Introduction:

Time to take some baby bot steps! In this exercise, you will say hi to your bot for the first time, customise your bot's welcome text, and add an extra bot reply.

 

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Start up your test chatbot:

In the Dialog Editor, click the green chat bubble in the lower right corner. This opens a chat window where you can test your chatbot design.

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Time to say hi:

• Step 1: Type 'Hi', hit enter, and see what happens.

As you can see, the bot follows the turns in the flow ‘system.greeting’.

 

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Customize your chatbot's welcome message:

• Step 1: ‌In the Dialog Editor, click on the blue bot reply that contains your bot's welcome message.

• Step 2: This opens the Turn Editor on the right-hand side. This is the part of the Dialog Editor where you will design your chatbot. In the Replies field, change some of your bot's welcome text, and click Save.

• Step 3: Open your test chatbot once more and see what happens when you say 'Hi'.

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Add a follow-up question:

As a final step in this tutorial, let's add a question to your bot's welcome message.

• Step 1: To add another turn to an existing one, click the green + symbol at the bottom of a turn.

• Step 2: it opens the Turn Editor. Click the drop-down menu and select Bot to add another bot turn.

• Step 3: Choose the type of response. In this case, we'll keep it simple and select Reply. Later on, we'll look at how you can design other responses, like questions or asking for an e-mail address.
• Step 4: In the Replies field, enter the text 'How can I help you?' and click Save.
• Step 5: Open your test chatbot, and start the Greeting flow by saying 'Hi'. As you can see, there's an extra text bubble now.

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Don't be a bore ...

To stop your bot from repeating itself, you can add variations on an answer:

• Step 1: Open the Turn Editor.
• Step 2: Click on the plus icon after "Add reply variations".
• Step 3: Add a variant for 'How can I help you?'. For example: 'What would you like to know about?', 'What can I do for you'?

Tip: Questions are a great way to keep a conversation going. So try to end each bot turn with a question for your customer.

 

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Oh no! I clicked on delete, and now my dialog looks weird!

Does your dialog look something like this, with a loose flow in the right side? This happens when you delete the link that connects the turns in your dialog. Don't worry, you can always connect your flow back to the user start node again.

• Step 1: Go to the Default start dialog and click on the link symbol.
• Step 2: The dialog editor only shows those turns that you can link to.
• Step 3: Look for the message that you want to connect to the Default start dialog, and click on the link symbol.
• Step 4: There you go, a fully functioning chatbot again.

Mind you, you can only link from a higher level turn to a lower level turn, not the other way round.

 

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Greatness!

 

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Click on the links below to get more out of OBI Bots:

• Chatbot basics: intents, utterances and responses