Overview

This article covers capabilities that were not covered in the Creating a Basic Bot article. Incorporating these tools into your Flow will create an impactful bot.

Intents, Keywords

The Intents and Keywords module enables the system to detect predesignated concepts from the customer's interactions with the bot or the agent. Once an intent is recognized, the system can tag the conversation, suggest a knowledge-based item in response, or direct the bot to a specific step.
Intents act as a step entry condition. Once the intent is recognized anywhere or anytime during the running of the bot, the flow will take the customer to this step.

1. At the designated step, expand the Intents and Keywords section.
2. Select one of the Intents from the dropdown menu. Note the brain icon in front of the step. In our example, the bot will tag the conversation with a New Driver tag once the customer enters the words “new driver.”
3. Enter the appropriate keywords if you don’t have a working intent in place. As with intent, once the customer types in those words, the Flow will come to this step.

To design a specific Intent or Keyword behavior, navigate to Settings > Intents.
To learn more, click here for the user guide.

Entry Point

Sometimes we want the customer to start the flow from a certain point and not from the beginning. It could be a certain section that has very specific functionality, like accepting credit card payments, or just an agent that transfers the customer to a flow wanting to skip the preliminary steps.
The Entry point marks the step that will enable the agent or another bot to start the flow from that step. You may have more than one entry point. Checking the Mark as entry point box will enable the agents to direct the customers to the selected step as part of the manual handover options.

1. At the Flow, at the Intents & Keywords section, check the Mark as entry point box.

2. Save and publish the flow under a different version name. In our example, we choose “CC payment”.

3. Navigate to Settings, select the channel type, select the specific channel, and open the Automation section at the channel settings.

4. At the Manual handover options, select the new version name of the Flow that will be the new entry point. Note the arrowhead symbol (>) that signifies a Step of the flow.
   

5. Save settings at the bottom of the screen.

Now, the agent will be able to direct the customer to that section of the flow. In our example, at the end of the conversation, the agent clicks the team members, selects Bot Assignment, and clicks the bot with the entry point. The customer will now be directed to complete payment using a credit card.

Entry Conditions

Entry conditions create a gate to the specific branch in the Flow. If the condition is met, the flow will continue to that branch. It is important to “cover all bases” and create an entry condition to a branch for every possible outcome.

Availability Conditions

Availability Conditions are based on the specific availability status of the channel.

1. Select the channel and subchannel (sub-stream) if applicable.
2. Select the operator – whether the channel IS (=) at the selected state or IS NOT (≠) at the selected state.
3. Select the Channel State:
   a. Active – The specific channel is currently Active, within business hours, with available agents.
   b. Inactive – The specific channel is currently Inactive.
   c. Busy – The channel is Active, within business hours, but there are no available agents (all agents have maximum conversations assigned to them).
   d. Off hours – based on the business hours module, the channel is currently after business hours.

In the example above, the flow will enter this branch only if the conversation at Bot Chat happens to be after hours for that channel (as set in the business hours module). A logical step that may follow will be a message to the customer about reaching the business after hours.

Field condition

Data fields are created in the Ask Step or in the Flow Settings (top bar) in the Flow Fields tab. These fields can then store data provided by the customer or the system.

Note: The field name must be lowercase with underscore instead of spaces.
The Data for the field name must have double curly brackets.

In the example below, for the field driver_age, we want to set the condition that only if the customer enters a number above 21 will the flow enter this branch.

Custom code

Custom code enables the programmers to create their own conditions for the branch of the flow.
In the example below, the system verifies that a certain value is true before proceeding to the next step. Make sure that all same-level steps (“brothers”) of the branch should also have a custom condition so that all bases are covered.

Delay

Delay before step

Prevent users from just clicking without reading the message by delaying the functionality.
Note that the time should be short to avoid thinking the program is just frozen.

Jump if customer is idle

When a customer does not respond to the bot, this capability moves to a different spot in the flow. It could bring the bot to the beginning of the flow, a few steps back or forward, or end the conversation as irrelevant in an End step.

Enter the amount of idle time before the flow jumps followed by the destination step.

Set Tag

Tags are used and discussed in step 7 of the Creating a Basic Bot article. Tags are created and managed at the Tags tab of the general settings menu in the CommBox console. You will need to have a few to make use of this feature.

Set Variables

At any point of the flow, you can add variables that can affect the behavior of the flow at a later point. For example, a step will establish that the field “customer_retention” is equal to 1. Later on in the FLow, and based on this set variable, a Forward step will determine if this customer should be transferred to the Customer Retention agent or to a regular Customer Service agent.

Change Channel

The Creating a Basic Bot article covered this topic and showed how to transfer the conversation to a specific channel for specialized agents. This capability is available in all types of steps and not just in the Forward to agent step.

It is important to add that for large enterprises, changing channels within the flow can help collect data about customers based on geography or service requirements.
For example, the national general WhatsApp number can be changed in the flow to the regional number, and as the customer feeds information, the channel can be changed to the closest city with the available services. This can also help track the usage of the automated system, what services were requested, where, etc.

Send

When the flow reaches a step with an added Send, a premade email or a Text/SMS message is sent to a designated person. Note that email and/or Text/SMS messages have to be set up in the CommBox system.

1. At the Send menu, click the +Add Send Item and select the form of communication.
2. Enter all relevant fields, including the email address and message, and click Save.
   

Remark

When the Flow reaches a step with an added Remark, the message entered here will be added to the conversation (Visible only to the agent).

Advance Options

The advanced options are channel-specific.

Chat channels only:

• Disable Free Text Replies – Customer cannot type any free text.
  

WhatsApp channels only:

WhatsApp presents options for selections in the following manner:

• 1-3 choices as buttons
• 4-10 choices as a pull-down menu
• More than 10 options as a numbered list

When presenting a pull-down menu (4-10 steps from one leading step), users can add the following:

• A Title – WhatsApp titles for the buttons/options selection are limited to 20 characters (including space). Write the shortened title here in the event the title of the step is longer (or shorten the one at the top for uniformity in all channels).
• Interactive header and footer – Enter a simple text or an approved URL for an interactive message as part of the bot (header or footer)

Design

The Design capability is channel-type specific.
The Items in Row capability is only available in the CommBox Interactive Navigator App. It sets the number of options to choose from that will be displayed in one row.
The uploading of images as part of the flow is only available on Chat channels.

Accessibility

Working closely with the Business hours module, you can check every step to include a pre-set message regarding the availability of the agents.

Debugger

The debugger enables admins to see the historical context of any conversation by entering the conversation ID.
Note that Context data is kept for 48 hours.

1. Locate the conversation ID by clicking the 3-dot menu at the conversation summary.

2. Click the copy icon at the bottom of the dialog box.
   

3. Open the Debugger by clicking Debug at the top of any Flow.

4. Paste the conversation ID and click Debug.