What is Bot as an API?
Written by Medha Anand
Updated on November 17th, 2021
- Getting Started
- Bot Building
- Smart Agent Chat
- Conversation Design
-
Developer Guides
Code Step Integration Static Step Integration Shopify Integration SETU Integration Exotel Integration CIBIL integration Freshdesk KMS Integration PayU Integration Zendesk Guide Integration Twilio Integration Razorpay Integration LeadSquared Integration USU(Unymira) Integration Helo(VivaConnect) Integration Salesforce KMS Integration Stripe Integration PayPal Integration CleverTap Integration Fynd Integration HubSpot Integration Magento Integration WooCommerce Integration Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integration
- Deployment
- External Agent Tool Setup
- Analytics & Reporting
- Notifications
- Commerce Plus
- Troubleshooting Guides
- Release Notes
What is Bot as an API?
You can use Bot as an API deployment option to connect to a channel that is not currently supported out of the box on Haptik Platform.
Another big use of Bot as an API is when you want to capture the events happening on the bot such as, messages sent by the bot, conversation completed on the bot.
Bot as an API uses webhooks to deliver these events to the mentioned URL.
Example use case:
- When you want to have a Haptik bot on Slack channel.
- When you already have a bot and you want to redirect the user to the Smart Agent Chat tool of Haptik Platform.
- When you want to generate a ticket in your CRM (Customer Relationship Management software) after the conversation between the user and bot is complete, the webhook event will deliver this event to your mentioned endpoint.
Briefly, this is how the integration works:
- Your application receives the message from the user.
- It then sends a POST request with that message to the callback URL of Conversation Studio tool of Haptik Platform.
- Conversation Studio tool processes the message and sends a response to the webhook URL of your application.
- Your application listens to the webhook and responds to the user.
Webhooks provide functionality where a provider application can notify a client-side application when a new event has occurred on the provider's server. Webhooks are "user-defined HTTP/S callbacks", that allows two applications to communicate automatically.
A key difference between an API endpoint and a webhook is that in APIs, the client-side application calls the server-side application to retrieve some sort of information. Whereas, in the case of webhooks it is the server-side that calls the client-side application when a particular server-side event occurs.
This document will provide you with all pre-requisites and setup processes to help you create a bot on the Haptik platform and use Bot as an API deployment option. You can read about it in the subsequent sections.
