Sending structured messages proactively when chat widget is opened? | Community
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Sending structured messages proactively when chat widget is opened?

  • June 9, 2019
  • 3 replies
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Is it possible to send Structured Messages proactively when a visitor opens the chat widget?

For our use case we want to present the visitor with an initial message before the visitor has typed anything. This message would include Quick Reply Buttons that the user can click to reply with a predefined answer that can be easily recognized by our chatbot service, already connected via the Chat Conversations API.

We already tried using triggers and it works for simple text messages, but we cannot find a way to include quick reply buttons with this message. We have also successfully sent structured messages with the API but only after the visitor initiated the conversation and we had the channel id.

    3 replies

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    • Ramin12
    • June 10, 2019

    Hi Marcus,

    Currently, there is no way to do this in the product since structured messages are tied to bots sending it today. The only workaround I can propose is use the Web SDK to build a custom widget that has the quick reply buttons you want that will send the text you need to the bot to progress it through the flow.

    You can learn more about the Web SDK here: https://api.zopim.com/web-sdk

    Thanks,
    Ramin

     

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    • Bernard16
    • November 27, 2019

    This feature would be very useful (enable starting proactive chat once user loads chat widget) - definitely second this

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    • Omar23
    • November 29, 2019

    This is almost a blocker for chatbots using Zendesk Chat Widget and pre-chat form.

    A good chatbot will always start the conversation. Today if you want to have name + email using pre-chat form and then start a chatbot this is not possible. The issue is that there is no SDK event for "Start chat" button. If they would add an event there and be able to hide "Message" from the pre-chat form, this would be solved. 

    Another option is to ask name and email from the chatbot and save it using the GraphSQL API, but it requires more changes in the process of a existing widget.

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