Overview
Action blocks are building blocks for the bot.
Consider them as an action that the bot performs, like sending a message, collecting an input, etc..
The Bot Builder has a collection of 21 action blocks that you can use to make your bot.
Trigger:
A chatbot always has to start with a trigger - something the visitor needs to start the conversation of the bot when the user invokes it. By default, the bot is triggered to appear without any condition defined.
There are 3 conditions that you can trigger the bot with:
Date Range: If you want the bot to trigger only on a specific date range
Browser Language: If the browser language of the visitor meets the language you defined
URL: If the bot is to be triggered on specific URLs. You can include/exclude a list of URLs
During a conversation, the bot may send informative messages to the user and does not expect a response back from them. These messages help build up the conversation rather than having a monotonous job of collecting input from the visitor.
With this action block, you can send a series of informative messages that can be either text or rich media (images, gifs).
You can reorder your messages in the send message by clicking on the reorder symbol and moving the block you want to re-order
A conversation takes place only if both parties send and receive messages. With this action block, the bot will ask the visitors questions and will only move forward with the conversation flow after it receives a response from the visitor.
To make the bot smarter in collecting responses from the visitors, you can use validations;
Text: Simple text responses will be accepted by the bot
Email: Valid email format is allowed as a response
Phone: Only numeric inputs are allowed. The bot will also display the country code of the visitor automatically using the IP location of the visitor
Custom: If you want to specify a custom validation for the input response, you can add the regex validation
If the input does not match any of the above validations, then the bot shows the Error Message defined by you. The conversation flow will only move forward with the flow if a valid input is provided by the user.
All responses captured by the bot can be stored on a Variable. The response stored in this variable can be used again within the flow by invoking it using # in the text editor field.
As a good practice, always use distinct variable names to store inputs, else the values may be overwritten
The conversation flow can be branched out using intuitive buttons. The visitor can simply choose any button to go down its path. Each button can either have the same path or different paths moving from it.
Buttons can do one of two things;
Branch: Move to a different path of the conversation flow
URL: Open a web page and end the flow
The maximum buttons you can add are 10 The buttons won't disappear after they were clicked on so, the visitor can return to them at any moment during a conversation
In channels like WhatsApp & SMS, where buttons are not compatible or permitted, we need to rely on only inputs to branch out the conversation flow. Each option is denoted with the number i.e 1,2,3..
The experience is similar to an IVR call but in a chat-format. And in case an incorrect number or an invalid response is received an error message will be displayed.
To choose an option, you can type the number as a word like one, two, three or write down the option name itself.
Have an items or products to show? Use carousels to show your items is a more eye-catchy format. The carousels are made up of;
Cover Image
Title
Subtitle
CTA Buttons
Similar to the carousel, if you just want to show a set of images is a carousel; you can use this action block.
The bot will show this carousel and move forward to the next action block, as it does not require any input.
You can click on any image to have a bigger view of the image pop-up
To notify yourself about an event occurring within a conversation flow like lead generated, somene showing an interest in a product; you can use this block to send an email to the recipients.
You can configure the following in this action block;
To Whom this email should be addressed to
CC Who should be copied to this email
BCC Whom you want to copy invisibly on this email
Subject The subject of this email
Include Chat Transcript Whether you want the chat history till this point of the conversation to be attached in the email
Email Markup The body of the email
If you're using Salesforce and want to create a lead on your account when a lead is generated, simply map the details of your Salesforce account along with the fields that you want to send. We achieve this using Salesforce's web-to lead API.
The contents of this action block are;
Salesforce Organization ID
Environment
Salesforce Fields
Not always will a chatbot complete all the tasks that you want it to. You may want a human agent to jump into conversation at just the right time. When a conversation reaches this block, the chat will be transferred to a live chat in the 'Unassigned' tab.
If auto-assign is enabled for the account, the chat will automatically be transferred to any available human agent.
Before the human handover is triggered, the bot will send a success or a failure message. Failure messages can occur in 3 ways
When human handover is disabled
When no agent is available
When human handover occurs beyond operational hours
On success, the conversational flow in the bot ends and its up to the human to take forward the conversation well, that's why you transferred the conversation to them right?
Booking an appointment? Great, use this block to collect dates the right way
The calendar action block has two main sections;
Date Selection:
You define the question and store the response in variable
Select type of date i.e Single Date or Date Range
You can also choose whether to show the past dates or not
Exclude Dates:
Excluding days like weekends i.e Saturday or Sundays
Excluding specific dates like Christmas or any public holiday
In order to collect files from the visitors, you can use the file upload dialog type. With this you can define which type of files are to be accepted like PDF, CSV etc.. or also specify the permissible number of files and size of file.
The files collected are stored securely on Cataleya's cloud server - Google Cloud Platform
Delay:
Between each action block, Cataleya will smartly give a dynamic delay (based on the time it would take to read the number of words). If you want to add an additional delay on top of what Cataleya adds, you can use this action block.
We may not have an integration to tool that you are using, yet. But in order to be able to send or receive data from your system using APIs, you can use this action block.
If you are a developer, you will feel at home with the contents of this action block.
In this action block, there are 2 scenarios that can occur i.e SUCCESS or FAILURE. To branch out these paths we have 2 separate nodes each denoted by Green or Red.
If you want to receive multiple responses from the service call, then this variable can be referenced anywhere in the flow to branch the conversation based on the type of response received from the service call
Slider is another unique way of capturing input. Here, in this case, we make use of a slider where the visitor can slide and choose their value.
The contents of the block are;
Question
Min & Max
Variable
Enable movement using step count
Unit
Count of steps
The visitor's attention in any chat is only for a short period of time. To make the most of it, instead of asking inputs separately, you can ask for all of them at once using a form.
With this form, you can ask for maximum upto 5 inputs at once. And each input can have its own validation similar to collect input.
Some fields can also be marked 'optional'
If you want to invoke your DialogFlow agent at any point in the conversation, you can connect your DialogFlow agent using this action block.
To invoke your Dialogflow agent, you need to send some query like ‘What is your name?’. Enter the variable in which that query was received and this Dialogflow agent will be invoked. Else, Dialogflow will not know what to respond back with.
To upload your JSON file, all you need to do is follow the steps mentioned in this URL to generate the Service Account key of your Dialogflow agent.
In this action block, there are 2 scenarios that can occur
Success
Failure
Each of these scenarios is represented with a node. Green for Success and Red for Failure.
The success node can be self-looped so that whatever input or output exchanged remains comes from Dialogflow.
Cataleya provides a FAQ Builder where you can create a knowledge base of questions and answers. Using this action block, similar to Dialogflow, we will use the question asked and search for the matching answer from the knowledge base we have imparted on it.
In this action block, there are 2 scenarios that can occur
Success
Failure
Each of these scenarios is represented with a node. Green for Success and Red for Failure.
The success node can be self-looped so that whatever input or output exchanged remains comes from the FAQ Builder.
You can enable the 'Ask for feedback' toggle to collect the response from the visitor i.e a like or dislike to denote whether our answer was relevant to what the visitor was looking for
This block is only for internal use by Team Cataleya
A special action block, which can be used to call functions made for a specific purpose by Team Cataleya.
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