Adding alternate phrasing and chit-chat are essential techniques for building robust conversational AI solutions in Azure. Alternate phrasing involves creating multiple variations of questions or utterances that users might ask to express the same intent. This improves the language understanding mo…Adding alternate phrasing and chit-chat are essential techniques for building robust conversational AI solutions in Azure. Alternate phrasing involves creating multiple variations of questions or utterances that users might ask to express the same intent. This improves the language understanding model's ability to recognize user intentions regardless of how they phrase their queries. In Azure Language Service and QnA Maker, you can add alternate questions to your knowledge base entries. For example, if your primary question is 'How do I reset my password?', you might add alternatives like 'I forgot my password', 'Password reset help', or 'Can you help me change my credentials?'. This ensures broader coverage of user expressions and increases the accuracy of matching user queries to appropriate responses. To implement alternate phrasing effectively, consider different vocabularies, sentence structures, formal versus informal language, and common misspellings. You can manually add alternates through the Azure portal or programmatically via REST APIs. Azure also provides active learning features that suggest alternate phrasings based on actual user queries that were not perfectly matched. Chit-chat functionality adds personality and conversational elements to your bot or QnA solution. It handles small talk and social interactions like greetings, jokes, or expressions of gratitude. Azure QnA Maker offers pre-built chit-chat datasets with different personality types including Professional, Friendly, Witty, Caring, and Enthusiastic. Adding chit-chat enhances user experience by making interactions feel more natural and engaging. You can enable chit-chat during knowledge base creation or add it later through the settings. The chit-chat responses can be customized to match your brand voice and organizational requirements. Both features work together to create more intelligent and user-friendly conversational experiences, reducing frustration when users do not phrase questions exactly as expected while maintaining engaging dialogue.
Adding Alternate Phrasing and Chit-Chat in Azure QnA Maker
Why It Is Important
Adding alternate phrasing and chit-chat capabilities is crucial for building robust conversational AI solutions. Users rarely ask questions in the exact same way, so your knowledge base must handle variations in how people express the same intent. Chit-chat adds personality to your bot, making interactions feel more natural and engaging rather than robotic.
What Is Alternate Phrasing?
Alternate phrasing refers to different ways users might ask the same question. For example: • "How do I reset my password?"• "I forgot my password"• "Password reset help"• "Can't log in, need new password" All these variations should map to the same answer in your QnA Maker knowledge base.
What Is Chit-Chat?
Chit-chat is pre-built conversational content that handles casual, non-business interactions like: • "Hello" / "Hi there"• "How are you?"• "Tell me a joke"• "Thank you" Azure QnA Maker offers several chit-chat personalities: Professional, Friendly, Witty, Caring, and Enthusiastic.
How It Works
Adding Alternate Phrasings: 1. Open your knowledge base in QnA Maker portal 2. Select a QnA pair 3. Add alternative questions that should trigger the same answer 4. Use the Active Learning feature to get suggestions based on user queries 5. Train and publish your knowledge base
Adding Chit-Chat: 1. During KB creation, select a chit-chat personality 2. Or add chit-chat to an existing KB via Settings 3. Customize responses as needed 4. Chit-chat pairs are added as regular QnA pairs that you can edit
Active Learning
Active Learning automatically suggests alternate phrasings based on actual user queries. It identifies questions that are similar but not matched confidently. You can accept, reject, or modify these suggestions through the QnA Maker portal or via REST API.
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Adding Alternate Phrasing and Chit-Chat
• Know the five chit-chat personalities - Professional, Friendly, Witty, Caring, Enthusiastic
• Understand Active Learning - Know that it suggests alternate phrasings based on user queries with similar confidence scores
• Remember the workflow - Edit KB → Add alternate questions → Train → Test → Publish
• API knowledge - Be aware that you can manage alternate phrasings programmatically using the QnA Maker REST API
• Confidence scores - Adding more alternate phrasings improves matching accuracy and confidence scores
• Best practices - Add at least 3-5 alternate phrasings per question for better coverage
• Chit-chat modification - Know that chit-chat responses can be edited or deleted after being added
• Scenario-based questions - If asked about improving user experience or handling varied user input, think about alternate phrasings
• Migration note - Be aware that QnA Maker is being replaced by Custom Question Answering in Azure AI Language, but concepts remain similar