For each message your bot says, it has a message and response type.
The message type dictates what type of message your bot is providing to the user. You can select the message type from a drop-down field when you create or edit a message.
The response type dictates what type of response you want to gather from the user. It restricts the user to provide a type of response you’d like to get from them (e.g. such as a valid email address). You can select the response type from a drop-down field when you create or edit a message.
Message type
There are 6 different message types you can provide to the user:
API request
This message enables you to pull data from a third party database and display it in Josef as a message. Check out our API article for more information.
External document
This enables you to provide a generated document to the user. Learn how to create a document.
Internal document
This enables the bot to produce a generated document, which would be accessible via the Activity tab in the dashboard (or sent by email using a Notification, if you set that up). Learn how to create a document.
Image
This displays an image as a message in the bot interface. Just drag and drop the image that you want into the field that appears after you select this type. The image needs to be less than 10MB in size.
Text
This enables you to provide text to the user, such as a greeting or question. Use the ‘message text’ field to enter the text message for your bot.
Video
This message enables you to embed a video in the bot interface. Simply copy and paste the URL of the video that you want to embed into the Video URL field. It needs to be either a Vimeo or YouTube URL.
Response type
There are 14 different response types you can select from to ensure you’re gathering the type of information you want from the user. Each type is detailed below with a description.
Address
This requires the user to provide you with an address.
API request
Select this if you want to pull data from a third party data source to enter the user’s answer. Please see our API article for more information.
Currency
This requires the user to provide you with a currency amount (e.g. their income).
Date
This requires the user to provide you with a date.
Duration
This requires the user to provide you with a number of days, weeks, months or years.
Email address
This requires the user to provide an email address.
File upload
This requires the user to upload a file.
- Users will be able to upload PDF, PNG, JPG, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT and PPTX.
- File sizes of up to 10MB can be uploaded.
- Users can upload multiple files at once, as long as they select all of the files in one instance from their computer. The multiple files they upload will be available in a .zip folder in the Activity tab.
Full name
This requires the user to provide a full-name.
Multiple choice
This requires the user to select a number of multiple choice options.
No response
Select this if you don’t want a response from the user (e.g. if you are providing the user with a statement and/or if you want to split apart large chunks of text).
Number
This requires the user to provide you with numbers only.
Percentage
This requires the user to provide you with a percentage figure.
Phone
This requires the user to provide you with a phone number.
Single choice
This requires the user to select one option from a number of options. The type of options a builder can set include:
- Text: options using free-text.
- Number: options using numbers.
- Date: options using dates.
- Currency: options using currency amounts.
- Percentage: options using percentage amounts.
Single choice scoring
This requires the user to select one option from a number of options.
You can assign a score to each response, which can then be used to set rules and create calculations. Scores can also be inserted as variables in messages, notifications and documents.
Text
This allows the user to type any form of text in their response, including words, numbers and symbols.