In this lesson we are going to complicate things a little bit: we want to ask the user a question and then make the bot react accordingly.

Xenioo supports many different built-in questions such as phone number, email and open, configurable actions that can be used to ask the user just about anything.

For this lesson, we are going to ask for an e-mail address.

You can follow our lesson directly from the video below. At the end of the post you will find a Xenioo bot file that simply restores the example bot into your account for playback and testing. Let’s start!

Setting up your new chatbot

First of all, let’s create a brand new chatbot.

As always, Xenioo will create a blank Behaviour and a simple Interaction with just a text action. Let’s click on the designer background to activate the Behaviour settings: from there we can click on the “add new interaction” button and add two more interactions.

We want to ask the user their email and modify the flow if the user gives us a correct address or just move ahead if he decides to skip the question.

So let’s call one interaction “Thank you” and the other “Going On”. In the “Thank you” interaction we can change the text to thank the user for giving us the email while in “Going On” we can go on with the normal flow.

Configuring the Email Input

Let’s go back to the first Interaction and add a new action.

This time we browse to get the Input section, and then pick an Email Input Action. Once selected, the Action is automatically added to the Interaction: we can click it on to see the properties available.

While powerful, the Email Input Action stays simple: all the validation is done by Xenioo so that you do not need to worry about getting bad addresses.

All you may want to do is change the validation reply with something you like and decide if you want the user to opt-out of your question.

With some questions, it may be a good idea to allow the user to go on. Every Xenioo Input Action allows you to do so: as the email input has a default setting of Never. However, you can change it to an Intent (using NLP), or using simple text.

Let’s use some simple text right now and specify ‘no thanks’ in the reply textbox.

Right away, the Input Action has added a Go To Interaction Operation: this operation will be triggered as the user gives a correct reply (in our case, gives a valid email address).

Select the Thank You interaction as the target: notice how Xenioo shows that the action, when successful, goes to the Thank You Interaction.

Question Opt-Out

In our configuration, if the user types ‘no thanks’, the successful reply never gets triggered and the interaction can move on.

Let’s put a message after our input and an immediate Go To Action, directed to the Going On Interaction. As the user uses the Opt-Out, the flow will continue back from the input block and immediately jump to the Going On Interaction.

Using Variables

The Email Input Action, like all other input actions, will automatically store the results of a user input into a variable.

Variables, like Tags, are stored at the user level and will remain forever, even if the user connects to the bot at a later time.

Everywhere in a Xenioo bot, you can reference these variables to change the flow conditionally, or simply display different data.

This is a very powerful Xenioo feature that we will discover in depth over the next tutorials.

Wrapping up

While simple, this example shows how incredibly easy it is to create conditional choices based on user input and to use them right away.

In the next lesson, we are going to explore the media capabilities of the chatbot using images, videos, audios and files.

As with all our lessons, you can find the chatbot sample in your Xenioo account so that you can import it to further experiment and learn.

The post TUTORIAL #2: Asking a question and reacting to the reply appeared first on Xenioo.

Today we are going to take our very first steps, and following this lesson, you’ll be able to create your first chatbot with some standard chat text and buttons.

A very simple chat flow to introduce you to the very basics.

You can follow our lesson directly from the video below. At the end of the post, you will find a Xenioo bot file that simply restores the example bot into your account for playback and testing. Let’s start!

Creating a Chatbot

Right after login, you’ll be in your account dashboard.

It’s a little empty so we can start by creating our first chatbot. Just click on the Add New Chatbot button to create a brand new chatbot.

Xenioo chatbots are organized in three simple concepts: Behaviours, Interactions and Actions.

From the bottom going up, an Action is a specific element like a text or a button. Everything is performed by either the user or the chatbot.

Multiple actions are grouped into a single Interaction.

Multiple interactions define specific bot Behaviour.

For example, a Behaviour may be a “Support And Feedback”, an interaction may be “Ask about a problem” and may contain actions like “Ask for input”, “Evaluate Input” and any flow decisions.

Using standard Text Actions

Our very first chatbot already contains a behaviour called ‘New Behaviour’ with a single interaction called ‘Bot Interaction’.

Our interaction contains a single action: a Text Action. This is one of the simplest actions you can add to your chatbot and represents a simple chat text bubble.

Although very simple, this is already a working chatbot and can already be previewed. You can activate the preview panel on the right side of the window and click on the “Refresh Preview” button to see your chatbot in action.

Remember: anything you do in the designer window can be immediately tested thorugh the preview panel.

Now click on the interaction text: the panel on the right will switch to the action properties section. Go ahead and change the text to whatever you like. Once you’re done, click on the Save button to apply your changes.

If you get back to the preview panel, you can test your update right away.

Xenioo employs a draft/publish approach to every chatbot as a whole.

Feel free to change everything , as you can rest assured that the published version of the chatbot, the one your contacts are using, remains unaffected.

Creating a simple flow

A typical example of a standard chatbot flow is to present one or more buttons that can move the conversation to other interactions.

What we want to do now is create a simple button that once clicked will move the user to another interaction.

First of all we need to create a new Interaction that will be our next step in the chat flow. To do so, we can click on any free spot of the designer area: this will show the current behavior details in the properties panel.

On the panel, we can click on the ‘Add Interaction’ button. A new interaction will appear in the designer. Let’s click on the new Interaction and change the default Text Action text.

Each new Interaction will contain a Text Action by default. You can easily delete it if you wish to build it differently.

Now that we’ve created a new Interaction, we want to connect the first one to this one with a simple quick button. To do so, let’s click on the interaction header: the interaction property panel will display the interaction data.

Click on the “Add Action” button to display the available actions dialog. This dialog will display all the actions that can be added to the current interaction.

For this first chatbot, we are going to use a Quick Reply button. Move to the “Content” tab of the actions dialog and select “Quick Reply”.

Once the new action has been added to the interaction click it on to display the details.

A Quick button has a button text (that is displayed to the user) and a default Operation that moves the conversation to another flow on the user click.

Operations are smart tech used by Xenioo to heavily personalize each component and we will see a lot more of them in the upcoming lessons.

For now, let’s select the target behavior and interaction in the “Go To Operation”, below the Quick Reply Action data. Select “New Behavior” as behavior and “New Interaction #3” as interaction. Click save to confirm everything.

As you see, Xenioo is now displaying an arrow representing the flow connection between the two interactions.

The more complicated your bot becomes, the more this diagram will be fundamental to understanding the chat flow experienced by the user.

Let’s go back to the preview panel to give a spin to our chatbot.

As you can see now you have a button in your chat: click it and the chat flow will be moved to the new interaction. That’s it!

Wrapping up

In this first lesson we’ve learned the fundamentals of every Xenioo chatbot: Behaviours, Interactions and Actions and we’ve created a very simple chat flow.

In the next lesson we will see how to ask a question to the user and react to the answer!

As with all our lessons, you can find the chatbot sample in your Xenioo account so that you can import it to further experiment and learn.

The post TUTORIAL #1: Creating your very first chatbot appeared first on Xenioo.