Introduction

A custom messaging bot is one that you create largely from scratch.

However, LivePerson offers a set of predefined, industry-specific bot templates too. These can enable rapid adoption of automation. You can find more info on available bot templates in this section.

Create a custom messaging bot

LivePerson recommends that before you create a bot, you set up the domains, intents, and entities that the bot will need. This makes creation of the bot much faster and easier because the Assist tool can use that information along the way to suggest suitable intents and entities to use.

To create a custom messaging bot

  1. Access Conversation Builder.
  2. On the Bots page, click New Bot in the upper-right corner.

  3. In the window that appears, select the Custom Bot template.

    The right-facing arrow to click to create a custom bot

    The Custom Bot template uses English and includes just a Welcome dialog and a Fallback dialog (see Dialog Types), so it’s ideal if you want to start from scratch.

  4. In the next window that appears, specify the following:

    • Name: Enter a name that’s concise and clear. Make sure abbreviations can be understood, and consider adding a prefix or suffix to indicate the environment (Dev, Prod, etc.) or language (En, Sp, Fr, etc.) if applicable.
    • Description: Enter a description that’s meaningful to you and others. Consider including language that identifies the bot's goal and key behaviors.
    • Small Talk: Small talk is chitchat (greetings, pleasantries, profanities, etc.). When consumers converse with bots, they sometimes engage in small talk, so supporting it is a best practice. If Small Talk is turned on for your account, this setting is enabled by default; you can turn it off and on as you want. If Small Talk is turned off for your account, this setting is disabled. To enable it, turn Small Talk on for your account in Bot Accounts.
    • Bot Language: This setting identifies the language that the bot will use to respond. Select the language based on how you'll train the bot: If you will use an intent domain, you must select the language of the domain that will be associated with the bot. For example, if the intent domain uses English, select "English" here. If these languages don't match, errors during NLU processing will occur. Alternatively, if the bot will use only pattern matching, you can select or enter any language.
    • Bot Group: Optionally select the bot group for the bot. A bot can be a member of exactly one group.
  5. Click Create Bot.
  6. Build out the bot, completing and adding the necessary dialogs and interactions. As you work, test the bot using the Preview tool.
  7. Save versions of the bot at important points in its development. This allows you to restore a version if you need.
  8. Train and tune things as you do more testing.

  9. Save a version of the final “Development” bot.

    See this Development-to-Production release workflow.