Check Spelling in Conversations

Answer Server can check the spelling of input to a conversation system. This means that if a user makes a spelling error, the conversation system can still suggest potential answers.

When a user submits input that does not trigger any tasks, Answer Server runs the spelling checker. If a spelling correction is possible and that correction would trigger one or more tasks, the user is presented with the suggested correction and a list of matching tasks through the standard disambiguation prompt.

To check spelling you must have an IDOL Content component that contains a large amount of indexed documents. The words in the conversation are checked against the words present in the index. With a sufficiently large amount of data spelling errors can be identified.

To check spelling in conversations

  1. Open your configuration file in a text editor.
  2. Create a new section in the configuration file and configure a spelling checker. You can give the section any name. Set the following parameters:

    Type The type of component to use to check spelling. Set this parameter to Content.
    Host The host name or IP address of the machine hosting the IDOL Content component.
    ACIPort The ACI port of the IDOL Content component.
    LanguageType The value to use for the LanguageType parameter, in Query actions sent to the IDOL Content component.

    For example:

    [MySpellingChecker]
    Type=Content
    Host=localhost
    ACIPort=12345
    LanguageType=englishUTF8

    For more information about these configuration parameters, refer to the Answer Server Reference.

  3. Find the configuration section for the Conversation system. In this section, set the configuration parameter SpellcheckEngine to the name of the section that you created in the previous step. For example:

    [MyConversationSystem]
    SpellcheckEngine=MySpellingChecker
  4. Restart Answer Server for your configuration changes to take effect.