How to get started?

Virtual Agents (VAs) on Webex Engage are bound to a single team and therefore we recommend you to create a team within your Webex Engage instance by providing a suitable name (Team BOT or so) and placing your Virtual Agents and Team Managers (always set to Unavailable states by default) alone within this team. This will ensure that inbound chats are always assigned to the BOT as the first touchpoint.

Adding a Virtual Agent:

  • Client Admins can add their BOT as a Virtual Agent on Webex Engage by heading to the Users menu >
    Virtual Agents tab and clicking on the Add Virtual Agent button.
  • Provide the basic details asked for such as Name and Description.

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Note

Please note that the Name and Description of the Virtual Agent cannot be changed once saved

  • Next, head to the Endpoint details section and provide your BOT's Webhook URL here along with any request headers you need to pass (only static values are allowed).
  • As a BOT developer you will need to subscribe to the following events from the Event Subscriptions section. Details of this
    • chat.assigned
    • message.received

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Note

Webex Engage expects the BOT webhook URL to respond with a 200 OK HTTP status code upon streaming an event. Any other HTTP codes will result in a retry mechanism. Please refer to the Retry Mechanism section on Page: Events and Payloads for further details on this.

  • Map your Virtual Agent to a team of your choice (ideally a separate one to your live agents to ensure the live agents do not end up receiving new chats instead of the BOT).
  • Just like Users, BOTS can Webex Engage can also multiple skills and you have the ability to define 'Custom Attributes' to them and managing conditions on these defined in Groups > / Teams / Skills Tab as defined in the user guide
  • Click on Submit to save your Virtual Agent's details.

Virtual Agent Actions:

  • VAs / BOTS can make the following actions using the REST APIs upon receiving an event from Webex Engage:
    • Send a message to the customer - use the POST /chats//messages endpoint
    • Add tags to a conversation - use the PATCH /chats/ endpoint
    • Append announcements (visible to agents and administrators alone) POST /chats//messages endpoint
    • Handover to Team Queue / Skill / Specific user - use the PATCH /internal/chats/ endpoint