Rules

Rules teach your Mpower Agent A virtual agent created with CXone Mpower Agent Builder that can handle voice or chat interactions. how to respond to messages Anything a contact says in a bot interaction, whether question or statement, written or spoken. that are the same in every context. Every time the Mpower Agent recognizes the intent associated with that rule, it responds the same way. Rules are useful situations such as:

Single-turn interactions with fixed responses: What are your hours? What is your address?
Conversation building blocks: Greetings, goodbyes, thank-yous, and transitions; simple yes/no questions; and acknowledgments. Agent Builder comes with default intents The meaning or purpose behind what a contact says/types; what the contact wants to communicate or accomplish. and rules Used to define an Mpower Agent's response to messages that don't change with context. for common building blocks. These include greetings, handover The transfer of a contact from a virtual agent to a live agent. requests, and more.
FAQs: Questions that customers often ask your Mpower Agent.
Insults and classic bot challenges: Are you a real person? Is this a bot?
Interruptions: Questions or topic changes from the contact that interrupt the Mpower Agent while it's attempting to fill slots Entity extracted from contact's message and saved for use in bot responses. Similar to a variable. for a form.

Before you add a new rule, be sure you have created the intent for the rule, if it doesn't exist already.

Glossary

Concept	Definition	Example	What the Mpower Agent Does
Utterance	Anything a contact The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center. says in an interaction The full conversation with an agent through a channel. For example, an interaction can be a voice call, email, chat, or social media conversation.. Sometimes called a message.	"I lost my password." "What is my balance?" "Are you a bot?"	The Mpower Agent uses Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to analyze each contact utterance to determine its meaning, or intent.
Intent	What the contact wants to communicate or accomplish. Every message the contact sends has an intent.	"I lost my password" has the intent of "reset password". "Hello" has the intent of "greeting".	The Mpower Agent analyzes a contact's message using NLU This process expands on Natural Language Processing (NLP) to make decisions or take action based on what it understands. to determine the intent. Once it knows that, it can respond with a message of its own. You configure the response you want your Mpower Agent to use for each intent.
Entity	A defined piece of information in a contact's message.	Person or product name, phone number, account number, location, and so on.	The Mpower Agent uses NLU to identify entities in a contact's message. Entities help the Mpower Agent understand what the contact's message means.
Slot	An entity extracted from a contact's message and saved for use in Mpower Agent responses. Similar to a variable.	Creating a slot for contact name lets the Mpower Agent use that name in responses during an interaction, making it more personal.	When configured to do so, the Mpower Agent extracts an entity from a contact message and saves it in a slot. You can have your Mpower Agent use this information later in the conversation.
Rule	Defines Mpower Agent responses to messages that don't change meaning with context.	Single-turn interactions with fixed responses: What are your hours? What is your address? Conversation building blocks: Greetings, good-byes, thank yous and transitions; simple yes/no questions; and acknowledgments. Mpower Agents come with default intents and rules for several of these, including greetings, handover The transfer of a contact from a virtual agent to a live agent. requests, and more. FAQs Insults and classic bot challenges	Rules are one of two ways you can configure how your Mpower Agent responds to an intent. Rules are useful for certain kinds of intents, but not all intents.
Story	Trains an Mpower Agent to handle an interaction based on message intent and conversational context.	In an interaction about a forgotten password, the Mpower Agent would respond to "How do I do that?" in one way. If the interaction were about creating a new account, the response would be quite different even though in both cases the contact is using the same words with the same intent—to get more information.	Stories are the second of two ways you can configure how your Mpower Agent responds to an intent. Stories teach the Mpower Agent how to use the context of the conversation to respond appropriately.
Mpower Agent Action	Anything an Mpower Agent says or does while handling an interaction.	In an interaction about a forgotten password, the Mpower Agent responds by sending the link to the password reset FAQ on the website. When a contact expresses frustration, such as "I don't understand! It's not working!!!" the Mpower Agent responds with "I'm sorry. Would you like me to transfer you to a human agent?" When the contact says yes, the Mpower Agent initiates the transfer.	Mpower Agent actions are the options you have when defining how you want your Mpower Agent to respond to each intent. They give you the flexibility to configure each response to achieve the outcome that meets the contact's needs.

Rules vs Stories

Rules are one method of teaching your Mpower Agent to respond to contact utterances What a contact says or types.. The other method is to create stories. Stories allow you to teach your Mpower Agent how to respond in the context of the conversation. When context matters to understand what the contact The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center. wants, use a story. If context doesn't matter and the contact's utterance means the same thing all the time, use a rule.

For example, if the contact says "What are your hours," the Mpower Agent probably doesn't need any context and you can use a rule. But if the contact says "How do I do that," the Mpower Agent needs to understand the context of the message. What the contact asked earlier in the conversation will help the Mpower Agent understand how to respond appropriately, so you should use a story.

Conditions

You can define specific conditions that must be met in order for the rule to be used. This allows you to have your Mpower Agent follow a rule in certain circumstances. This is helpful if you want your Mpower Agent to respond to the same message in different ways, depending on some criteria.

You can choose from the following types of conditions:

Active Form: The rule only triggers when the specific form or forms are active.
Slot Value: The rule only triggers when the specified slot or slots have the configured value.