A slot is a small groove or opening in a thing. For example, a mail slot at a post office allows you to insert a piece of mail. It also serves as the fourth position during a flying display. Slots originated in the late 14c., and are derived from the Old French esclot. The word slot is also cognate with the German Schloss. But it’s still not entirely clear where the word originated.
To create a slot, you must start by choosing a type of slot. It can be a symbol, a number, or a phrase. Some slot machines have more than one word or phrase, such as Big Apple and NYC. You can add synonyms by selecting the Allow Synonyms checkbox. Next to the slot type value, find the Enter Synonym field. Type a synonym in it and click X. If you don’t know how to add synonyms, don’t worry. The Dialog Engine will take care of the rest.
There are two types of slots: builtin and custom. Builtins map any amount or duration type value, and number maps any numeric value. But ordinal numbers are not supported. Custom slot types let you define your own types of slots, which you can use in your utterances. For example, if you’d like to mark a location when uttering a sentence, you can define a custom slot type. A custom slot type is not defined by default, but it allows you to map different types of slots.