Conversation APIs and Webhooks
Chat now has a comprehensive set of conversation APIs and associated webhooks. You can customize and extend Chat’s core conversation workflows through these APIs. For example, you can use the APIs to integrate with a custom bot platform/your own bot, sync to an external CRM to push and pull data, or even connect your own widget/front end to the Chat agent backend.
Supported Interactions
Quick reply buttons
URL Buttons
Web Views
Images
Gifs
Drop-downs and Carousels
How does this interaction happen?
Interaction from your side will be sent to Chat through the APIs. And Chat will respond back by using Webhooks when certain events happen (eg: new user messages).
For a list of supported APIs, refer our API document.
For webhooks, refer the webhooks article.
Sample Use Case
For example, consider this scenario of a fictional bank called AG bank.
When a customer sends a message your custom bot (lets call it ‘Freddy’) starts engaging with them. With the interactive button element, you can display multiple options to the user. Here, the customer chooses to view their account statement, and the bot asks for card details. Once the customer clicks card details, with the web view option, you can load your website or the particular html page right within the Chat widget where the user can enter their details (securely - Chat cannot see or access this information and it entirely resides on your side) and check their account statement. Post this, you or the customer can close the page and the customer will be redirected to the conversation flow and the bot will resume with the interaction. This is completely secure and Chat won’t be able to read the customer information.
The above example is just one use case. With customized Chat APIs, the possibilities are endless.
Setup
You can generate API Key by going to Settings > API Tokens. Refer this article.
For the Webhook Settings, you can go to Settings>Webhooks and configure your preferences.
For more information on webhook events and authenticating webhook calls, refer the webhooks article.