frail-apricot•2y ago
Difficulty with Entity "Name" types
Hi everyone
I am trying to understand why, when as a user, I input a name to be captured as entity FirstName (data type "Name") I get inconsistent results.
Below are 5 names which I have tested with, using uppercase and lowercase first letters of the name.
1: "Daron" always seems to return a "No match" whereas "daron" is accepted as {FirstName}
2: "David" always seems to return a "No match" whereas "david" is accepted as {FirstName}
3: Both "Ashton" and "ashton" always seems to return a "No match"
4: Both "Tracey" and "tracey" always seems to return a "No match"
5: Both "John" and "john " are accepted as {FirstName}
Clearly there are inconsistencies in the results, but I can't find enough information to help me understand how to fix or get around the problem
I emailed support, but as part of the response it said “…The Name entity type in Voiceflow is designed to recognize common first names, last names, or full names. However, it might not always accurately capture less common or unique names.”
I’m therefore unsure why a common name like “David” would return a “no match” but lowercase “david” worked fine.
Has anyone experienced similar or have suggestions on how to overcome this problem?
Thanks
4 Replies
The best way to deal with this is to use an LLM. Your struggles are felt by all bot designers. LLMs are really good at finding that kind of stuff.
frail-apricotOP•2y ago
Thanks. I was hoping that the Name data-type for the entity would allow for more control and flexibility than appears to be the case, here. I’m sure that over time the library will grow.
I could of course just allow whatever someone enters to be stored as a variable, but that would enable people to enter anything at all, which is not a good idea.
Actually, before switching to using entity instead of populating a variable, I ran checks on length (for example “>=2 && <=15”) etc., and set an alternative path for anything which falls outside of that. But when I discovered entities (you can tell I’m new!!!) I thought my prayers had been answered.
But thanks for your suggestion for LLMs. I’ll give that a shot.
@W. Williams (SFT) is right, and capture entities are so inconsistent there just not worth using. With an LLM it’s very easy to do and way more reliable.
frail-apricotOP•17mo ago
Thanks, Steve.
I'm actually getting consistently good results by using a block of 4 choices, where, for example, I ask a question like "Can I ask your first name?" and I'm successfully handling responses for all of the [1] "Yes" variations, [2] "No" variations, [3] First Name entered, and [4] handling questions or other input where the user is only interested in getting to the information they came for.
So far so good, and of course the more scenarios I apply, test and debug, the better it gets.