Announcing the composite slot type for Amazon Lex

[Amazon Lex](/lex/) is a service for building conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text. With Amazon Lex, you can quickly and easily build sophisticated, natural language, conversational bots (“chatbots”), virtual agents, and IVR systems. Today, Amazon Lex introduces the composite slot type. A slot is used to capture user input and provide the bot the necessary information to fulfill a task. In some cases, the information contains multiple values, each requiring its own slot. For example, a customer making a payment may confirm credit card details to the bot (“Card ending in 5678 with an expiration of September 2025 and billing zip 94105”). Previously, bot builders had to elicit each slot individually (e.g., “Please provide last 4 of the card number”, “Now, please provide the expiration date on the card”). With the composite slot type, Amazon Lex can capture the full user response at once and associate each piece of information with the appropriate slot. The composite slot type also enables you to define logical expressions (e.g., “Last4 AND ExpirationDate OR Zipcode”) and capture required slot values to fulfill an intent. This new slot type helps you create flexibility in bot design and deliver more natural conversations for your customers. The composite slot type can be enabled via [Lex V2 Console](https://console.aws.amazon.com/lexv2/home) or SDKs. This capability is available in US English for all [AWS regions](/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regions%5Faz/) where Amazon Lex operates. To learn more, visit the [Amazon Lex documentation page](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lexv2/latest/dg/composite-slots.html).