Thanks NiK! The youtube channels and documentation I have reviewed fairly in-depth.
My question is fairly specific to populating slots (slots and not forms because I want to persist between sessions). I see that there is a way to create entities from custom components but no direct slot access. Custom Slot Set in NLU/Custom NLU Component This approach seemed quite complicated https://github.com/RasaHQ/rasa/issues/2294
Is there not a better approach that populating a form with a custom component, and using that form to populate slots"?
At least one of the Udemy courses is closed BTW.