How do I build a taxonomy?
An Orbita taxonomy is a hierarchical tree of information that refines topics from general to more and more specific items that relate to a topic.
For example, the hierarchy of a first-aid taxonomy could have the following topics and more.
The top-level lists a number of medical issues that require first-aid attention, such as Broken bone, Burns, Fever, and so on.
Each medical issue can have a list of sub-items, such as Symptoms, Treatment, and so on.
Symptoms may include items such as a stiff neck, rash, trouble breathing, and so on.
Treatments may include advice to drink fluids, take medicine, call your doctor.
The lock icon indicates that the item is being edited by someone else. Once the person who is editing the item saves, the lock disappears.
Tip: Try designing your taxonomy on paper before creating it so that you can determine relationships among the kinds of information before you implement the taxonomy in the software.
A voice experience designer builds a taxonomy so that a developer can use it in Orbita Experience Designer to create a natural conversation. This document focuses on building a taxonomy, and not using it in development.
Creating a taxonomy
Login to Experience Manager.
Select a project.
Select Agents > Taxonomy from the side menu.
Click Add (+) to create a new taxonomy.
Enter the following information and click Add.
Title. Enter a name for the taxonomy.
Description. Enter the purpose of the taxonomy.
Enable Auto Generate Slots to create the slots for this taxonomy automatically. Orbita generates an ID automatically for any new Taxonomy Tree.
The taxonomy has the following views:
Tree View. The tree view will display a structured interface of your Taxonomy. Content is organized as a tree. Where each branch is a different topic. The Category of a branch is the top-level item in the branch. All items beneath the Category item are sub-category items.
JSON View. The underlying JSON code for the taxonomy tree is present in the JSON View. You can copy the taxonomy tree from one instance to another using the JSON code. If you are familiar with JSON then you can even tweak the JSON code to rearrange the topics.
Initially, the top-level node is called Home. You can change this by clicking Edit. The Taxonomy Tree dialog box appears. (See the following section.)
Editing the Home category
Every taxonomy has a Home category that anchors the taxonomy hierarchy.
Click Home to access options such as Delete, Edit, Create.
Click Edit.
In the Edit Dialog box, enter Title, Match Phrases, and content in the Multi-modal content editor.
Title. Describes the node and creates the auto-generated navigation. The title is added as one of the match phrases in the database. Do not include the title in match phrases. Keep titles short and unique for each article. Titles are used in the auto-generated navigation.
Match Phrases. Optional. Lists additional phrases to search against.
Enter the exact words and phrases needed to access this taxonomy node.You do not need to use the plural form of the words.
Match phrases are used as slot values.
Separate match phrases with a comma.
See Best Practices (end of this document) for Tips on creating slots.
Note: Do not duplicate the match phrases in another topic or subtopic (even as a title name).
Partial Phrases. Optional. Same as match phrases, except that the partial phrases are not added as slot values. Separate partial phrases with a comma.
Enter words or phrases that do not need to be an exact match. For example, if you enter blister as a partial phrase, then blister, blisters, blistering each provides access to the taxonomy node. If you do not want blistering to be part of the access phrase, then specify blister and blisters in the Match Phrases field instead.Voice. Select this tab for audio responses.
SayText. Content for voice response. Enter content for the voice assistant to speak.
RePrompt. Optional. Usually blank, because you would use the taxonomy self-navigation as a re-prompt. However, you could organize your content into a summary with SayText, with additional information in RePrompt. Enter content for the voice assistant to speak when there is no response, or response was not understood.
Text. Select this tab for textual responses such as for an automatic chatbot.
Chat Text. Enter content for the chatbot or other text display.
Reprompt. Enter content to display when there is no response, or a response was not understood.
Screen. Select this tab for responses on a display device.
Short Title. Enter a short title to display on the screen.
Long Title. Enter a long title to display on the screen.
Body. Enter the content of the taxonomy node for the screen display.
Image Small. Click Upload to open the Asset browser where you can select an image and click OK to upload it. The display device uses either a small or large image, depending on its capability.
Image Large. Click Upload to open the Asset browser where you can select an image and click OK to upload it.
Note: You can use images that are in the Asset browser only. To upload an image from your local system to the Asset Browser, click Browse. After the image is added, you can select it and click OK.
Button. Select this tab to define push-button responses. Use this for chatbots. (See image below.)
Value. Enter the value of the button.
Text. Enter the text you want to appear on the button.
Attributes. Use this field to make a notation about the taxonomy node. For example, perhaps you made an agreement with your developer to publish a taxonomy node based on whether you enter the word “Approved” into the Attributes field. Or, if you wanted multiple approvers, you can use a comma-separated list such as “approver 1, approver 2”. There may be other uses that you can discuss with your developer.
Click Save to save the edits. After saving it, the system creates and assigns an Id to this category.
You can start creating your own taxonomy by clicking Add (+) to add a category under Home.
Fill in the Title, Match Phrases, and the content in the Multi-modal content editor, then click Save.
Example: Tree view of a taxonomy.
Reorder your taxonomy tree
The JSON tab exposes the code behind the Taxonomy Tree user interface. You can edit the code, bypassing the user interface, and rearrange the taxonomy tree by cutting, pasting, and moving code.
Best Practices
Defining the slots
When creating the match phrases in the taxonomy, create utterances with multiple slots.
prefix. help with, tell me about, what is …
who. me, my daughter, my wife …
auxVerb. have, has, get…
category. This comes from the title and the match phrases of the root level taxonomy nodes. They generated automatically when you enable the Auto Generate Slots checkbox when creating a taxonomy.
Category and subcategory intents
Examples of category and subcategory intents that can be created are shown below.
{category}
{prefix} {who} {auxVerb} {category}
{who} {auxVerb} {category}
{who} {category}
{prefix} {category}
{who} {prefix} {category}
{category} {who} {prefix}
{category} {prefix}
{subCategory},
{SubTopicPrefix} {subCategory},
{SubTopicPrefix} {who} {subCategory},
{SubTopicPrefix} {auxVerb} {who} {subCategory},
{who} {auxVerb} {subCategory}
Creating phrases
The following examples show how to create phrases.
What are treatments for hypothermia. Treatments is the subcategory and hypothermia is the category.
What are symptoms for hypothermia. Symptoms is the subcategory and hypothermia is the category.
Hypothermia treatments
Hypothermia
Treatments. Treatments is the subcategory – it will use the last category from the session, i.e. hypothermia.
Symptoms
Treatments for hypothermia. You would include this phrase for a match phrase in treatment.
Using multi-slot utterances
You need the prefix and post slots to have Alexa and Google recognize the intent. An exact match to a phrase to what someone says generates a large weight for selecting the article.
For example, when a person says Poison for a category, only the word Poison is searched for in the taxonomy branch. The voice assistant responds with an overview of Poison and provides navigation to other articles. If the person then says, "my daughter swallowed a small battery”, then the match words swallowed, and battery provides an article about swallowed poison because it matched on two of the match phrases.
Also see, Taxonomy node document