Users can use your chat bot via a channel. The channel you choose for your bot depends on where its users will most likely look for help or hang out.
For example, if you are building an internal HR bot, we think it's best to put it on the company HR portal using a web widget, or perhaps on Facebook Workplace. However, if you're building a bot that targets a young(er) demographic, Facebook Messenger might be a better channel.
Publishing your bot on a channel is quite easy if you follow our channel guides:
If you want your users to follow a different flow based on the channel they are using, you can use our multi-channel functionality. To do this, add a Go To to the point in your flow where you wish to diverge, based on the channel.
Within this 'Go To', guide the user based on the botType variable, which contains the channel variable. For example:
The values for botType correspond to the channel names:
Facebook Messenger: facebook
Google Home: google
Chat widget: web
Facebook Workplace: facebookWorkplace
Phone: voice
All channels managed through the Sinch Conversation API: sinchConversationAPI
The table below gives an overview of which features are available in which channels. If a feature is not listed below, it's available for all channels.
| Chat Widget | Facebook Messenger | Facebook Workplace | Webhook API | Zendesk | |
Text messages | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Buttons | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | ✅ | ✅ |
Quick replies | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | ✅ | ✅ |
Carousel | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | ✅ | ✅ |
List | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | ✅ | ✅ |
Media | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
File upload | ✅ | | | | | |
Rich text | ✅ | | | | | |
Branding customization | ✅ | (✅) | (✅) | (✅) | ✅ | ✅ |
iframe | ✅ | | | | | |
Webview | ✅ | ✅ | (✅) | | | |