Nodes are the actions that make up the flows in your chatbot. Examples of nodes are 'Send message to customer' or 'Transfer to agent'. Some chatbot nodes are more complicated than others. 

 This help file will guide you through some of the more complex nodes. 

Before you start 

  • Ava is available as an Add-On. To learn more, click here.
  • Admin and Team Leader roles will have the Chatbot permission as default.
  • You’ll need to have access to Smart Tools > Chatbots in your permissions.
  • If you don’t have access, you can request it from an Admin user within your business. 

01 Conversational AI 

  • For this node, you need to have content inserted into your Content hub - which is available under Smart Tools. For more information on our Content hub, click here.
  • In the ‘Have a conversation with the Ava’ node, you are accessing all the content in your Content hub and the AI will have a conversation with the customer based on that.
  • From the ‘Content hub’ dropdown in this node, you choose the Content hub you want this node to point to. 
  • The ‘Max number of questions’ field determines the number of questions a customer can ask before being brought down the ‘Failure’ branch of the node.
  • ‘Placeholder text’ means the field the customer types into. You can edit this. (See below).
  • ‘Success button label' and ‘Failure button label' is the text that shows on the buttons and that your customer will see. You can edit these. (See below).

Note: With the ‘Have a conversation with Ava’ node, you should insert a ‘Send message’ node before it to direct your customers to ask a question.

02 Ask for identity

  • Some nodes require the 'Ask for identity' node so it must be added before using any of the following nodes:
    • ‘Select order’ and ‘Show order details’.
    • Transfer to agent
    • Create ticket
  • Require Verification - you can select whether verification is required or not. It is strongly recommended to enable this before the ‘Select order’ node so that a customer can’t enter a random email address and find information. When verification is enabled, the customer receives an email from the channel’s email address and needs to enter the code to proceed.
  • Forget previous verification - if disabled and the customer has already been asked to verify their identity through another node or flow, they won’t be asked for it again. If enabled, they will be asked to enter a verification code again.  
  • Also ask for name - if enabled, this will also ask the customer for their name. The message the customer will see by default is ‘Please enter your name’.

  • Custom Messaging - this allows you to enter custom messaging for your customer for the name, email and verification prompts. You need to fill in the fields for all of the ‘prompts’ and ‘invalid’ messages before this can be saved. 

Note:  If you don’t turn on custom messaging, the text shown to the customer in the chat widget is
Message prompt: Please enter your email address.
Email prompt: john@gmail.com
Verification code prompt message: Please type in the verification code we just sent to your email.
Verification code prompt: eg. 123456
The email address is required, so the option to disable it is hidden in this node.

03 Order nodes

Select order

  • You must have the 'Ask for identity' node added before the 'Select order' node.
  • The 'Select order' node will fetch any order associated with that email address.
  • If the email the customer enters is not associated with an order in eDesk, they will be brought down the 'Order not selected' branch.
  • Orders from past X months - enter from how far back orders can be pulled.
  • Maximum number of orders to show - enter how many orders to show
  • Use all channels - enable to search for orders on all channels connected to eDesk. Disable to only search for orders in the channel the Chat Widget belongs to.
  • Custom messaging - enter custom text that your customer will see, for your order selection message and ‘Order selected’ and ‘Order not selected/found’ buttons. Text is required in all fields to save your custom messaging.

Show order details
  • You must have the ‘Ask for identity’ node and the ‘Select order’ node added before the ‘Show order details’ node.
  • The ‘Show order details’ node needs to be under the ‘Order selected’ branch of the ‘Select order’ node. 
  • The customer will then see the order details of whichever order they have selected.

04 Business hours

  • With this node, you can say ‘If it is within our business hours’ > bring customer to node X' (for example the ‘Transfer to Agent’ Node). 'If it is outside our business hours > bring customer to node Y' (for example, ‘Create a ticket’ node). 

Note:  The customer does not see the ‘Within Business Hours’ & ‘Out of hours’ options. This is done automatically based on the business hours you have set in your eDesk Company settings. To learn more about setting up business hours, click here.

05 Condition node

The condition node allows you to create more dynamic and responsive chat flows by setting up IF/OTHERWISE statements within your flows.

IF your customer triggers your specific chosen conditions, they will be brought down one branch in the flow. OTHERWISE they will be brought down another branch. 

To read more about the Condition node and see an example of it, click here.

Further Readings

Learn more about the Condition node here 
Learn more about the Content hub here
Learn about connecting creating and editing chatbots here

_____________________________________________________________________________________