Voiceflow CSV - Import & Export

Voiceflow allows you to import your data created on the most popular NLU platforms, but for teams that are working on other 3rd party NLUs, in-house NLUs, or on data sets that live outside of your NLU, we offer a generic CSV Import/Export format for you to get your data into your Assistant.

Data Included on Import+Export

Here is a quick overview of the data that will be imported to Voiceflow from a CSV, and included in our export files:

• Intents
• Utterances/Training Phrases
• Entities (must be annotated in the Utterance using { }, and the value in the parentheses will be the Entity Name)

Format Required for the CSV Import

Your file requires a basic two-column structure, without any headers:

• Intent Name
• Utterance (annotate Entities in the Utterance using { } with the name in the parentheses)

Importing NLU Data into Voiceflow

There are two methods to import your skill data into Voiceflow:

On Assistant Creation

When creating a new assistant in Voiceflow, you will be asked to select your use case (Launch & Host or Design & Handoff), choose Design & Handoff. The select the channel you are building for (Voice Assistant or Chat Assistant) and the NLU you are building for.

Once you select Voiceflow (default) from the options, an upload link will appear, and when you click it, you can select the CSV file you have created.

 This will pre-populate your assistant with the complete training data set contained in your file.

In your NLU Manager

There is a similar import function available in your NLU Manager view, and clicking the ‘Import’ button found in the bottom-left will trigger the import flow.

Using this import method will upload all new intents, utterances and entities without deleting the current ones. Any intents or entities with the same name will be overwritten by the newer version.

Exporting NLU Data from Voiceflow

When you are ready to export your NLU data for use back in your NLU, you can manually export the data back out as a CSV.

In the Export Menu, if you do not select any individual intents (ie. leave the Select intents to export field blank), hitting the ‘Export’ button will generate a ZIP export file containing every Intent that is currently in your NLU Model.

You can generate these export files in the following ways:

• From the ‘Share’ Menu on the design canvas (under ‘Export as…’ and ‘NLU data’)
• From the ‘Export’ Menu on the NLU Manager