Custom entities

You can create custom entities for matching data specific to your agent. For example, you could define a vegetable entity type that can match the types of vegetables available for purchase with a grocery store agent.

Create custom entities

To create a custom entity:

Limitations

The following limitations apply:

• Custom entity type display names are unique for each agent. Entity type display names should start with a letter and can contain the following: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _ (underscore), - (dash). Entity reference and synonym values have no such limitation.

Export and import custom entities

You can export and import entities for sharing across agents.

One of the export format options is Json package, which is a zip file that contains a hierarchy of directories and JSON files. The following describes the directory structure:

• entityTypes: This directory contains your entity types.
  • <entity type name>: One or more of these directories exist, and the directory names correspond to entity type display names.
    • entities: This directory contains entity entry files.
      • <language tag>.json: One or more of these files exist, and the file names correspond to language tags. Each file contains language-specific entity entries.
    • <excludedPhrases>: This directory contains excluded phrase files.
      • <language tag>.json: One or more of these files exist, and the file names correspond to language tags. Each file contains language-specific phrase exclusions.
    • <entity type name>.json: This filename corresponds to an entity type display name. The file contains entity-type-specific data not found in other files.

For example:

folder entityTypes
 ⤷ folder Entity Type A
    ⤷ folder entities
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-gb.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-ca.json
    ⤷ folder excludedPhrases
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-gb.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-ca.json
    ⤷ insert_drive_file Entity Type A.json
 ⤷ folder Entity Type B
    ⤷ folder entities
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-gb.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-ca.json
    ⤷ folder excludedPhrases
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-gb.json
       ⤷ insert_drive_file en-ca.json
    ⤷ insert_drive_file Entity Type B.json

When importing entity types, there may be merge conflicts when the display name of an entity type in your existing agent matches that of an imported entity type. You can control the merge behavior when entity type display names match by selecting one of the following:

• Replace existing entity types: An imported entity type overwrites any same-named entity type in your existing agent.
• Merge with existing entity types: The entity entries of an imported entity type are added to the existing entity type. If the same entity entries exist, they won't be duplicated, and the synonyms under them will be merged.
• Rename and import as new entity types: The imported entity type is renamed by appending "_1" to the display name.
• Skip the entity types: The existing entity type remains unchanged, and the imported entity type is ignored.

To export entity types:

To import entity types:

Import entity entries

You can import entity entries to an existing entity type.

The file format used for importing entity entries is the same as the format used for importing entity types. However, the import file can only contain 1 entity type and all the entries under it will be imported to the selected entity type. If the same entity entries exist, they won't be duplicated, and the synonyms under them will be merged.

To import entity entries for an entity type: