Interacting with a bot
You can interact with any bot built on Zia Skills in conversational English - just like how you speak or text a fellow human being. The bot understands your natural language and would try to answer your questions or carry out your instructions.
While all bots can accept inputs and respond in a textual format, a bot embedded in a mobile app can additionally listen to your voice and talk back to you.
Once you open the bot, the onboarding screen with a list of actions that the bot can perform will be displayed. If the bot does not have custom onboarding screen configured, then "Hi, How may I help you? " will be shown as a welcome message, when the bot is opened up.
You can either choose one from the list or type your message in the text box. The text box also has a help 
icon to switch between the onboarding screen and chat screen (screen to converse with the bot).
After the message is given, the bot will respond with a reply. The reply will be an answer to the question asked or the result of the instruction given. In case, if the bot needs more information to answer the question or to perform the instruction, it might prompt for some additional information conversationally. For instance, if you are trying to book an event, then the bot may prompt questions to get the details like the name of the event, the type of event, event days and so on.
For certain questions, bot displays options from which you can select one or many options according to your requirements. After selecting, click the apt button (if available) to proceed with the instruction. If no buttons are displayed, the selected option would be immediately submitted to the bot. For example, for the "event day" question, the bot may provide you with options like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on.
Sometimes, bot allows you to skip certain questions which are considered optional for processing that instruction. So if you are not willing to answer a particular question, this option will be helpful.
Similarly, if the answer given by you is in an invalid format or if the bot is not able to infer meaningful data from your message, then the bot will prompt for the same input repeatedly, till it gets a valid answer.
At any point, if you do not wish to continue the current context of the conversation further, you can use the "Stop" option. Stop will make the bot drop the current context in the conversation and you can start over the conversation with some other instruction.
To access the "Stop" option, and "Skip" option (if available) for a particular question, click the arrow button in the text box.
Upon receiving all the required details, bot performs the desired operation and displays the final output. The output can be a message, table, image, bulleted list and more.
You can further continue your conversation with the bot with some other question or instruction. The bot would also display suggestions related to the previous instruction. You can either select one from the suggestions or enter a new message and continue the interaction.
Similar to showing suggestions, the bot may also ask a follow-up question to proceed with the conversation. You can either answer that question or type a new message to proceed with the new action.
Access your files securely from anywhere
Zoho CRM Training Programs
Learn how to use the best tools for sales force automation and better customer engagement from Zoho's implementation specialists.
Zoho DataPrep Personalized Demo
If you'd like a personalized walk-through of our data preparation tool, please request a demo and we'll be happy to show you how to get the best out of Zoho DataPrep.
- Zoho Workerly Home
- Forums
- Connect With Us:
- Zoho Recruit Home
- Forums
- Connect With Us:
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
You are currently viewing the help pages of Qntrl’s earlier version. Click here to view our latest version—Qntrl 3.0's help articles.
New to Zoho Survey?
Zoho Sheet Resources
Zoho Forms Resources
New to Zoho Sign?
Zoho Sign Resources
Sign, Paperless!
New to Zoho TeamInbox?
Zoho TeamInbox Resources
New to Zoho ZeptoMail?
Zoho DataPrep Resources
Design. Discuss. Deliver.
New to Zoho Workerly?
New to Zoho Recruit?
New to Zoho CRM?
New to Zoho Projects?
New to Zoho Sprints?
New to Zoho Assist?
New to Bigin?
Related Articles
Creating a bot
Follow the below steps to create a new bot in Zia. In Zia Skills Platform's landing page, click the CREATE BOT button at the top right corner. In the Create New Bot page, provide a name for the bot. Add a meaningful description and an image for the ...FAQ - Basics
What is Zia Skills? Zia Skills is an AI driven platform that offers Natural Language Understanding (NLU) as a service, to build and train conversational AI assistants for your business applications, that can converse through voice or text. What is ...FAQ - Bots
What are bots? Bots are the conversational assistants you build, to serve as the conversational interface of your application. Every bot can configured with a set of conversational abilities. Can I make changes to a deployed bot without affecting it? ...Defining Deluge Functions
If the chosen development platform of your skill is Deluge, you will have to define all your actions’ business logic in the pre-defined Deluge functions, hosted in Zoho’s cloud environment. Deluge is the native online scripting language of the ...Bots
Bots are the conversational assistants you build, to serve as the conversational interface of your application. Technically, bots are your own instances of Zia, intact with its natural language understanding and conversational abilities. You can ...
New to Zoho LandingPage?
Zoho LandingPage Resources