Creating a Conversation Bot
To start making a conversation bot, first head to the Automations page and click the Conversation Bot button.
On the top right side of this page, click the New Conversation Bot button to get started. The first thing you will need to do is to name the bot and optionally, write a description. Once you’ve entered a name, click Create to continue setting up the conversation bot. This guide will explain what each of the inputs and selections are for. We've selected sensible default values, so if you are unsure, feel free to leave most of these settings untouched.
General Settings
Bot Name: The name of the conversation bot. This isn’t revealed to contacts, it’s just used to identify this specific bot in the list of your conversation bots.
Bot Description: An optional field that lets you store information about the purpose of this conversation bot.
Allow Multiple Instances: Setting this option to “Yes” will allow the bot to trigger on multiple contacts at once. If you wish the bot to only have one conversation at a time, mark this as “No”.
Reset Bot if Inactive: Setting this setting to “Yes” will allow you to reset the bot after a certain amount of time has passed.
Bot Timeout: If Reset Bot if Inactive is set to “Yes”, this is the time in seconds it will take for the bot to reset itself.
Bot Instance Cooldown: This determines the amount of time that a contact must wait before they can start another bot conversation.
Bot Instance Cooldown Unit: Choose either seconds, minutes, hours or days for the Bot Instance Cooldown.
Default Message Settings
Disable Default Invalid Response Message: Setting this to true will remove the default invalid response message. Invalid response messages set at the step level will still be delivered.
Default Invalid Response Message: This message will be sent to the contact when they have entered an invalid response or their response does not match any viable options.
Default Completion Message: This message will be sent to the contact when they have completed the bot.
On Completion Settings
Resolve Conversation on Complete: Using this setting, you can have conversations automatically be marked as ‘Resolved’ once the bot is complete on that conversation.
Enable Bot Completed Email: Turn this on to send an email to a user or users of TxtSquad once a conversation bot has been completed. The other settings in this category will do nothing if this is set to false.
Attach Bot Transcript: Set this to ‘Yes’ will attach a PDF file with a transcript of the bot conversation to the email notification.
Attach Complete Conversation History: Setting this option to ‘Yes’ will attach a PDF file with a contact’s entire conversation history, including the most recent bot conversation, to the email notification.
Users to Notify: Use this section to select who will get the email about a a bot conversation completing.
Email Body: Compose the email here. You can use the Template Fields button underneath to customise the message using information about the contact that the bot was conversing with. For example, if you write “[[full_name]] has completed a bot conversation.” it will use the contact’s full name in the body of the email.
Tags to Apply: Selecting tags here will apply that tag to a contact when they complete the bot conversation.
Tags to Remove: Selecting tags here will remove that tag from a contact when they complete a bot. If they didn’t already have the tag, nothing will happen.
Once you have finished setting up the conversation bot settings, click Save to save it. From here, to start the conversation bot, first you must create a Step. Check out our guide on Adding Steps to Conversation Bots for more information.