Web Agent

A web agent is a chat bubble for your own website. Visitors ask a question, and the agent answers from the help articles you have chosen to show customers. When it cannot help, the visitor can leave their name and email and talk to a real person. The chat then lands in the Inbox of the teammates you pick, and the visitor stays in the same chat window.

The agent only answers from pages meant for customers. It says it does not know instead of making things up, and it never reads your team-only pages.

Use cases

Situation	What the web agent does for you
Customers keep asking the same questions about delivery, returns or passwords	The agent answers from your help articles at any hour and tells the visitor which article the answer came from.
A question needs a person, such as a discount or a special case	The visitor passes the chat to your team. Your support people answer from the Inbox, and the visitor sees the answer in the chat.
The visitor closes the website before you answer	If they are away, your answer is also emailed to them after a couple of minutes, with a link back to the page.
You want every website question tracked	Each passed-on chat can also become a numbered ticket, and the visitor is added as a contact with the chat on their timeline.
Sales should not be disturbed by support chats	You choose who answers. Teammates you did not pick never see the chats.
A shop wants product help only, not internal policies	Narrow the agent to one list of pages, and only to the pages shown to customers.

Before you begin

Only workspace admins can create, change, switch off or delete a web agent, because the agent talks to people outside your company. Everyone else sees the message “Only admins can set up web agents” on the page.
The agent needs something to answer from. By default it uses the articles your help centre shows to customers, so publish a help centre with at least a few articles first. See Help Centre.
To let visitors reach a person, you need a list that can take their question, such as a ticket list. The Service desk template gives you a ready-made one. See Service Desk. Without it the agent still answers questions, but it will not offer a person.
Decide who should answer chats. Chats appear in the Email Inbox, next to shared mailboxes. See Shared Mailboxes & Team Inbox.
You need a website where you can paste one line of code, or a site builder with a custom code box.

Where to find web agents

Open Support in the sidebar and choose the Web agent tab. The Overview tab shows a short checklist (shared mailbox, help centre, web agent) with a tick for each step you have done. You can also open Features, find the Support card and click Open, then choose Web agent.

If you have no agent yet you see “No web agents yet” and a Set up button. Otherwise each agent is a row showing its icon, name, an On or Off badge, its tone of voice, and where unanswered questions go (for example “Questions it can’t answer go to Tickets”, or “Answers questions only”).

Set up your first agent (guided)

Click New web agent (or Set up). The guided setup takes about a minute.

Get ready. This step only appears when the agent has nothing to answer from. Click Add help pages to add the ready-made help centre, or Write your first page if you already have one. Then click I’ve done it or Continue.
Make it yours. Fill in:
- Name: what visitors see at the top of the chat. It starts as your workspace name. Up to 60 characters.
- Tone of voice: Friendly, Professional, Playful or Brief. Friendly is warm and helpful. Professional is polite, with no slang or emoji. Playful is upbeat with a little humour, but the facts stay exact. Brief gives the answer first, in as few words as possible.
- First message: the first thing visitors read. Up to 300 characters. It is already written in your language, with the agent’s name in it.
- Click More options for Color (used for the bubble and the visitor’s messages) and House rules.
- House rules are things the agent should always or never say, in your own words. For example “Keep answers short. Never promise a refund before the team checks.” Up to 2,000 characters.
- A Preview on the side shows how the chat will look.
Click Set it up. When you see It’s live, the agent is on.
Click Try it to chat with it the way a visitor would, on its own web page. Click Open settings to carry on with the full settings, or Done to close.

The guided setup only asks for the basics. Icon, answer sources, passing chats to your team and who answers them are set in the full settings below.

Full settings

Click the pencil (Edit) on an agent row. The dialog has three tabs and a Preview on the right. Click Save when you are done. Save stays disabled until the name and first message are filled in, and until every answer source has a group or condition.

Personality tab

Name, Personality (the tone of voice), Greeting (the first message) and House rules (optional).
Icon: choose Chat, Robot, Headset, Sparkles or Question mark. This is the icon on the bubble and at the top of the chat. Click Use my own picture to upload a logo instead, and Remove picture to go back to a ready-made icon.
Color: use the colour dot above the preview. You can pick a ready colour or a custom one.

Answers from tab

Choose what the agent may answer from. This keeps the chat on the topics it should talk about.

Object set to What your help centre shows is the default. The agent uses the articles your enabled help centre shows to everyone.
Pick a specific list of pages instead, for example Articles. Then tick the groups it may read in. A list with no group ticked and no condition is not accepted (“Tick at least one group”).
Click Add condition to narrow it further, for example only pages where Shown to customers is Yes. This is how you keep team-only pages private.
You can choose one list at a time. Up to 10 conditions are allowed on it.

The agent only uses what a visitor could read. It never reads team-only pages or private fields.

If it can’t answer tab

Turn on Also save each question as a ticket to let visitors reach a person.

Saved in: the list that receives the question. Ready-made ticket lists are marked Ready-made and come first. The Service desk fits this perfectly.
In group: the group where the new request appears. Everyone in that group sees it. Only groups that show the list can be chosen.
Under the list, the dialog tells you what will happen. If the list links to contacts, “Each question becomes a new (list name), linked to the visitor as a contact.” If it does not, the visitor’s name and email stay in the Inbox chat only.
If no list can take questions you see “No object here can take questions yet.” Chats still reach your team in the Inbox once a list exists, so add the Service desk first.

Lists of people (anything with an email field of its own) are not offered here, because a question typed into one would overwrite a name.

Who answers chats

Also on this tab, under Who answers chats, is the Who can use this choice. It is shown once the agent is saved. Before that you see “Once it’s saved, you can pick who answers its chats.”

Everyone in the workspace is the starting choice.
Selected teammates: click Add teammates and pick people. Click the remove button next to a name to take them off. Pick at least one, or only you can use it.
Only me: only you.

The change is saved at once, with the message “Updated who can use this”. Only the admin who set the agent up, or any admin, can change this. Teammates who are not picked do not see the website chats in their Email Inbox.

Turning it on or off

The switch in the bottom left of the dialog says that the chat shows on your website when it is on. Switch it off and the bubble disappears from your website straight away, but nothing is deleted. Switch it on again to bring it back.

Put the agent on your website

On the agent row, click Add to website.
In “Put (agent name) on your website”, click Copy code. You see “Code copied”.
Paste the code into your website just before the closing body tag, or in your site builder’s custom code box. Paste it once and every page that has it gets the chat bubble.
Click Done.

Good to know:

Each agent has its own code. If you put two different agents on the same page, only the first one loads.
The bubble only appears after the chat has loaded. A switched-off or deleted agent leaves nothing on the page.
To test without a website, click the open icon (Open the chat) on the agent row. It opens the chat as a page of its own that you can also share as a link.
New link (the circular arrows icon) gives the agent a fresh link. Confirm with Make new link. The code on your website stops working until you paste the new code, so use it if the code ended up somewhere it should not. The dialog then shows the new code.

What the visitor sees

A round button in the bottom right corner, in your colour, with the icon you chose. Clicking it opens a chat window about 380 by 600 pixels. On a small screen it shrinks to fit.
The top shows the agent’s name and “Usually answers right away”. Your first message is already there.
The visitor types in “Write a message…” and presses Enter or the send button. A moving dots bubble shows while the agent writes.
Answers are written in the visitor’s own language and in the tone you chose. Under an answer that came from your articles the visitor sees “From:” and the article titles.
If the agent cannot answer, it says so plainly, and does not guess.
Messages are limited to 1,000 characters each. The conversation is kept while the visitor moves between the pages of your site.

Asking for a person

This only appears when the agent can pass questions on (the If it can’t answer tab is set up).

The button Ask a person appears straight after an answer the agent could not give, or when something went wrong. After the visitor has asked three questions a small link Talk to a person instead appears as well.
It opens “Ask our team”. The visitor gives Your name, Your email and What do you need help with?, which is already filled in with their last question. A note says the chat is shared with the team so they do not have to repeat themselves. They click Send to the team.
If the name or email is not valid they see “Please enter your name and a valid email.”
The chat window now says “You’re chatting with our team”. It shows “Your chat was passed to our team” with a reference number such as TICK-12, when the list has numbered requests. A note says the team will reply there, and that if they leave they will get an email.
Messages show who wrote them and the time. The visitor is shown as You. Teammates are shown by first name only, never an email address. Answers from the agent are shown under the agent’s name.
The visitor can keep writing. Their messages go straight to your team. Click Start a new chat to go back to the agent.
If they close the website and come back later in the same browser, the chat with the team is waiting for them.

Where the chat lands

When a visitor passes a chat on, four things happen:

Team Inbox. The whole conversation (what the visitor asked, what the agent answered, with names and times) appears as one chat in Email, under the visitor’s name. It sits in an inbox named after the agent. Only the people you picked see it.
Ticket (record). If you turned on Also save each question as a ticket, a new record is created in the chosen list and group. The title is the visitor’s question, the description is what they wrote under What do you need help with?, and the channel is set to chat when the list has such a choice.
Contact. The visitor is found by email. If they are not in your contacts they are added, with their first and last name. The ticket is linked to them. The chat also shows on the contact’s timeline.
Links. In the Inbox chat, the ticket and the contact are shown under “Linked to”. Click Open (name) to jump to either.

If the group you chose was deleted or no longer shows the list, the request still goes through. It lands in Unsorted and admins are told in Needs attention.

Answering a chat (for your team)

Open Email and click the chat under the visitor’s name.
Read the whole chat. Answers written by the agent carry an AI badge, so you know what the visitor was already told.
Check the badge by the conversation. Online now means the visitor is on your website. Away means they left. Someone counts as online for about 30 seconds after their last sign of life.
Write in the box “Write your message…”. Under it you see “Sends as” followed by the agent’s name. Press Send, or Ctrl or Cmd with Enter. A reply is up to 1,600 characters.
If the visitor is online, the answer pops up in their chat within seconds. If they are away, a note explains that they will see your reply when they are back, and that it is also emailed to them.

The email to a visitor who left

About two minutes after your answer, if the visitor is still away, the app sends one email with all the answers they have not seen. Several quick replies are grouped into one email.
If they come back to the page in time and read the answer, no email is sent.
The email says “You have a reply from (agent name)” and has a link to continue the chat on the page where it started. It is written in the visitor’s browser language: English, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish. Other languages get English.
Replies to that email are not read. The email tells the visitor to answer in the chat.

Change, stop or remove

What you want	What to do
Change look, sources or wording	Click Edit, change it, click Save. It applies to the live chat.
Pause the chat	Edit the agent and switch it off. The bubble disappears from your website. The code stays valid.
Replace a leaked code	Click New link, confirm with Make new link, and paste the new code on your website.
Remove the agent	Click Delete (the bin icon) and confirm. The bubble disappears at once. Chats already passed to your team stay in the Inbox so you can finish them.
Change who answers	Edit the agent, open the If it can’t answer tab and change Who can use this.

Limits and defaults

Item	Value
Name	up to 60 characters
First message	up to 300 characters
House rules	up to 2,000 characters
Answer source	one list at a time, up to 10 conditions
Visitor message	up to 1,000 characters
Team reply	up to 1,600 characters
Chat turns sent to the agent	the last 30
Passages used per answer	up to 4
Questions one visitor (one internet address) can ask	about 20 per minute
Questions passed to the team by one visitor	3 per minute
Answers across all your visitors	120 per minute
Questions passed on across all your visitors	20 per minute
Visitor shown as online	for about 30 seconds after their last activity
Chat checks for replies	every 4 seconds while the page is open, every 20 seconds in the background, and they stop after 30 minutes of no activity
Email to an away visitor	about 2 minutes after your answer
Default tone	Friendly
Default color	dark grey
Default icon	Chat
New agent switch	On
Who answers chats	Everyone in the workspace until you change it

There is no fixed limit on how many agents you can have.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to do
“Only admins can set up web agents”	Ask a workspace admin. Only admins can create, edit, switch off or delete agents.
Web agents are missing from the menu	The feature may be switched off for your workspace. Contact support. Saved agents are kept and return when it is switched on.
The bubble does not show on the website	Check the agent is On, the code is pasted before the closing body tag, and you have not made a New link since pasting. Open the agent with Open the chat. If it says “This chat isn’t available right now”, the agent is off, deleted or the link is old.
Visitors see “This chat isn’t available right now”	The agent is switched off, was deleted, has a new link, or the workspace subscription is not active.
The agent says it does not know	The answer is not in the articles it may read. Add or publish an article, check that the help centre is enabled, or check the Answers from tab and its conditions.
The agent does not use a team-only page	That is intended. Only pages shown to customers can be used.
There is no Ask a person button	Turn on Also save each question as a ticket and pick a list and a group. The button also appears only after a failed answer or three questions.
“No object here can take questions yet”	Add the Service desk template, or another list with a title field. Chats still reach your team in the Inbox once a list is chosen.
“No group shows this object yet. Add it to a group’s views first.”	Add that list to a group’s views, then pick the group.
“Tick at least one group.”	Tick a group, or add a condition, so the list is not shared whole.
Visitor sees “You’re sending messages quickly. Please wait a minute and try again.”	They hit the per-minute limits above. Waiting a minute is enough.
Visitor sees “Please enter your name and a valid email.”	The email address is not valid.
Visitor sees “This chat has ended. You can start a new one.”	The saved chat can no longer be opened. They can start a new chat.
A teammate cannot see website chats	They were not picked under Who can use this. An admin can add them.
The chat owner left the company	The chat inbox keeps working for the team. Admins see it in Needs attention and should check who answers it.
The visitor did not get the email	They may have read the answer in the chat, or came back before the two minutes passed. Replies are only emailed when the visitor is away and has not seen them.
Request goes to Unsorted	The group chosen under In group no longer shows the list. Pick another group in the settings.