How to create a Chatbot?

Published in

Hekate

10 min readJun 20, 2017

Part 1: What’s a Facebook Chatbot? How do I find bots?

A Facebook bot is an extension to your Facebook Page’s messaging functionality.
Each Facebook bot has to be linked with an existing Facebook Page. So if anyone is chatting with your bot, they’re chatting with your Facebook Page — but instead of talking human-to-human, your bot talks for you.

How do I find bots?

You can get in touch with a Facebook bot via the page it’s running on. Simply press the Message button to get in touch with it.
You can find your bot in Messenger by searching for the name of the page your bot is running on.

You can click on your bot’s Messenger link m.me/hekateai or on an embedded widget on your website. This will then open a chat with your bot in the Messenger app. Check out the promotion tab in the dashboard to find more info about this.
In addition, you can scan Messenger code to start a conversation with your bot on Messenger

Part 2: How do I create a bot on Hekate’s platform?

It’s very simple to create a bot. It takes about 5 minutes to install completely all features on Hekate’s platform.

To get started please click “Create Now” button on http://hekate.ai/

After logging in via Facebook you can create a new bot

Logging in Facebook successfully, you can create a new bot by click “+Create” button
Step 1: Choose your page which you want to create your bot

Step 2: Choose your bot’s category such as event, fictional character…

Step 3: Setting basic information such as

Bot name: Your bot’s name

Language: Choose language fot your bot

Time zone: Choose time zone for your bot

Avatar: Change the avatar for your bot, with the ratio of 1.91:1 (ex: 191x100, 382x100),

Default message: A saying when your bot can't answer questions by users.

(by text or card).

ex: “Sorry, I don’t understand your question.”

Greeting message: to introduce your bot

Get started button (by text or card): The first chatbot messages sent to users. It can by text or card

ex:

The difference between “Greeting message” and “Get started button”:

- Greeting message appears before users start to a conversation with their bot.

- Get started button only appears before chatting and users must click the button to start to a conversation

- To delete “Greeting message” and “get started button”, you don’t fill in the blank

- Use ({{user_first_name}} or {{user_last_name}}) to take user’s information.

Ex: Hello, ({{user_first_name}}, I will inform that the weather forecast at your location.

In case, your bot is fictional character:

Turn On AI: Turn on this button, your bot start to conversation immediately
Category Fictional Character: fictional character’s genre.

Ex: Chicken, Rabbit, Corn…

Part 3: What is the function of Build on Hekate’s platform?

“Build” is used to create the Block and build the structure of a chatbot.

What are blocks and bot’s structure?

A block is a basic building block of your bot. It consists of one or more message cards that are sent together to a bot user.

You can link the blocks together by using the buttons in the Text Card, Gallery …

Create a new block you want to link
Create a button in an existing block, fill button caption and choose previously created block name in button action

When your bot’s user taps the button, they’ll receive all the messages the new block has inside.

What are groups?

Groups help you as a bot creator to organize your bot’s blocks.

You can move blocks between groups
You can move blocks inside a group
You can create, delete, and rename blocks, except in the default group

Part 4: What’s a text card?

This is a list of the card when you enter the Block in Hekate’s platform.

Text card

A text card can only contain text with a length up to 640 characters and a maximum of three buttons.

Here’s a simple text card without any buttons

Here’s a text card with two buttons

Add Button: add the button’s name, insert the card, link URL, phone number, or Module which you want.

Facebook limitations for text card:

Up to 640 symbols in each text card
Up to 3 buttons in each text card

2. Gallery

A gallery card is a special Facebook Messenger UI card that gives you the ability to show up to 9 items in a slider. Gallery items can make use of a(n):

- Image: 2:1

- Title: Maximum in 80 symbols

- Subtitle: Maximum in 80 symbols

- URL — tap on the image and on URL opens in your web browser

- Up to three buttons

A gallery card always has two required fields: title and image OR subtitle OR buttons.

This gallery uses: Images, Titles, URLs

Tapping each image will open the web browser. You can use this gallery for guiding users to your website or any external URLs.

This gallery uses: Images, Titles, Buttons

You can use this gallery for navigating your user through the bot.

This gallery uses: Titles, Subtitles, Buttons

This is the same as the previous example, without images

Limitations for gallery cards:

- Up to 40 symbols in titles

- Up to 80 symbols in subtitles

- Up to 3 buttons in each card

- Up to 9 cards in a row

Each card in a gallery card has two required fields: title and image OR subtitle OR buttons.
Images in galleries do not support gifs (but Image cards do!)
You can have different content in cards in a gallery card.

3. Image, Audio, Video, File và Module

Image: you can create 1 or many image cards, and send directly through chatbot.

Audio, Video và File: you can create audio, video or file and directly through chatbots. Limitations up to 10 MB.
Module: To create the Module card, you choose “Store” and turn on all Module available (games, newspaper, astrology, vote, edit the photo…) which you want to set up for users. At Module cards, you can rename and choose the suitable application

In the card Module, you can get the name and select the corresponding application has opened in the Store.

To automatic application, just open in the Store is user can start chatting with the bot right now.

4. Quick Reply

- That’s the new way for users to show the button. It can show under the Text Card, Gallery, Image, Audio, Video và File

- In “Quick reply” button, you can get the name and link with the other cards which you created. It can contain images, text, audio…

You can use “Quick reply” button to remind users to set up their locations.

Limitations for Quick reply:

- Up to 11 for Quick reply button

- Up to 20 symbols in titles (If the content is location, title won’t be used)

- Minimum size for images is 24x24, cut and resize for suitable size

Note: Module card is required to be last under all cards. Quick Reply is not displayed underneath each module.

Part 5: What is Setting included?

Settings is where you can set the basic information of the chatbot.

Page Tooken: Click the “Refresh” button in case you installed your bot but it’s not active.

Active: Turn on/off this button if you want to your bot is active/ not active

Add users: If you create your bot, you can add/delete Facebook accounts which you want

General Settings:

- In this part, you can edit all basic information as create a new bot (you can read at part 3)

Part 6: What’s “Chatbot menu”? How to use it?

Chatbot Menu is a small menu is located in the left corner of Messenger can help users quick access to the functions of a chatbot.

Firstly, you can click “Create item” to create items for menu

In “Create item”, you can get the name and choose the kind of cards, link URL or Module which you want.

After creating and setting up in “List items”, you can drag and drop through Menu messenger your page Facebook so your chatbot’s integrated and users can quickly access the features.

Part 7: What’s Store/ Module?

Store is where the modules are available, you just turn on directly into your chatbot.

Now, Store contains many modules as Game, Instant Auto, Read report, Horoscopes, Polls, Edit artwork, Avatar 8bit, Tarot, Strikes the wind, live chat, RSS and completely free.

But if you need to a special modulde for yourself, you can contact us for support: admin@hekate.ai.

If you want your users to chat directly with the Manager instead of chatting with the bot’s fanpage, you can turn on Live Chat module. Facebook will send this message to all the fanpage’s admins.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a module to help users to easily update and lookup your information quickly and conveniently by summarizing information into a data segment short on messaging platform.

Module is the special features, available and can be integrated into your chatbot.

Module features only appear when categories bot that you choose is a fictional character and application of Smart Reply is turned on in the Store.

At here, you can enter the type of your fictional characters.

Ex: chicken, girl, corn…

You must enter a value here then this new module can active

Part 8: What’s Bot Learning? How to use

Bot Learning is function to train your bots.

How to use:

- Click on “+ Add Rule” button to start setting the questions and answers to the bot.

User says: Type the keyword for the question, the more keyword, the bot returns the correct result is more accuracy.
Bot replies with Text/Card: type the answers by text or a link to the card that you created earlier in the Build. If you want the bot replies users with different random sentences, open the “Random” button for more answer.

Note:

button is to select the accuracy of the keyword.

Ex: Type this word “ hello”

- If the mark: In the sentence must correct the word “hello” regardless of typography, the bot will reply back. If you type “hell”, it’ll not available.

- If no mark: in the sentence just write “hell”, the bot will return the value.

This button is to delete a tab or delete the answers. This button is displayed when move the mouse where you want to delete.

Use of variables ({{user_first_name}}, {{user_last_name}}) to retrieve user information (First name, Last name)

In case, chatbots reply by text

In case, chatbots reply by card

Part 9: What’s notification? How to use

Notification is a feature is used to send a message to the whole of your users. In addition, you can schedule an appointment to send notifications to users.

You can send a message with the text or the card created earlier to all its users

Note: In case sent by the card which should contain only 1 Text Card, Gallery …