Intents and Utterances

This article covers creating intents, organising them into groups and adding the example utterances a virtual agent learns from. It is part of Virtual Agent, which explains what a virtual agent is and how a flow uses it. Bringing intents in from a file or a template is covered in Importing Intents, and the other two tabs of an intent in Entities and Intent Actions.

The intents page

The Virtual Agent menu in the project app bar opens the intents page.

1. Search: Search intent or group filters the page by intent or group name.

2. Groups panel: Each card shows a group and how many intents it holds. Selecting a card shows that group's intents in the table. The folder-plus icon adds a group.

3. Intent table: The intents of the selected group, with # of Utterances and # of Entities for each one. The table shows a # before each name, but the # is not part of the name. Open an intent from the table to edit it, or delete it with its trash icon. Select several intents to move them to another group or delete them together.

4. Train: Trains the virtual agent on its current intents and utterances. See Training and Testing.

5. Test: Tests one utterance. The caret next to it holds the batch test. See Training and Testing.

6. New Intent: Creates an intent. The caret next to it holds the import, export and template items. See Importing Intents.

Creating an intent

1. Click New Intent.
2. Type the intent's name and press Enter.

The new intent is added to the Default group and opens on the Edit Intent page.

For the example on this page, name the intent weather.

An intent name can be up to 256 characters long and must be unique in the virtual agent. Names that differ only in upper and lower case count as the same name. An intent name cannot contain ', ", /, \, < or >.

Adding utterances

Utterances are the example sentences the virtual agent learns an intent from. Vary the wording, not just one word.

1. Intent and Group: The intent's name and the group it belongs to. Changes are saved automatically.

2. Tabs: Utterances, Entities and Actions.

3. Utterance box: Type or paste utterances here, one per line. Click + Add or press Shift+Enter to add them. Each utterance can be up to 2048 characters long.

4. Generate with AI: Suggests more utterances for the intent. It is available when the feature is set up, as described in Add-On AI Features.

5. Utterance list: The intent's utterances, with a Search utterance box. To delete one utterance, use its trash icon. To delete several, select them and click Delete Selected.

For the weather intent, paste these lines into the box and click + Add:

What's the weather like in Istanbul today? Will it rain tomorrow? How hot is it in Ankara right now? Do I need an umbrella this afternoon? What's the forecast for the weekend? Is it going to snow in Izmir?

You cannot edit an utterance in place. To change one, delete it and add the corrected version.

When you add, change or delete utterances or intents, you need to train the virtual agent again before the changes take effect. See Training and Testing.

Organising intents into groups

Groups keep a large virtual agent manageable. Every intent belongs to exactly one group, and new intents start in Default.

• Add a group: Click the folder-plus icon (Add New Group) in the Groups panel and type a name.
• Move intents: Select the intents in the table and click Move to another group. You can also change the Group field of a single intent on its Edit Intent page.
• Manage a group: Open a group's menu. It offers Rename, Move Intents to Default and Delete Group.

Default has no menu, so you cannot rename or delete it.

⚠️ Warning: Delete Group deletes the group and every intent in it, along with their utterances. To keep the intents, use Move Intents to Default first.

The built-in intents: welcome and fallback

Every virtual agent starts with two intents:

The fallback intent comes with a large set of built-in example utterances that are out of scope for a typical virtual agent: about 1000 in most languages, fewer in some. You can add your own, for example requests your business does not handle, so that the virtual agent sends them to fallback instead of matching them to a real intent.

💡 Tip: Do not delete the built-in fallback utterances. The fallback intent relies on them to recognise messages that belong to none of your intents.

Limits and naming rules