vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
* Language: The language of the user input the skill will be trained to understand. The default value is English.





After you create the dialog skill, it appears as a tile on the Skills page. Now, you can start identifying the user goals that you want the dialog skill to address.



* To add prebuilt intents to your skill, see [Using content catalogs](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-catalog).
* To define your own intents, see [Defining intents](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-intents).



The dialog skill cannot interact with customers until it is added to an assistant and the assistant is deployed. See [Creating an assistant](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-assistant-add).



 Troubleshooting skill import issues 

If you receive warnings when you try to upload a skill, take a moment to try to fix the issues.



1. Make a note of the warning message that are displayed when you try to upload the JSON file.
2. Edit the skill to address the issues.



* If you have access to a public service instance, open the skill from there and make edits. Export the edited skill by downloading it.
* Otherwise, open the JSON file in a text editor and make edits.



You might need to remove the @sys-person and @sys-location entities from your training data, and any references to them from dialog nodes, for example.
3. Try again to import the edited skill.







 Adding the skill to an assistant 

You can add one skill to an assistant. You must open the assistant tile and add the skill to the assistant from the assistant configuration page; you cannot choose the assistant that will use the skill from within the skill configuration page. One dialog skill can be used by more than one assistant.



1. Click the Assistants icon !
: For English, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish dialog skills only the new system entities API version is supported. For backward compatibility, both the interpretation and metadata attributes are included with the recognized entity object. The new system entity version is enabled automatically for dialog skills in the Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages. You can choose to use the legacy version of the system entities API by switching to it from the Options>System Entities page. This settings page is not displayed in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish dialog skills because use of the legacy version of the API is no longer supported for those languages. For more information about the new system entities, see [System entities](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-system-entities).





 28 October 2020 

Introducing the actions skill!
: The actions skill is the latest step in the continuing evolution of Watson Assistant as a software as a service application. The actions skill is designed to make it simple enough for anyone to build a virtual assistant. We've removed the need to navigate between intents, entities, and dialog to create conversational flows. Building can all now be done in one simple and intuitive interface.

The actions skill is available as a beta feature. For more information, see [Adding an actions skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skill-actions-add).

Web chat integration is created automatically
: When you create a new assistant, a web chat integration is created for you automatically (in addition to the preview link integration, which was created previously). These integrations are added also to the assistant that is auto-generated (named My first assistant) when you create a new service instance. For more information, see [Integrating the web chat with your website](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-deploy-web-chat).

Text messaging integration was renamed
: The Twilio messaging integration was renamed to SMS with Twilio.





 9 October 2020 

Search skill update
For more information about feature support in the universal language model, see [Supported languages](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-language-support).





 Creating a skill that uses the universal language model 

To create a skill that uses the universal language model, complete the following steps:



1. From the Skills page, click Create skill.
2. Choose to create either a dialog or actions skill, and then click Next.

For more information, see [Choosing a conversational skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skills-choose).
3. Name your skill, and optionally add a description. From the Language field, choose Another language.

Remember, if the language you want to support is listed individually, choose it instead of using the universal model. The built-in language models provide optimal language support.
4. Create the skill.
5. If your skill will support a language with right-to-left directional text, such as Hebrew, configure the bidirectional capabilities.

Click the options icon from the skill tile ![Skill options icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/417db917d18067d9dcc4cf2612564a9a87c3ddc8/assistant/images/kebab.png), and then select Language preferences. Click the Enable bidirectional capabilities switch. Specify any settings that you want to configure.

For more information, see [Configuring bidirectional languages](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-language-supportlanguage-support-configure-bidirectional).



Next, start building your conversation.

As you follow the normal steps to design a conversational flow, you teach the universal language model about the language you want your skill to support. It is by adding training data that is written in the target language that the universal model is constructed. For an actions skill, add actions.
The dialog node response is equivalent to a Then statement in If-Then-Else programming logic. 
 Skill Does the work of the assistant. A dialog skill has the training data and dialog that your assistant uses to chat with customers. An actions skill is a new way to build a conversation. Actions offer step-by-step flows for a conversations and are made so that anybody can build them. A search skill is configured to search the appropriate external data sources for answers to customer questions. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skill-add). 
 Skill version Versions are snapshots of a skill that you can create at key points during the development lifecycle. You can deploy one version to production, while you continue to make and test improvements that you make to another version of the skill. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-versions). 
 Slots A special set of fields that you can add to a dialog node that enable the assistant to collect necessary pieces of information from the customer. For example, the assistant can require a customer to provide valid date and location details before it gets weather forecast information on the customer's behalf. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-dialog-slots). 
 Step A step that you add to an action represents a single interaction or exchange of information with a customer, a turn in the conversation. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-actions-overviewactions-overview-steps). 
 System entity Prebuilt entities that recognize references to common things like dates and numbers. You can add these to your skill and start using them immediately. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-system-entities). 
 Try it out A chat window that you use to test as you build. For example, from the dialog skill's "Try it out" pane, you can mimic the behavior of a customer and enter a query to see how the assistant responds.
The dialog node response is equivalent to a Then statement in If-Then-Else programming logic. 
 Skill Does the work of the assistant. A dialog skill has the training data and dialog that your assistant uses to chat with customers. An actions skill is a new way to build a conversation. Actions offers step-by-step flows for a range of simple or complex conversations and is made so that anybody can build. A search skill is configured to search the appropriate external data sources for answers to customer inquiries. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-skill-add). 
 Skill version Versions are snapshots of a skill that you can create at key points during the development lifecycle. You can deploy one version to production, while you continue to make and test improvements that you make to another version of the skill. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-versions). 
 Slots A special set of fields that you can add to a dialog node that enable the assistant to collect necessary pieces of information from the customer. For example, the assistant can require a customer to provide valid date and location details before it gets weather forecast information on the customer's behalf. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-dialog-slots). 
 System entity Prebuilt entities that recognize references to common things like dates and numbers. You can add these to your skill and start using them immediately. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-system-entities). 
 Try it out A chat window that you use to test as you build. For example, from the dialog skill's Try it out pane, you can mimic the behavior of a customer and enter a query to see how the assistant responds. You can test only the current skill; you cannot test your assistant and all attached skills from end to end.
A dialog skill has the training data and dialog that your assistant uses to chat with customers. An actions skill is a new way to build a conversation. Actions offer step-by-step flows for a conversations and are made so that anybody can build them. A search skill is configured to search the appropriate external data sources for answers to customer questions. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skill-add). 
 Skill version Versions are snapshots of a skill that you can create at key points during the development lifecycle. You can deploy one version to production, while you continue to make and test improvements that you make to another version of the skill. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-versions). 
 Slots A special set of fields that you can add to a dialog node that enable the assistant to collect necessary pieces of information from the customer. For example, the assistant can require a customer to provide valid date and location details before it gets weather forecast information on the customer's behalf. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-dialog-slots). 
 Step A step that you add to an action represents a single interaction or exchange of information with a customer, a turn in the conversation. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-actions-overviewactions-overview-steps). 
 System entity Prebuilt entities that recognize references to common things like dates and numbers. You can add these to your skill and start using them immediately. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-system-entities). 
 Try it out A chat window that you use to test as you build. For example, from the dialog skill's "Try it out" pane, you can mimic the behavior of a customer and enter a query to see how the assistant responds. You can test only the current skill; you cannot test your assistant and all attached skills from end to end.
[Finish creating the new assistant](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/417db917d18067d9dcc4cf2612564a9a87c3ddc8/assistant/images/gs-create-assistant-done.png)
3. Click Create assistant.







 Step 2: Create a dialog skill 

A dialog skill is a container for the artifacts that define the flow of a conversation that your assistant can have with your customers.



1. Click Add an actions or dialog skill.

![Add actions or dialog skill button](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/417db917d18067d9dcc4cf2612564a9a87c3ddc8/assistant/images/gs-addskill.png)
2. Give your skill the name My first skill.
3. Optional. If the dialog you plan to build will use a language other than English, then choose the appropriate language from the list.
4. For skill type, choose Dialog.

![Finish creating the skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/417db917d18067d9dcc4cf2612564a9a87c3ddc8/assistant/images/gs-add-skill-done.png)
5. Click Create skill.

The skill is created and appears in your assistant.







 Step 3: Add intents from a content catalog 

The Intents page is where you start to train your assistant. In this tutorial, you will add training data that was built by IBM to your skill. Prebuilt intents are available from the content catalog. You will give your assistant access to the General content catalog so your dialog can greet users, and end conversations with them.



1. Make sure your My first skill is open.
2. Click Content Catalog from the Skills menu.
3.
Understanding where you will deploy the assistant before you begin can help you author the right types of answers for a given channel or platform.





 What languages does your assistant speak? 

Decide whether and how you want to handle more than one spoken language. For more information about ways to approach language support, see [Adding support for global audiences](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-assistant-language).





 Does your assistant see the glass as half full? 

Is your assistant an optimist or a pessimist, a shy intellectual type, or an upbeat sidekick? Choose a personality for your assistant, and then write conversations that reflect that personality. Don't overdo it. Don't sacrifice usability for the sake of keeping your assistant in character. But strive to present a consistent tone and attitude.

Never misrepresent the assistant as being a human. If users believe the assistant is a person, then find out it's not, they are likely to distrust it. In fact, some US states have laws that require chat bots to identify themselves as chat bots.





 Who will build your assistant? 

Assemble a team with people who understand your customers and their needs, people who know how to interact with customers to reach the best outcomes. These subject matter experts can focus on designing an engaging conversational flow. In fact, the actions skill is designed with this type of expert in mind. The team can simultaneously build a conversational flow by defining discrete actions.

If you have data scientists or team members with programming skills, you can take advantage of some advanced capabilities that require varying levels of development expertise. This set of users might prefer to build the conversational flow with a dialog skill because there is greater visibility into the individual components that make up the training data.

So, which conversational skill type should you use?

Use both. Leverage advanced capabilities that are available from a dialog skill and build individual actions to perform finite tasks that you want to support. You can call the actions in your actions skill from your dialog skill.

For more information, see [Choosing a conversational skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skills-choose).
If your skill will support a language with right-to-left directional text, such as Hebrew, configure the bidirectional capabilities.

Click the options icon from the skill tile ![Skill options icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/a2b18c153837bce00a5b4de496e4b4ca64bbf56e/assistant-data/images/kebab.png), and then select Language preferences. Click the Enable bidirectional capabilities switch. Specify any settings that you want to configure.

For more information, see [Configuring bidirectional languages](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-language-supportlanguage-support-configure-bidirectional).



Next, start building your conversation.

As you follow the normal steps to design a conversational flow, you teach the universal language model about the language you want your skill to support. It is by adding training data that is written in the target language that the universal model is constructed. Add intents, intent user examples, and entities. The universal language model adapts to understand and support your language of choice.





 Integration considerations 

When your skill is ready, you can add it to an assistant and deploy it. Keep these tips in mind:



* Search skill: If you build an assistant that specializes in a single language, be sure to connect it to data collections that are written in that language. For more information about the languages that are supported by Discovery, see [Language support](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/discovery-data?topic=discovery-data-language-support).
* Web chat: Web chat has some hardcoded strings that you can customize to reflect your target language. For more information, see [Global audience support](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-web-chat-basicsweb-chat-basics-global).
Adding support for global audiences 

Your customers come from all around the globe. You need an assistant that can talk to them in their own language and in a familiar style. Choose the approach that best fits your business needs.



* Quickest solution: The simplest way to add language support is to author the conversational skill in a single language. You can translate each message that is sent to your assistant from the customer's local language to the skill language. Later you can translate each response from the skill language back to the customer's local language.

This approach simplifies the process of authoring and maintaining the conversational skill. You can build one skill and use it for all languages. However, the intention and meaning of the customer message can be lost in the translation.

For more information about webhooks you can use for translation, see [Webhook overview](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-webhook-overview).
* Most precise solution: If you have the time and resources, the best user experience can be achieved when you build multiple conversational skills, one for each language that you want to support. Watson Assistant has built-in support for all languages. Use one of 13 language-specific models or the universal model, which adapts to any other language you want to support.

When you build a skill that is dedicated to a language, a language-specific classifier model is used by the skill. The precision of the model means that your assistant can better understand and recognize the goals of even the most colloquial message from a customer.

Use the new universal language model to create an assistant that is fluent even in languages that Watson Assistant doesn't support with built-in models.

To deploy, attach each language skill to its own assistant that you can deploy in a way that optimizes its use by your target audience.





 Understanding the universal language model 

A skill that uses the universal language model applies a set of shared linguistic characteristics and rules from multiple languages as a starting point. It then learns from the training data that you add to it.

The universal language classifier can adapt to a single language per skill. It cannot be used to support multiple languages within a single skill.
Language [Actions skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skill-actions-add) [Dialog skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skill-dialog-add) [Search skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-skill-search-add) 

 English (en) GA GA GA 
 Arabic (ar) GA GA GA 
 Chinese (Simplified) (zh-cn) GA GA GA 
 Chinese (Traditional) (zh-tw) GA GA GA 
 Czech (cs) GA GA GA 
 Dutch (nl) GA GA GA 
 French (fr) GA GA GA 
 German (de) GA GA GA 
 Italian (it) GA GA GA 
 Japanese (ja) GA GA GA 
 Korean (ko) GA GA GA 
 Portuguese (Brazilian) (pt-br) GA GA GA 
 Spanish (es) GA GA GA 
 Universal (xx) GA GA GA 







 Intent feature support details 



Table 3. Intent feature support details

 Language [Content Catalog](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant?topic=assistant-catalog) [Algorithm version](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-algorithm-version) 

 English (en) GA GA 
 Arabic (ar) GA (except Covid-19) GA 
 Chinese (Simplified) (zh-cn) NA GA 
 Chinese (Traditional) (zh-tw) NA GA 
 Czech (cs) NA GA 
 Dutch (nl) NA GA 
 French (fr) GA GA 
 German (de) GA (except Covid-19) GA 
 Italian (it) GA (except Covid-19) GA 
 Japanese (ja) GA (except Covid-19) GA 
 Korean (ko) NA GA 
 Portuguese (Brazilian) (pt-br) GA GA 
 Spanish (es) GA GA 
 Universal (xx) NA NA 







 User input processing support details 



Table 4. User input processing support details
Activating dialog and migrating skills 

To use an existing dialog skill, you need to activate the dialog feature in your assistant. Then you can upload your existing skill.



 Activating dialog 

To activate the dialog feature in the new experience:



1. Create or open an assistant where you want to use a dialog as the primary conversation with users.
2. Open Assistant settings![Assistant settings](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/ca9232b3702768f24bb897f48f10778fcda28718/watson-assistant/images/assistant-settings-icon.png).
3. Click Activate dialog.

![Activate dialog](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/ca9232b3702768f24bb897f48f10778fcda28718/watson-assistant/images/activate-dialog.png)
4. In the confirmation that displays, click Activate dialog again.

![Activate dialog](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/ca9232b3702768f24bb897f48f10778fcda28718/watson-assistant/images/activate-dialog-modal.png)



Once you activate the dialog feature, it takes precedence over actions. You can use actions to supplement a dialog-based conversation, but the dialog drives the conversation with users to match their requests. For more information, see [Calling actions from a dialog](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-dialog-call-action).





 Migrating existing skills 

Once the dialog feature is activated, you can start a new dialog conversation from scratch if you want. But, you probably have an existing dialog skill that you want to migrate into the new Watson Assistant.

To migrate an existing dialog skill:



1.
Language [Dialog skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-skill-dialog-add) [Search skill](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-skill-search-add) 

 English (en) GA GA 
 Arabic (ar) GA GA 
 Chinese (Simplified) (zh-cn) GA GA 
 Chinese (Traditional) (zh-tw) GA GA 
 Czech (cs) GA GA 
 Dutch (nl) GA GA 
 French (fr) GA GA 
 German (de) GA GA 
 Italian (it) GA GA 
 Japanese (ja) GA GA 
 Korean (ko) GA GA 
 Portuguese (Brazilian) (pt-br) GA GA 
 Spanish (es) GA GA 
 Universal (xx) GA GA 







 Intent feature support details 



Table 3. Intent feature support details

 Language [Content Catalog](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-catalog) [Irrelevance detection](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-irrelevance-detection) [Enhanced intent detection](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/assistant-data?topic=assistant-data-intent-detection) 

 English (en) GA GA GA 
 Arabic (ar) GA (except Covid-19) NA NA 
 Chinese (Simplified) (zh-cn) NA NA NA 
 Chinese (Traditional) (zh-tw) NA NA NA 
 Czech (cs) NA NA NA 
 Dutch (nl) NA NA NA 
 French (fr) GA NA NA 
 German (de) GA (except Covid-19) NA NA 
 Italian (it) GA (except Covid-19) NA NA 
 Japanese (ja) GA (except Covid-19) NA NA 
 Korean (ko) NA NA NA 
 Portuguese (Brazilian) (pt-br) GA NA NA 
 Spanish (es) GA NA NA 
 Universal (xx) NA GA GA 







 User input processing support details 



Table 4.