Congratulations on building out your bot!
Once you’re ready to launch your bot, head to the Launch tab in the left-hand panel of the Dashboard. The Launch tab is where you can:
- Launch & share your bot
- Generate a code to embed your bot on a website
- Update a live bot
- Unpublish a bot
Launch your bot
The process to launch your bot is different depending on if you’re a builder, manager, or admin on Josef.
Manager & admins
To launch your bot, simply click the Launch button. This will do a few things:
Josef will generate a link for a live version of your bot. You can copy this link and share it directly with others to use your bot!
- The live version of your bot will record data from all user interactions. You can access that data in the Activity tab. Admins on Josef can also see high-level information about all live bots in the Reporting tab.
- The live version of your bot will also send notifications if you have them set up.
[Image: Launch button, bot link, and embed code available to managers and admins of live bots via Dashboard > [bot] > Launch]
Builders
As a builder, you will need to submit your bot for approval. Learn more at Submit your bot for approval.
Embed your bot on a website
Josef will also generate an embed code for your live bot in the Launch tab.
If you want to embed your bot on a website you can use the embed code to do so.
This code will create an iframe (a window on the webpage) in which your bot will appear. Your website manager can use the embed code to manipulate the size and shape of the iframe.
Update a live bot
If you ever need to update a live bot, the first rule is: be careful! You’re dealing with live data and you’re making changes to something that your end users can see.
We recommend doing this in two ways.
1. Small updates
For small updates, like editing the message text or basic changes to rules, you can make these edits directly in your live bot via the Dashboard. You can test these in Preview and, when you’re ready, click Update bot in the Launch tab to ensure that all changes flow through to the live bot.
2. Significant updates
For any significant updates that involve deleting messages or connections or adding new branches, we suggest making a copy of the bot by clicking Duplicate in the Details tab. Once you’ve made the changes and you’re happy that they’re working as expected, you can either:
- launch the new version of the bot and replace the URL with the new URL; or
- make the changes to the existing live version of the bot and click Update bot in the Launch tab to ensure that all changes flow through to the live bot.
[Image: Update bot options accessible to managers and admins via Dashboard > [bot] > Launch]
Unpublish a bot
You can unpublish a live bot to prevent users from accessing it temporarily or permanently. You may want to do this if you want to make some changes to your bot or if the advice it is giving is out of date.
Unpublishing your bot means users who access the live link will be taken to an inactive page informing the user that the bot has been unpublished by the owner (see example below).
If the bot is launched again, it will use the same URL as before, meaning anyone accessing it at a link or embedded on a webpage will be able to access it again.
- Note: Only managers and admins on Josef can unpublish bots. Admins can also unpublish bots from the Manage bots tab.
[Image: A screenshot of a live bot that has since been unpublished]
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Got a question? Contact us at support@joseflegal.com.