A narrow depression, groove, notch, or slit, especially one for receiving something, as a keyway in machinery or the slit for a coin in a vending machine. Also: a position in an organization or hierarchy, a time of broadcasting for a radio or television program, a period of employment (especially at a newspaper) occupied by a particular person, etc.

A slot in a computer’s operating system (OS) is an area of memory reserved for the OS to execute programs. The program can be stored in a hard disk drive, non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM), or other mass storage device. Changing the program in a slot requires removing the OS from its hardware, physically swapping it for the desired program, and then rebooting the machine to complete the swap. Changing the payout percentage in a slot machine requires a physical swap of the software or firmware, which may require tamper-evident seals and must be done in the presence of gaming control board officials.

A custom slot type allows you to define slots that the bot can recognize. For example, you can create a location slot to identify cities in an utterance. You can also add synonyms for a slot type to enable the bot to recognize multiple words and phrases that map to a specific slot. For example, you can set up a synonym for the slot type value New York. This allows the bot to recognize the phrase Big Apple when the user says NYC.