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Deploy Chatbots

When creating a chatbot, you design the logic of a chatbot. To then bring it to life so your users can interact with it, you must deploy it on one of the media, which include Web pages, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, KLaunch, or Twilio phone numbers. A key advantage of SmartBot360 is that you can deploy the same bot to multiple media to meet the users on their favorite medium.

The easiest way to deploy a bot is to follow the prompts right after creating a bot. First, go to CHATBOTS page and load your bot. Then click on “Save&Deploy” button as shown below.

Then, follow the prompts to choose the medium you want as described below.

After you deploy the bot the first time to a medium, if you make changes to the bot logic you don’t have to repeat all steps of the Save&Deploy wizard. After clicking Save&Deploy, instead of selecting again the medium to deploy to, just click “ok”, as shown below, and your bot logic will go live to all previously deployed media.

If you later want to change some non-logic attributes of a deployment (hashtag, presentation colors and so on) you don’t have to start the Deploy&Save wizard again. Instead, go to the CHATBOTS page, and select the deployment you want to edit on the right panel.

Deploy to web page

If the bot has already been deployed, you can go straight to step 4 and copy the snippet from the right panel of the CHATBOTS page. Else, if you deploy for the first time:

  1. In the “Save&Deploy” wizard, select “Deploy on Web”

  2. Leave the default options in Advanced Options popup, or change the Web bot presentation or functionality options (which will be reflected in the HTML snippet created next).

  3. An HTML snippet will be automatically generated, as shown below

  4. Copy it and paste it inside your HTML page, before </body>.

Here are more details on Step 4 in the above list, if you use one of the popular Web site hosting tools.

Wix:

4a. Go to Settings, then click on “Custom code”

4b. Click + Add Custom Code

4c. Paste the snippet, and select all pages or the page to deploy the bot on as shown below. Make sure you select “Body - end” and “Load code once”. For more information, also see instructions from Wix.

 
 

Squarespace:

4a. Go to the page where you want to add the chatbot.

4b. Click on + and select a Code object.

4c. Go to the Code object and paste the snippet as below:

 
 

WordPress:

There are many variants of Wordpress, so instructions to insert HTML snippets may vary. The easiest way is to use a plugin that allows inserting HTML snippets, such as Scripts n Styles or Embed Code. Other ways are also possible as described in https://www.godaddy.com/garage/3-ways-to-insert-javascript-into-wordpress-pages-or-posts/.

Tips

  1. Some features are not available on bot preview, so it is recommended that you test your bot on an actual Web page that you create.

  2. To test your changes to the flow diagram to a live web page, first follow the above instructions to deploy the first version of the bot to a page. Then, when you edit the diagram, click on “Save&Deploy” and then click “OK” (not “Deploy on Web”). This updates the already deployed bot, so you can go again to the same web page (open a new browser tab) and test the updated bot version.

  3. If you want to change the presentation (e.g. title, colors) or functionality of a Web bot you don’t have to redeploy it using the deployment wizard (by clicking “Save&Deploy”), as this will create another HTML snippet, so by doing so several times you will end up with several snippets, which will lead to confusion. Instead, select the chatbot in the CHATBOTS page, and on the right panel edit the deployment attributes.

Deploy to phone number (SMS)

SmartBot360 can easily deploy a bot on a Twilio phone number. You must first create a Twilio account and link it to SmartBot360. Then, load a bot, click Save&Deploy, select SMS and then select the phone number where the bot will be deployed.

Deploy to Whatsapp

The instructions are identical to deploying on SMS. You need to first create a WhatsApp account in Twilio, link it to SmartBot360, and then deploy the bot.

Deploy to Facebook Messenger

Messenger can be tricky to work with, due to the several privacy and anti-spamming measures that Facebook takes to protect its users. SmartBot360’s goal is to shield you from all this complexity and provide a super-easy interface to deploy your bots on Messenger.

To deploy a bot on one of your Facebook Pages (you may not deploy a chatbot on your Facebook homepage, you must create a Facebook Page for that), follow these steps:

Press Save&Deploy, then select “Deploy Facebook” in the deployment wizard, click on the button to login to your Facebook account. Grant any requested permissions when prompted. Then, all your Facebook Pages will be displayed. Select the page where you want to deploy the bot.

See more details on Facebook chatbots and considerations.

Hashtags

Sometimes you may want to deploy more than one bot on the same medium. For example, in the below image, we deploy two bots on the same Facebook Page. If the user types #stop at any time (even during the execution of another bot), the stopWellness bot starts (which unsubscribes the user from all scheduled bots). Else, the default bot, wellnessBot, is active. There can only be one default bot per medium (e.g. per Facebook page), that is, only one bot with empty hashtag.

Hand-off from non-HIPAA media to Web bot

SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are not HIPAA-compliant (click for more information). To facilitate HIPAA-compliant chats over SMS/WhatsApp/Messenger, the bot can start on these media and display a hyperlink which will hand-off to a Web bot, that is, when the user clicks on the link they will switch to a Web bot.

To achieve that, load the bot from the CHATBOTS page, then click “Save & Deploy”, select “Deploy to Web”, and in the “Web Bot Deployment Advanced Options“ screen select the medium you want the bot to initiate from (SMS, Messenger or Whatsapp) and follow the instructions.

For example, if you want to deploy wellnessBot on the Web but start from SMS, load the wellnessBot, click on Save&Deploy, then select Web, and in the next screen select “Start as SMS Bot” as shown below, and follow the instruction in the next page.

Advanced note: Following this process, a new bot is created with name wellnessBot_smsintro, which starts with a welcome message followed by a link that takes the user to a Web-bot deployment of wellnessBot. This means that if you want to create a Schedule Pattern for this handoff bot, you should select wellnessBot_smsintro instead of welnnessBot in SETTINGS→Scheduling.