in the 'New' section of the Ribbon. This will create a new entity in the selected folder.
2. Call the entity COFFEES_SERVED (the type .ENTITY is automatically defined).
3. Use the left arrow on the top to get to the HOME tab of the entity.
4. Copy the following table onto the clipboard:

   Coffee name	coffeeType
   %AMERICANO.NN.LEX	americano
   %CAPPUCCINO.NN.LEX	cappuccino
   %CORTADO.NN.LEX	cortado
   %ESPRESSO.NN.LEX	espresso
   %FRAPPUCCINO.NN.LEX	frappuccino
   %LATTE.NN.LEX	latte
   %LUNGO.NN.LEX	lungo
   %MACCHIATO.NN.LEX	macchiato
   %RISTRETTO.NN.LEX	ristretto
   flat white	flat white
   flat whites	flat white
   brewed coffee	brewed coffee
   brewed coffees	brewed coffee
   filtered coffee	brewed coffee
   filtered coffees	brewed coffee

   Note that filter coffee and brewed coffee are considered synonyms and both should return the type 'brewed coffee'.

5. In the Home window of the Entity mark the field Click here to add a new entry.
6. While the Entity field is marked, use Ctrl+V to paste the table into the Entity.
7. You will now be asked whether the first row of the table you are about to paste contains variable names or belongs to the data. Select 'First row is variable names'
8. Hit 'Save' and close the entity window.

As you can see the entity structure is similar to a spreadsheet as it contains columns and rows. The left column contains entry values like language objects and words. In the right column, we have the variable 'coffeeType' which contains the string value of the entry on the corresponding row. For example, if we recognize 'americano' the variable 'coffeeType' would get the value "americano". You will learn more about how to extract data from user input on the next page.

Summary

Great job! You have just created your first custom entity and worked with these components:

• Folder: Helps you keep your solution organized,
• Entity: A way of structuring data and mapping entry values to variables that can be used for data extraction,
• Language objects: Used to get broader coverage for plural forms, declinations, and synonyms of words so the bot can recognize a wide variety of user input.

Test yourself

Now that we have added an entity that stores coffee types. Let us proceed with adding one more entity but this time for the following coffee sizes:

What's next?

We have finally created an entity that stores different coffee types. Now its time to use this entity inside the flow and extract the values.