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Using Bots

Customers can use natural language when conversing with a bot to accomplish various business needs, such as making a payment or checking an account balance. Bots can be used for chat (called chatbots) and voice (called voicebots) interactions.

Genesys Intelligent Automation can provide your customers with chatbot-based access to your WebIVR and Messaging (such as Apple Business Chat) applications.

Once installed, the WebIVR chatbot and the Apple Business Chat chatbot act in a similar manner, handling queries and responses between the parties of the interaction. The optional use of SMS (Short Message Service) is restricted to the WebIVR chatbot; Apple Business Chat does not support it. However, if the WebIVR application is using SMS, the customers cannot use any special characters in response to queries from the bot.

If installing the Apple Business Chat chatbot, the application essentually emulates an Apple Business Chat session, enabling the user of an iOS terminal (Apple iPhone, iPad, or laptop) to interact seamlessly with the company using Apple's iMessage framework.

How you set up a chatbot for use with WebIVR and Apple Business Chat is almost identical, and is described in the following sections. Refer to the following sections for mroe information about the respective applications: WebIVR and Apple Business Chat.

Setting up a chat bot

To set up a chatbot for WebIVR or Apple Business Chat applications, you must install the following Genesys components:

Install and configure Digital Messaging Server

  1. Refer to the Digital Messaging Server 9.0.0 Deployment Procedure for information on how to install Digital Messaging Server.
  2. Copy the chatbot jar file to the Digital Messaging Server subfolder for chatbots. For example: C:\Program Files\GCTI\eServices 9.0\Digital Messaging Server\DMS\media-channel-drivers\channel-chatbot\bots-repo\.
  3. Log in to Genesys Administrator or Genesys Administrator Extension (GAX).
    Important
    If you are setting up a chatbot for Apple Business Chat, you must use GAX.
  4. Go to Provisioning > Environment > Applications and open the Digital Messaging Server object.
  5. Create a section called channel-chatbot-monitor-bots.
  6. Create a chatbot option. You must ensure the option name matches exactly the name of the jar file that you uploaded to Digital Messaging Server in step 2, above. For example: fish-cbp-9.0.0.jar.
  7. Set the value of the chatbot option to point to the load balancer for Messaging Server. If you want to set timeout values, add the parameters downstream_request_timeout_millis and session_timeout_minutes. In the following example, the request timeout is 120000 ms (120 seconds) and the session timeout is 30 minutes: 
    { "base_url" : "http://www.yourcompany.com:8081/fish-messaging", "downstream_request_timeout_millis" : 120000, "session_timeout_minutes" : 30}
  8. Save your changes.

(Optional) Configure SMS Server

Important
  • Use this section only if you want to provide SMS (Short Message Service) access to your chatbot. Otherwise, go to the next section.
  • Apple Business Chat does not SMS.
  • Refer to SMS Server (part of eServices) documentation for more information on SMS Server.
  • This feature uses the Session Mode of SMS Server, which refers to creating and keeping an interactive conversation between a mobile client and an agent in the form of a conventional chat session. All messages received and sent during this session are associated with one interaction, which corresponds to this SMS session.
  1. In Genesys Administrator, log in to your configuration environment.
  2. Go to Provisioning > Environment > Applications and open the SMS Server object.
  3. Open the channel that you want to use with the bot.
  4. For the option inbound-route, specify the access point in your routing strategy that is used to place submitted interactions for incoming messages.
  5. Save your changes.

Configure the chatbot

Once you have installed the bot interface, you can use Interaction Routing Designer to configure settings.

  1. Open Interaction Routing Designer and log in to your environment.
  2. Open the routing strategy that is triggered by the session endpoint, and add an External service block to the start of the flow.
  3. Open the External service block and go to the General tab. Configure the settings as described below:
    • Application type - Set to the Digital Messaging Server or Social Messaging Server in your environment.
    • Application name - Set to the Digital Messaging Server or Social Messaging Server in your environment.
    • Service - Set to ChatBotPlatform.
    • Method - Set to StartBot.
    In the Parameters section, add the following:
    • Nickname - The bot name displayed to customers.
    • SiteID - The ID number of your Genesys Intelligent Automation application to use with the bot.
    • IsTestCall - If true, the test version of the application is used. Otherwise, set to false to use the production version.
    • AuthToken - The value of the Authentication Key field in your company page.
    • StopBotOnAgentArrival - Set to true if you want the bot to end once an agent joins the session. Otherwise, set to false.
    • StopBotOnCustomerLeft - Set to true if you want the bot session to end once a customer leaves the session. Otherwise, set to false.
    • Visibility - Set to ALL.
    • ChatBotID - Set to speechstorm-chatbot.
    • ChatBotName - Leave this field blank.
    • _umsChannel - Set to channel-chatbot.
  4. Click OK.

Genesys recommends that you add new blocks to your routing strategy, just after the External service block, to pause the strategy until the chatbot has completed its task. Otherwise, the routing strategy might queue up the session for an agent and, as soon as an agent joins, the StopBotOnAgentArrival parameter will cause the bot to terminate early.

To determine if a chatbot interaction is still alive, Genesys Intelligent Automation checks the following interaction data values:

  • IsOnline - If the value is 0, the bot is offline and you can terminate the interaction.
  • FishTransferRequested - If the value is true, you can proceed to route the interaction to an agent.

Refer to the Interaction Routing Designer documentation or consult your Genesys representative for information on the best routing strategy for your environment.

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