Creating Chatbots

You can create chatbots that provide support for the questions that your website visitors might have.  Chatbots can be customized in both how they look and what they contain to respond to users who fit a particular audience type. This article will detail how to create and configure chatbots in SharpSpring. Article Contents Understanding Chatbots Creating New Chatbots Navigating the Main Chatbots Page Main Page Options Custom Field Chatbots Regarding Chatbots on Small Screens			Available with:
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Understanding Chatbots

Chatbots are an automated communication service. They allow users to search for answers about your content, and they provide a series of answers and means of collecting data. With this, chatbots can quickly and effectively navigate users to the solutions for their problems. Failing that, they can automate the process of contacting you for additional support.

Conversations through chatbots use a specific logic path. A chatbot workflow starts with a welcome message, progresses to an initial question, provides specific answers, allows the user to respond, collects any necessary information, and then displays a message that ends the conversation. This logic path best emulates person-to-person communication.

Creating New Chatbots

Chatbots require information on where it will be placed, who will be able to interact with it, and how it will appear. Chatbots cannot be created unless all of this information is entered and configured. Once chatbots have been created, you will be able to configure their workflows.

Configuring Name and Website Settings

In order to create a chatbot, you will need to enter basic chatbot data. This includes what name you give it and where it will be located on a website. To enter and configure chatbot data, do the following:			Click to enlarge.
1.	Click Marketing > Automation > Chatbot Workflows in SharpSpring's top toolbar.
2.	Click Create.		Important: You must have tracking code enabled on your site in order to activate your chatbot.
3.	Enter a workflow name for the chatbot.
4.	Select the website that the chatbot will be set to in the Select a website drop-down menu.
5.	Select either of the following:

Optional: Excluding URLs and Directories

Optionally, to prevent the chatbot from appearing on specific webpages, do the following:

1.	Click Exclude URL/directory.		Click to enlarge.
2.	Enter a webpage URL, including a trailing / forward slash if there is one in the live URL.
3.	Repeat as necessary with Exclude additional URL/directory.

Configuring Audience Settings

Once you have entered and configured basic information, you can determine who will be interacting with this chatbot.  This is based on the various types of lead attributions available in SharpSpring.			Click to enlarge.
To configure chatbot audience settings, do the following:
1.	Click Next.		Important: You can only have one active bot of each audience type per page, unless the audience type is set to a custom field.
2.	Select one of the following audience types:

Configuring Appearance Settings

Once you have entered and configured chatbot name, location, and audience settings, you can modify its appearance.

To configure chatbot appearance settings, do the following:

1.	Enter a display name for the chatbot.		Click to enlarge.
2.	Click    Update Avatar.
3.	Select the desired image file on your local machine.
4.	Upload the file.
5.	Select one of the following placement options:    •   Bottom-left    •   Bottom-right		Important: By default, created chatbots will be branded with Powered by SharpSpring. Agencies have the option to configure this setting.
6.	Click Select a Theme Color.
7.	Do one of the following:    •   Select one of the available colors    •   Enter a hexadecimal color code
8.	Enable or disable the Enable gradient checkbox.
9.	Enable or disable the Include welcome message at launch checkbox.
10.	Click Save.

Navigating the Main Chatbots Page

The Chatbots page is where all your created chatbot workflows are located.  Click Marketing > Automation > Chatbot Workflows in SharpSpring's top toolbar to access the Chatbots page.

Once a chatbot is saved, it will be nested under the site it is associated with. If there are multiple chatbots that have an audience set to custom fields, they will be placed at the bottom of the chatbot list for that site. At any time in the main chatbots page, you can: Click the Website drop-down menu to view chatbots associated with a particular website. Click the Activity drop-down menu to view active or inactive chatbot workflows. Enter the desired chatbot name in the Search Chatbots field to search for chatbots. The main Chatbots page displays certain information about your available chatbots:			Click to enlarge.
			Note: The Search Chatbots function will only display matching chatbot names for the selected Activity status. You may need to select Active or Inactive to view relevant search results.

Main Page Options

There are chatbot options that are available on the main Chatbots page. These options provide different ways for you make certain changes to the chatbot. 

To access chatbot options, do the following:

1.	Click Marketing > Automation > Chatbot Workflows in SharpSpring's top toolbar.		Click to enlarge.
2.	Select the desired website domain from the Website drop-down menu.
3.	If necessary, select either Active or Inactive from the Activity drop-down menu.
4.	Hover over the chatbot.
5.	Click    Options.
6.	Select from one of the following options:

Custom Field Chatbots

When creating chatbots, you have the option to create chatbots that interact with and gather information on users who meet the criteria for specific custom fields. This means that you can create chatbots that are custom-tailored for those specific interests.

To create chatbots that utilize custom fields, do the following:

1.	Click Marketing > Automation > Chatbot Workflows in SharpSpring's top toolbar.		Click to enlarge.
2.	Click Create.
3.	Configure the chatbot's name and website settings.
4.	Click Next.
5.	Select the Custom Field audience type.		Important: The following custom field formats are available for use with chatbot audiences:     •   Bit     •   Boolean     •   Checkbox Group     •   Country     •   Drop-Down     •   Radio     •   State
6.	Select the desired custom field from the Custom Field drop-down menu.
7.	If necessary, select the desired information for the custom field in the drop-down menu that appears.
8.	Click Next.
9.	Configure the chatbot's appearance settings.
10.	Click Save.

Prioritizing Custom Field Chatbots

You can create many different chatbots that utilize custom fields. However, there might be times where a user with specific custom field information on their Contact Record meets the criteria for all of those different custom fields. To prevent users from interacting with the incorrect chatbot—or interacting with many at once—SharpSpring prioritizes the way in which users interact with chatbots with custom fields.

Chatbots with custom fields can be set in an order to determine their priority. This priority system allows users to be filtered down through different chatbots with custom fields until they meet the criteria for a chatbot with a specific custom field. This way, custom field information that you deem more important can be prioritized, and users will interact with those chatbots before any others.

To prioritize chatbots with custom fields, do the following:

1.	Click Marketing > Automation > Chatbot Workflows in SharpSpring's top toolbar.		Click to enlarge.
2.	Ensure you have created at least two chatbots with the Custom Field audience type.
3.	Select the desired website domain from the Website drop-down menu.
4.	If necessary, select either Active or Inactive from the Activity drop-down menu.		Important: Custom field chatbot prioritization requires at least two chatbots with the Custom Field audience type.
5.	Scroll to the bottom of the Chatbots page.
6.	Click-and-drag the custom field chatbots in the priority order you want.

Regarding Chatbots on Small Screens

When adding chatbots to a webpage, be aware of the potential size constraints of the page on certain computer monitors or screens. In certain cases, such as users viewing your website on a tablet computer, the chatbot might not be able to completely display due to webpage features. 

Most often, the chatbot will be unable to display    Close in its header bar. This is usually due to how the CSS style is set on these webpages. On these webpages, the floating header's z-index value set to a value higher than that of the chatbot's z-index value.