Using Flow Builder to create a social messaging bot

This article describes how you can build and deploy a bot built using Flow Builder and make it visible on your social channels to start deflecting those commonly asked questions.

This article includes the following topics:

• Activating social messaging channels on your Zendesk account
• Building a bot for social channels using Flow Builder
• Adding a bot to active social channels
• Removing a bot from social channels
• Functionality differences from web and mobile messaging

Activating social messaging channels on your Zendesk account

You can add a bot to any social channels that are connected to your Zendesk account.

If you have not yet connected your social channel(s), see About messaging channels for the Zendesk Agent Workspace, and use the links to Supported channels to enable the needed channels. Note that each available social channel has its own enabling instructions.

After you have added your social channels, you can continue the processes described in this article.

Building a bot for social channels using Flow Builder

You can create a customized messaging bot using Flow builder, a drag-and-drop tool for web, mobile, and third-party messaging interactions with your customers, giving them the opportunity to self-serve their support issues before connecting with agents.

See Using Flow Builder to create bot flows for information about the Flow Builder tool and the bot creation process. When you publish the new bot, you’ll be able to select the social messaging channel(s) you want to connect the bot to.

You can also use a previously-created, unused bot, or a bot that is already in use.

Adding a bot to active social channels

You can add a bot you’ve already created to your social channel.

• Adding an unpublished bot to social channels
• Adding a live bot to your social channels

Adding an unpublished bot to social channels

If you choose to add a bot to a social channel that is currently unpublished, you can publish the bot to your social channel in Flow Builder.

To publish an unused bot to a social channel

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots.
2. Hover over the bot you want to use and click Edit in Flow Builder.
3. Make any necessary changes, then click Publish.
4. In the channel selection screen, select one or more channels to connect to your bot, then click Publish to selected channels.

Adding a live bot to your social channels

If you have published a bot to a web or mobile channel and want to now deploy that bot to social messaging channels, you can do so in the bot’s settings.

To add a live bot to a social channel

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots.
2. Hover over the bot you want to use and click Settings.
3. In the General tab, select the channels you want to connect to the bot.
4. Click Save.

Note: If the selected channel already has a bot connected to it, that bot will be disconnected from the channel and replaced with this new bot. If no other changes are made to the bot, the live channel is not impacted by this process.

Removing a bot from social channels

You can remove a bot from a social messaging channel if you no longer wish to use it.

To remove a live bot from a social channel

1. In Admin Center, click the Channels icon () in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots.
2. Hover over the bot you want to use and click Settings.
3. In the General tab, deselect the channels you want to remove.
4. Click Save.

Functionality differences from web and mobile messaging

Flow Builder on social channels has the following differences in functionality than compared to native channels:

• Data capture. If you've added a Transfer to agent step and configured support custom fields as a part of your bot's answers, the configured fields will not show on your third party channel customer experience. While the conversation will still be transferred to an agent with relevant history, the bot will skip any data capture configured.
• Quick reply options experience. For channels like WeChat, quick reply options aren't supported, and will degrade to a text-based experience to list the options for the user. The bot will say “You can say” followed by the options configured in Flow Builder. The bot can't be configured per channel at this stage and will be enabled across all Zendesk integrated social channels, including Sunshine Conversation integrations.
  Note: Quick reply options are currently available on WhatsApp using Sunshine Conversations integrations.
• Greetings. On social channels, the bot is not able to send the greeting message to begin a conversation. The user must speak first, and then the bot will follow normal behavior when receiving a free-text message and attempt to find a conversational shortcut.
• The same bot will be shared by all channels within a brand. You can’t have different bot experiences on different social channels to your Web Widget, if those channels share the same brand.
• Intent characters limitation. The Bot intent title and the presented options for social media have to fit the limit of 20 characters.
• Authentication and messaging metadata variables. Messaging authentication and messaging metadata variables are only available for the Web Widget and mobile SDK channels.
• Automatic translation. On social channels, automatic translation of incoming and outgoing messages is not available.

For a summary of all social channel capabilities, see Sunshine Conversations: Channel capabilities.