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I'm using Watson conversation to help run a virtual support system and am trying to figure out how to play with conditions a bit more. Specifically, I'm looking for a way to negate conditions or to specify a condition not found.

For example, I have an entity @sports with the sub-entities @sports:mlb, @sports:nba, @sports:nhl, and @sports:nfl. I'm looking for a way to specify recognizing any of these except nba (I know I could just specify the other three, but I have other similar needs where that is less feasible).

Ideally, it would be as easy as:
If bot recognizes:
@sports AND !@sports:nba (sports and not nba)
but that doesn't seem to work.

Is this doable? Any help is appreciated!

C Stephens
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  • Hello @CStephens what have you tried so far? Also welcome to Stack Overflow! Please take a time to go through the [welcome tour](https://stackoverflow.com/tour) to know your way around here (and also to earn your first badge), read how to create a [Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) and also check [How to Ask Good Questions](https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask) so you increase your chances to get feedback and useful answers. – DarkCygnus Sep 11 '17 at 17:52

3 Answers3

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Answering my own question for anyone else looking for this answer:

An exclamation point before the entity DOES, in fact, work to negate the response.

I'm not sure why it wasn't earlier; likely a misrecognized entity.

C Stephens
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According to the Official documentation, Watson uses the following example to Accessing entities with one negative example:

@year != 2016

In this case, your example will be: 

@sports != 'nba'
Sayuri Mizuguchi
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This should work: 

@sports AND !@sports:nba

What could be causing it to fail is that you didn't select "Create New Condition" on the second part.

Entity for sports.

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Dialog Nodes

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Dialog Node with condition.

(Remember, create new condition) enter image description here

Results

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Outside of this, a common mistake is to forget to add # or @.

Get into the habit of naming your intents #ALL_IN_CAPITALS and your entity names in @CamelCase.

Simon O'Doherty
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