Symphony Messaging Dev Docs
Developer CertificationREST API
  • Start Your Developer Journey
  • Bots
    • Building Bots
    • Planning Your Bot
      • Conversational Bot
      • Interactive Bot
      • Headless Bot
    • Getting Started
      • Getting Started with BDK
      • Creating a Service Account
      • Configuration
      • Truststores
    • Overview of REST API
      • REST API Architecture
      • Overview of Pod API
      • Overview of Key Manager API
      • Overview of Agent API
      • Bot Permissions
      • REST API Reference
    • Authentication
      • RSA Authentication Workflow
      • Certificate Authentication Workflow
    • Datafeed
      • Real-Time Events
      • Overview of Streams
    • Messages
      • MessageML
        • MessageML Basics
          • Content Grouping
          • Text formatting and semantics
          • Tables
          • Images
          • Tags and mentions
            • Enhanced tags notice
          • Style Attributes
          • Special Characters
          • Emojis
        • Elements Interactive Forms
          • Buttons
            • Icon set for Buttons
          • Text Field
          • Masked Text Field
          • Text Area
          • Checkbox
          • Radio Button
          • Dropdown Menu
          • Person Selector
          • Room Selector
          • Date Picker
          • Time Picker
          • Timezone Picker
          • Table Select
          • Regular Expressions - Regex
        • Extensibility UI Actions
          • OpenChat
          • Dialog
        • Entities
          • Standard Entities
          • Custom Entities
      • PresentationML
    • Bots Best Practices
    • Open Source Code Samples
  • Extension Apps
    • Building Extension Apps
    • Planning Your App
    • Getting Started
      • Getting Started with ADK
      • Application Manifest Bundle
      • Add an Extension App to a Symphony Pod
    • Overview of Extension API
      • Initialization
      • Register and Connect
      • Extension API Services
        • Service Interface
        • Register and Subscribe
        • Modules Service
        • Entity Service
          • Entity Advanced Templating
          • Message Format - ExtensionML
        • Applications-Nav Service
        • Share Service
        • Commerce Service
        • Dialogs Service
        • UI Service
          • Receiving Conversation and User Information
          • Filter Function
    • App Authentication
      • Circle of Trust Authentication
      • OBO Authentication
  • Developer Tools
    • Symphony Messaging Generator
    • Bot Developer Kit for Java
      • Build a Conversational Bot
      • Build an Interactive Bot
      • Build a Headless Bot
      • Integrate a Bot with an Identity Provider
    • Bot Developer Kit for Python
    • App Developer Kit
      • Build a Basic Extension App
      • Build an Extension App with App Views
        • Add Buttons and Handlers to an Extension App
        • Add BDK to an Extension App for Circle of Trust
      • Build an Extension App with Message Renderers
    • Postman
    • UI Style Guide
      • Colors
      • Form Elements
      • Buttons
  • Embedded Modules
    • Symphony Messaging URI
      • Symphony Messaging URI for Mobile (deprecated)
    • Desktop interoperability
      • FDC3 intents
        • Message format
      • Configuration guide
        • Configure Interop.io
        • Configure Here Core
        • Configure Finsemble
        • Configure with Embedded Mode
        • Troubleshooting
      • Change log
    • Embedded Mode
      • Get started
      • Configuration parameters
      • Open a chat
      • Send a message
      • Create a room
      • Pin a message
      • Notifications
      • Support for extension applications
      • Open an app
      • Embedded Mode with Sponsored Access
      • Pricing tiers
      • Logout
    • Universal Webhook
      • User guide
        • Example with Splunk
      • Installation guide
  • Symphony REST API
    • Messaging REST API
    • Federation
    • Sponsored Access API
    • Enhanced Directory API
  • Developer Certification
    • Developer Certification
  • Mobile Frameworks
    • Blackberry
    • MobileIron
  • Admin Guides
    • Change Logs
      • API Agent
        • Agent - 25.5
        • Agent - 25.3 (LTS)
        • Agent - 24.12 (LTS)
        • Agent - 24.9 (LTS)
        • Agent - 24.6 (LTS)
        • Archives
          • Agent - 24.11
          • Agent - 24.10
          • Agent - 23.9 (LTS)
          • Agent - 24.8
          • Agent - 24.3 (LTS)
          • Agent - 24.2
          • Agent - 24.1
          • Agent - 23.12 (LTS)
          • Agent - 23.11
          • Agent - 23.10
          • Agent - 23.7
          • Agent - 23.6 (LTS)
          • Agent - 23.4
          • Agent - 23.3 (LTS)
          • Agent - 23.1
          • Agent - 22.12 (LTS)
          • Agent - 22.11
          • Agent - 22.10
          • Agent - 22.9 (LTS)
          • Agent - 22.8
          • Agent - 22.7
          • Agent - 22.6 (LTS)
          • Agent - 20.14
          • Agent - 20.13
          • Agent - 20.12
          • Agent - 20.10
          • Agent - 20.9 (2.62)
          • Agent - 20.7 (2.61)
          • Agent - 20.6 (2.60)
          • Agent - 20.5 (2.59)
          • Agent - 20.4 (2.58)
      • SBE (Pod API)
        • SBE - 24.1
        • SBE - 20.16
        • SBE - 20.15
        • Archives
          • SBE - 20.14
          • SBE - 20.13
          • SBE - 20.12
          • SBE - 20.10
          • SBE - 20.9 (1.62)
          • SBE - 20.7 (1.61)
          • SBE - 20.6 (1.60)
          • SBE - 20.5 (1.59)
          • SBE - 20.4 (1.58)
      • Client 2.0 APIs
        • Client 2.0 - 25.05
        • Client 2.0 - 25.03
        • Client 2.0 - 24.12
        • Client 2.0 - 24.05
        • Client 2.0 - 23.02
        • Client 2.0 - 22.11
        • Archives
          • Client 2.0 - 20.4
          • Client 2.0 - 20.5
          • Client 2.0 - 20.6
          • Client 2.0 - 20.7
          • Client 2.0 - 20.9
          • Client 2.0 - 20.10
          • Client 2.0 - 20.12
          • Client 2.0 - 22.8
          • Client 2.0 - 22.10
      • Universal Webhook
        • Univ Webhook - 2.6
        • Univ Webhook - 2.4
        • Univ Webhook - 2.2
        • Univ Webhook - 2.1
        • Univ Webhook - 2.0
    • API Change Management
    • Global Throttling
    • Agent Guide
      • Network Topology
      • Agent Download
      • Agent Installation
      • Agent Configuration Fields
      • Agent Server High Availability
      • Agent Performance Tuning
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Chatbot Workflow
  • 1. Kick off your Workflow
  • 2. Listen for Events
  • 3. Handle Events with Custom Business Logic
  • Next Steps:

Was this helpful?

Export as PDF
  1. Bots
  2. Planning Your Bot

Conversational Bot

Last updated 2 months ago

Was this helpful?

Chatbots or conversational Bots, are the most common bots in the Symphony Messaging ecosystem. These types of bots run 24/7 and wait for users to initiate conversations in order to perform certain tasks. The conversations could be simple commands or even natural language queries. The bot will determine the user’s intent based on their messages and take the appropriate action.

Chatbot Workflow

1. Kick off your Workflow

As stated before, users can interact with chatbots in chatrooms or 1 to 1 chats. In order to initiate your chatbot's workflow we recommend that users @mention the bot's username in order to get the bot's attention and signal to the bot to begin its intended function. That way, chatbots can be active members of chatrooms, but eliminate noise that is outside the scope of its intended workflow.

It is common for Bots to contain multiple commands or sub workflows that it can action upon. It is best practice to list these commands in a help menu. Additionally, it is best practice for all commands to follow a "/" so that it's clear what text is meant to be processed as a command. The following illustrates these best practices:

2. Listen for Events

A core aspect of all chatbots and conversational bots is the ability to 'listen' to different types of commands and events and reply to them accordingly. The mechanism that enables Bots to listen to events in chats is the Datafeed.

The Datafeed is a real-time message and event stream that can be created using the REST API. The datafeed provides a secure stream of messages and events from all conversations that a bot is in.

In order to 'listen' and respond to user events, bots create a single datafeed and will subsequently have access to all chat activity including non-chat based events such as users being added/removed from chatrooms, external connection requests, as well as chats being created.

To learn more about the Datafeed continue here:

3. Handle Events with Custom Business Logic

The next step of your chatbot workflow is to introduce your custom business logic. Once you have access to the bot's events and messages through the Datafeed, the next step is to create dedicated event listeners. Inside these listeners is where you parse messages, fetch data from external sources, manage conversation state, and make requests to our Symphony Messaging REST API in order to reply to users directly or perform administrative functions such as creating chatrooms.

Next Steps:

You can learn more about parsing events and introducing custom business logic .

Continue on to our guide in order to learn more about our development tools and appropriate development pathway for building your first Symphony Messaging Chatbot.

Datafeed
Building a Conversational Bot
Build a Conversational Bot
here