6. Set up a channel and publish your bot

Congratulations on building your bot! Yet, it's still not available for your customers. In this lesson, you will learn how to connect your bot to a channel and publish it.

What your web widget will look like once the bot is published on a Web channel.

Step 10: Set up a Web channel

For this bot, we will use a Web channel.

Bear in mind that we're not still operating in the DRAFT environment of your bot, i.e. an environment for building and testing. To have a channel in your LIVE environment (i.e. the customer-facing environment), you'll need to re-do these steps after publishing, in the LIVE environment. Lean more here.

To set up a Web channel for your chatbot:

1. From your left-hand menu, click on Channels.

There are many other channels where you can publish your bot, yet, they require some configuration that we’re not covering in this short tutorial. To learn more about channels, check this page.

The Channels tab.

2. Click on the Add channel button, at the top-right corner of your screen.

3. Click on Web.

4. Here, set up your chatbot widget as you please. For this tutorial we will:

   • call the chatbot Leadzy,

   • give her Your shopping assistant as a subtitle,

   • and disable audio input and file upload since our bot doesn’t use that.

Set up the basics of your web widget.

5. Under the Appearance tab, select colors and add an image for your bot avatar.

Set up the appearance of your web widget.

Screenshot 2024-02-21 at 16.38.00.png

6. Click Save.

Your widget is now designed and ready to be used!

Test your web widget on Webchat

To test your bot on Webchat:

1. From your Web channel menu, click on the Installation tab.

2. Here, copy your iframe URL from the link provided at the top:

Copy the iframe link.

3. Paste it to a new window: you can test your bot here on Webchat!

Test your chatbot in an iframe.

Please bear in mind that we're still in the DRAFT environment here.

Test your web widget on Codepen

To test your bot on Codepen:

1. From your web channel menu, go to the Installation tab.

2. Click on Preview at the bottom-left corner of the screen.

3. A Codepen page opens that simulates what your chatbot widget would look like on your website.

Test your bot on Codepen.

Step 11: Publish your bot

To publish your bot:

1. Open your Flows view.

2. On the top-right corner of your screen, click on Publish.

3. A window pops up and asks you to describe what you’re publishing. Add a short description as a release note.

Give a short description of the version of your bot that you're about to publish.

4. Click on Publish.

5. Set up a Web channel in your LIVE environment this time.

To have a channel in your LIVE environment (i.e. the customer-facing environment), you' need to set up a channel inside that LIVE environment. Lean more here.

Check the different versions of your bot

You know if you are in the DRAFT or LIVE version of your bot depending on what you see on the bottom right corner of your screen.

When editing the LIVE version of your bot, you are editing what users interact with immediately. Be careful! It’s always best to work on the DRAFT environment then publish it so that it overwrites the LIVE one. Lean more here.

To check the different versions of your bot:

1. From the left-hand menu, under the History tab, click on Versions.

2. There, you can see the different versions of your bot that were published.

Check the different versions of your bot.

In case of a problem, the Versions allows you to publish an older version of your bot. Learn more about versioning here.

Lesson 6 recap

You’re done with this very first Chatlayer tutorial, congratulations to you! 👏

In this last lesson, you’ve learned how to:

• Add a Web channel to your bot.

• Configure your chatbot widget.

• Test your widget on Codepen and Webchat.

• Publish your bot.

• Check the different versions of your bot.

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