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Add-on AI agents - Advanced

A carousel is a rich messaging block type within a dialogue for an advanced AI agent. It displays up to 10 options, each with a visual element called a card. Carousels provide a visually pleasing way for customers to make a selection from options presented to them by the AI agent.

This article contains the following topics:
  • About the carousel block
  • CRM-specific requirements and limitations
  • Populating carousel cards via an API integration

About the carousel block

When you add a carousel block in a dialogue, two child blocks appear for configuration:
  • Card block: Represents the first card in the carousel. It includes fields for image URL, card title, and description.

  • Card button block: Represents a button element on the associated card. Each button can be one of two types: a standard button, or a button with an external link.

You can add more buttons to each card (though some CRMs have limits on the number of buttons), and up to 10 cards total within a carousel.

You can add a fallback for users who don't interact with the carousel using the Fallback toggle in the Details pane. A fallback block appears in the dialogue and can be configured as an alternate branch.

Carousel blocks are available only for messaging AI agents, and only with certain CRMs. CRMs may have specific requirements and limitations for carousels.

CRM-specific requirements and limitations

If you’re adding carousels to a CRM integration, special requirements and limitations apply in the following instances:
  • Using carousels with Sunshine Conversations
  • Using carousels with Zendesk Chat
  • Using carousels with Freshchat
  • Using carousels with Salesforce

Using carousels with Sunshine Conversations

Sunshine Conversations has the following requirements and limitations in its support of rich format messaging.

Block type Component Sunshine Conversations limitations
Card All fields
  • All fields mandatory unless otherwise specified
  Card count
  • Maximum 10 cards per carousel
  Images
  • URL maximum 2048 characters
  • URL must be valid http/https
  Card title
  • Maximum 128 characters
  Description
  • Maximum 128 characters
  • No line breaks allowed
Card button Button count
  • Maximum three buttons per card
  Button text
  • Mandatory
  • Maximum 35 characters
  Button with external link
  • URL maximum 2048 characters
  • URL must be valid http/https
  • Dialogue must end here

Using carousels with Zendesk Chat

Zendesk Chat has the following requirements and limitations in its support of rich format messaging.

Block type Component Zendesk Chat limitations
Card All fields
  • All fields mandatory
  • Must contain at least one character (spaces don’t count)
  Card count
  • Maximum 10 cards per carousel
  Images
  • PNG, JPEG or GIF
  • Maximum 20MB
  • Render rectangularly (horizontal side being longest)
  • Automatically cropped from center to 2:1 ratio (width:height)
  • URL maximum 2000 characters
  • URL must be valid http/https
  Card title
  • Maximum 150 characters
  • Quotation marks (") not allowed
  Description
  • Maximum 150 characters
  • No line breaks
  • Quotation marks (") not allowed
Card button Button count
  • Maximum three buttons per card
  Button text
  • Mandatory
  • Maximum 20 characters
  Button with external link
  • Dialogue must end here
  • URL maximum 2000 characters
  • URL must be valid http/https

Using carousels with Freshchat

Freshchat has the following requirements and limitations in its support of rich format messaging.

Block type Component Freshchat limitations
Card All fields
  • All fields mandatory
  • Must be followed by an AI agent message
  Card count
  • Minimum 2 cards
  Images
  • JPEG, PNG or GIF
  • Maximum 2MB
  • URL must be valid http/https
  Card title
  • Maximum 128 characters
  Description
  • Maximum 70 characters
Card button Button count
  • Maximum 2 buttons
  • Must have one of each type
    • Button
    • Button with external link
  Button text
  • Mandatory
  • Maximum 33 characters
  Button with external link
  • Dialogue must end here
  • URL maximum 2000 characters
  • URL must be valid http/https

Using carousels with Salesforce

Before using carousels, you must first implement the latest scripts to enable rich messaging in Salesforce.

For a good user experience, it’s recommended to have no more than three buttons per card.

Block type Component Salesforce limitations
Card Images
  • Image URL must be valid http/https
  • Image must be less than 5MB
  • Image must be one of Salesforce's supported file types
Card button Button with external link
  • Dialogue must end here
  • External link must be valid http/https URL

Populating carousel cards via an API integration

A carousel is static by default, but can be converted to a dynamic carousel in order to use content fetched from an existing custom API integration. In a dynamic carousel, the card and card button blocks are templates that contain the dynamic content.

To add a carousel with dynamic content to a dialogue
  1. In the dialogue builder, click the plus (+) icon to add a carousel block.

    The dynamic carousel block appears along with the first template card block, a fallback block, and a Details pane.

  2. To remove the fallback (optional), deselect Fallback on the Details pane.

    Otherwise, it can be configured as an alternate branch.

  3. In the Details pane, click Convert to dynamic carousel and enter dataSources as the array type parameter.
  4. In the template card block, enter text or parameters such as %imageurl, %title, and %description in the respective fields.
  5. In the template card button block, enter text or a parameter such as %buttontext.

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