Best Practices for Developing a Windows Live Agent: Part 1
Today we will start a series on best practices for developing a Windows Live Agent (WLA). Here we go:
Use the WLATemplate Project as a Starting Point
The WLATemplate Project (“C:\Program Files\Colloquis\Colloquis SDK\Projects\WLATemplate“) is a generic project you can quickly customize into your own Agent. Simply launch the instantiation script “StartInstantiation.bat” and follow the instructions to start a new Agent in the right directory.
Use Natural Language Handles
The fastest and most efficient way to get your Agent to recognize User questions is to add Natural Language Handles. NL Handles are analyzed against the libraries of rephrase rules and synonym subpatterns defined in your project and in the BuddyScriptLib packages (included in the SDK) and are transformed into regular “+” style matching patterns.
Example:
This natural language handle:
? What can you do?
is rephrased as:
? What do you do?
and “patternized” into these subpatterns:
+ =qsWhat =vDo =You =vDo
This user query:
Tell me what you do
is rephrased as:
What do you do?
Case and punctuation are stripped from queries, so:
what do you do
matches perfectly on the patternized natural language in the agent.
Natural language handles should be:
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Concise—ideally 15 words or less and one sentence
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Unambiguous
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Grammatically correct and properly punctuated (including question marks or periods)
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Free of spelling mistakes
