Smart Agent

Smart Agent in the sidebar is the AI that works for your business. Settings → Smart Agent → Website Chat sets up its chat assistant for your own website. Visitors ask questions in plain language, and the assistant answers from your business details, the instructions you give it, and the documents and facts in your knowledge that are visible to website visitors. To give it questions and answers, write them in a document, or add them as facts, under Knowledge. The Smart Agent item's tabs are the work: Conversations, the chats visitors have had with it (see Smart Agent Chats), and Workflows, the cases the smart agent runs for your customers (see Running Cases). Configure on the Conversations tab opens Website Chat. The documents and facts it answers from are under Knowledge in the sidebar. Visitors are told they are chatting with an AI assistant for your business before their first message. The smart agent was previously called the chat widget.

Only Owners, Admins and the Uncog AI onboarding team can open Settings → Smart Agent → Website Chat. Members don't see Website Chat or the Configure link to it.

Create the smart agent

Go to Settings → Smart Agent → Website Chat.
Choose Create Smart Agent, give it a name and choose Create Smart Agent again.

The name is for your team only. A new smart agent is off until you turn it on. Each account has one smart agent. If you need another, contact Uncog AI support. The Put your smart agent on your website card on Home creates it too, and walks you through going live (see Your Home Page).

Go live

While the smart agent is off, a Go Live card at the top of the page lists the four steps between you and visitors chatting on your website, with a tick beside each one done:

Add the website it may show on: saved as Allowed Sites on the Setup tab (below).
Add your privacy policy link: saved as Privacy Policy URL on the Setup tab.
Paste the embed code into your website: choose Copy Code and add it to your site (see Add it to your website below). Only you can know when this is done, so it never gets a tick.
Turn it on: use Show on my site at the top of the page once the first two are saved.

The card goes away once the smart agent is on.

Setup

Each tab has its own Save Changes button. If you move to another tab or leave the page before saving, Uncog AI asks first: choose Keep Editing to stay, or Discard Changes to move on and lose those changes.

Name: what your team calls the smart agent.
Allowed Sites: every domain your website runs on, separated by commas, for example example.com.au, www.example.com.au. List each domain on its own; wildcards such as *.example.com.au aren't accepted. You can list up to 10. The smart agent only loads on the sites listed here.
Privacy Policy URL: the full https:// address of your privacy policy. Visitors see a link to it before they give an email address or personal details.
Let visitors confirm their email: the assistant may offer to email a visitor a code. A visitor who enters it is treated like the sender of an email you received: added to your contacts, or sent to Review, as your AI Settings say.

Turn it on

Use the Show on my site switch at the top of the page. You need at least one allowed site and a privacy policy URL, saved under Setup, before you can turn it on. A published landing page that uses the smart agent counts as a site, so you can turn it on without a website of your own; Setup then lists your landing pages' address as added by Uncog. Turning it off takes it off your site straight away.

Add it to your website

The Embed Code card under Setup has one line of code. Choose Copy Code, then paste it just before </body> on every page the smart agent should appear on, or once in your site's shared footer or template.

If your website sets a Content Security Policy, add the smart agent's address to its script-src and frame-src directives. The card shows the exact lines.

Open the smart agent from your own buttons

Besides the smart agent button, your own buttons, links and forms can open the smart agent. Add one of these attributes to the element in your website's HTML. The Open It From Your Own Buttons part of the Embed Code card lists them too.

data-uncog-open: opens the smart agent.
data-uncog-close: closes it.
data-uncog-toggle: opens it, or closes it when it's open.
data-uncog-trigger="get-a-quote": opens it on a trigger you set up on the Triggers tab, with that trigger's greeting, starter questions, instructions and process. Use the trigger's Key.
data-uncog-message="What does refinancing cost?": added to an element that opens the smart agent, puts that message in the message box, ready to send. The visitor still presses Send, and it never replaces something they have already typed.

For example:

<button type="button" data-uncog-trigger="get-a-quote">Get a quote</button>
<a href="/contact" data-uncog-trigger="book-call">Book a call</a>
<button type="button" data-uncog-open data-uncog-message="What does refinancing cost?">
  Refinancing costs
</button>

Good to know:

Use a real <button> or a link with an href, so keyboard and screen-reader users can use it too.
A link still works without the smart agent. If the smart agent can't open (it's turned off, your site's Content Security Policy blocks it, or the page is still loading), the link goes to its own page as usual, so <a href="/contact" ...> still reaches your contact page.
A form with data-uncog-open or data-uncog-trigger opens the smart agent only when your own script sends the form without leaving the page. The form always sends as it normally would, and the smart agent never reads what was typed into it.
Your page only names the trigger. The greeting, questions, instructions and process always come from your settings, so nobody can change what the smart agent says by editing your page.
A key your settings don't have opens the smart agent as usual, without a trigger.
Opening the smart agent doesn't use up any of its daily replies. Only a message the visitor sends does.
On a page that embeds more than one smart agent, add data-uncog-widget="<embed key>" to say which one.

Hide the smart agent button on some pages

The smart agent button shows on every page with the embed code. To hide it on some pages, so visitors open the smart agent only from your own buttons:

tick Hide the smart agent button on these pages on a page rule on the Pages tab, or
put <meta name="uncog-agent-button" content="hide"> in the page's <head>. content="show" shows the button on that page even where a page rule hides it.

The page's own meta tag wins over a page rule. The smart agent still loads on a page where its button is hidden, and opens from your buttons. If a visitor has it open when they move to such a page, it stays open, and closing it hides it. On those pages, visitors can reach My Applications only from your own buttons or through the secure link in their email.

How visitors use it

How the smart agent is used on your website — Chats by day, the pages most chats started on, Chats, Last 7 Days and Leads from Chat, Last 7 Days with the buttons and links that led to the most — is in your Business Pulse (see Business Pulse). Uncog keeps counts only: no names, email addresses, IP addresses or what each visitor looked at, and the preview is never counted. The numbers stay when old chats are deleted.

Look

Launcher Text: shown beside the smart agent button, the floating chat button on your site. Leave it blank for the button alone.
Primary Colour and Accent Colour: six hex digits after a #, like #4f46e5. Leave them blank to use your brand colours from Settings → Branding; while a colour is blank, its colour box shows the brand colour the smart agent will use.
Position: Bottom Right or Bottom Left.
Icon (its own card under the form): the round picture on the chat's first screen and in the header of the conversation. Leave it blank to use your logo from Branding, fitted into a circle. To give the smart agent a square icon of its own, choose Upload Icon (or Replace Icon), pick a PNG or JPEG, frame it in Crop Icon (the In chat tile shows it at the size visitors see) and choose Use Icon. It shows Checking… while Uncog AI checks it for security; visitors see it once the check passes, and see your logo until then. Remove Icon goes back to your logo.

Assistant

Welcome Line: one sentence on the chat's first screen, under your business name — what you do and who for, up to 160 characters. Leave it blank to show "What can [your business] help you with?". The first screen also has a button for each process on your Processes tab and Ask a question, which opens the conversation.
Assistant Name and Greeting: the greeting is the first message a visitor sees once they choose Ask a question. The assistant name is how the assistant refers to itself; the chat's header shows your business name with "AI assistant" under it.
Tone: Friendly, Professional or Concise.
Instructions: what to offer, what to ask about and what never to say, up to 4,000 characters.
Knowledge: the knowledge the assistant answers from, or None. It's saved as soon as you choose, separately from the tab's Save Changes. Visitors only get answers from knowledge visible to website visitors. See Smart Agent Knowledge.

The assistant never gives financial, credit, legal or medical advice, and never asks for a tax file number, Medicare number, card number or password.

Knowledge

Your documents and facts live under Knowledge, not in the smart agent's settings. Upload the brochures, fee guides and policies customers ask about there, tick Visible to website visitors on the ones visitors may be told, and settle anything your sources disagree on (see Knowledge). Then connect the smart agent to your knowledge in the Knowledge field on the Assistant tab, or with Connect on the notice at the top of the Knowledge page, shown while the smart agent isn't connected. The smart agent only answers visitors from knowledge visible to website visitors. See Smart Agent Knowledge.

Pages

Page rules give parts of your site their own starter questions and instructions. Each rule has a Page Path such as /refinance/**: * matches one part of a path and ** any number of parts. Add up to 20 rules, each with up to 4 starter questions. The first rule that matches a page is used, so put the most specific rules first.

Tick Hide the smart agent button on these pages to hide the floating button on the pages a rule matches. A /** rule last on the list hides it everywhere the rules above it don't say otherwise. See Hide the smart agent button on some pages above.

Processes

Processes let a visitor start one of your workflows from the chat, such as a home loan application or an enquiry. Each process is a button on the chat's first screen, in the order of your list and under the workflow's own name; the assistant also offers one in the conversation when it fits. A case only starts for a visitor who has confirmed their email, so Let visitors confirm their email under Setup must be on. The assistant offers a process when it fits the conversation, and a trigger can offer one too (see Triggers below). Nothing starts until the visitor confirms. The visitor is added to your contacts and receives the workflow's usual emails, including the secure link.

How a visitor starts a process depends on the process:

Answer first, confirm last. When every step the visitor does at the start of a process opens in the chat, such as the Enquiry (website chat) example, a visitor who hasn't confirmed their email answers those steps first. Their answers are kept as unfinished answers, not a case: nothing is sent to your team, nobody is emailed and your contacts don't change. When they finish, they confirm their email with a code and choose Send. Only then does the case start, with their answers filled in. Unsent answers show under Conversations as Unfinished (see Smart Agent Chats), and are deleted 30 days after the visitor last changed them.
Confirm first. For any other process, the visitor confirms their email first, then starts it.

A visitor who has already confirmed their email starts straight away.

A visitor who has confirmed their email has a menu at the top of the conversation, beside + for a new chat (which returns to the first screen). It shows the email they confirmed (partly hidden), My Applications, where they carry on with the processes they've started, and Not you?, which forgets their email and starts a new chat. My Applications lists each process as the same checklist as the customer portal: what you still need from them, a progress bar, then the items in four groups — Needs another look, To do, Sent and Accepted — each with its due date. Items that need a file, a signature or a payment say to finish them from the secure link in their email, with Email Me the Link to send a fresh one to their confirmed address (the earlier link stops working; one every ten minutes).

Add a Process: choose one of your published workflows. Only workflows that one person can start on their own are listed: a workflow with more than one kind of customer, or one that needs two people to start, can't be started from the chat. You can add up to 5.
Description for Visitors: a sentence or two about what the process is for, up to 500 characters. The assistant uses it to offer the process. It starts as the workflow's own description when that is short enough.
Case Owner: the member of your team who looks after cases started from the chat. They take the team roles the workflow gives to whoever starts it. A Case Owner is needed while any process is listed. If your Case Owner leaves the team, visitors can still start processes. Their team steps wait in the Unassigned queue in My Work for anyone to claim. Choosing a new Case Owner doesn't reassign cases already started: use Reassign in the case's Team panel.

Use the arrows to reorder processes and the cross to remove one, then choose Save Changes. A listed process marked Not Offered has been archived, or now needs more than one person to start; visitors aren't offered it, and you need to remove it before you can save.

A workflow listed here says so on its own page: open it from Settings → Smart Agent → Workflows → Templates and its Details tab reads Offered in chat by your smart agent, naming any trigger that also starts it. The words link back to this tab. Owners, Admins and the Uncog AI onboarding team see this line.

Use the Enquiry starter for website leads

The Enquiry (website chat) example in the workflow templates is built for leads from the smart agent: the visitor does every step in the chat (about them, what they need, how to reach them, and that they're happy to be contacted), then your Case Owner reviews the enquiry, makes first contact within a business day and records the outcome. To use it:

Create a workflow from the Enquiry (website chat) example (Settings → Smart Agent → Workflows → Templates, New Workflow, Start From a Template, Use This), adjust the questions to how your business works, and publish it. Until your account can design workflows, the Uncog AI onboarding team does this for you (see Designing a Workflow).
Add it on the Processes tab with a description for visitors, and choose a Case Owner.
Optionally, give a trigger such as get-a-quote that process on the Triggers tab, and add <button type="button" data-uncog-trigger="get-a-quote">Get a quote</button> to your site.

A copy of an example keeps its records for your account's default retention period (see Workflow Settings). Enquiries are often worth keeping for less time than other cases, so consider a shorter Records kept period on the enquiry template.

The Uncog AI onboarding team can add and describe processes, but can't see your member list, so an Owner or Admin chooses the Case Owner.

Let visitors book a demo from the chat

The Book a demo (website chat) example in the workflow templates lets a visitor book a meeting with you without leaving the chat. Once it is on your Processes tab it is a button on the chat's first screen, so a visitor who opens the chat from its launcher can book too. The visitor answers a short form (their name, company, website and phone, and what they'd like to see), then picks a day and a time from the free times of your Case Owner — shown in the visitor's own local time (a Times are shown in picker changes the zone) with your business's time zone named — and chooses Choose This Time. A visitor who hasn't confirmed their email does all of this first; the time is held only when they confirm their email with a code and choose Send. If someone else takes that time in the meantime, the case still starts, the chat says the time was just taken, and the visitor picks another from My Applications. A visitor who has confirmed their email books straight away, and can move the booking once with Change the Time.

Once booked:

The meeting is on your Case Owner's calendar, with the visitor's company, website and phone in its notes, and the visitor is a contact. If their company isn't in your contacts yet, it is added from what they typed and linked to them; if it is, they are linked to it.
Your Case Owner, and anyone who receives the smart agent's notifications, gets an email at once: who booked, for when, and what they said about themselves, with a link to the case.
The visitor gets a confirmation from your business with a calendar file to add the meeting to their own calendar, and their secure link.

Free times come from your business hours (Settings → Smart Agent → Workflows → Settings) less what is already on the Case Owner's Uncog calendar — and, where they have connected their mailbox with its calendar, less every busy event on that calendar too, so a meeting they already have elsewhere is never offered. To use it:

Create a workflow from the Book a demo (website chat) example (Settings → Smart Agent → Workflows → Templates, New Workflow, Start From a Template, Use This), adjust the questions, the length and how far ahead people may book, and publish it.
Add it on the Processes tab with a description for visitors, and choose the Case Owner whose calendar the times come from.
Give a trigger such as book-a-demo that process on the Triggers tab, and add <button type="button" data-uncog-trigger="book-a-demo">Book a demo</button> to your site (or to a hero button on one of your hosted pages).

A booking step works the same way in any workflow you offer in the chat, not only the demo example. Times are offered from one team member's calendar: the member who holds the step's role on the case.

Triggers

A trigger is a named way into the smart agent from a button or link on your own site, such as "Get a quote" or "Book a call". Your page names the trigger by its key; everything else stays here. Add up to 10 with Add Trigger. Each has:

Label: what your team calls it. It shows under Conversations as Opened from on conversations that began from it.
Key: what your page names it by, in data-uncog-trigger. Lower-case letters, numbers and hyphens, starting with a letter or number, up to 40 characters, different for each trigger. It's suggested from the label. If you change a saved key, pages that still use the old one open the smart agent without this trigger.
Greeting: shown in place of your usual greeting when the smart agent opens from this trigger. Leave it blank to keep your usual one.
Starter Questions: up to 4, shown in place of the page's starter questions. If the visitor is already part-way through a conversation, it carries on and these show as quick replies under the last message.
Instructions for This Trigger: why a visitor opened the smart agent this way and what the assistant should do about it, up to 1,000 characters. They apply alongside the page's instructions, and never override the assistant's own rules (no financial advice, no links to other sites, never saying something has started when it hasn't).
Offer a Process: one of the processes on your Processes tab, or None. The smart agent then shows a Start button for it. Nothing starts until the visitor confirms. Once the visitor has started or sent the process, the Start button isn't offered again on that page, and your button just opens the chat. The tab says which way visitors start it: "Visitors answer first and confirm their email last", or "Visitors confirm their email first". The Start button only shows when Let visitors confirm their email is on. If the process leaves the Processes tab or can no longer be started from the chat, the trigger keeps it but shows a warning and offers no Start button until you put the process back.

Each trigger shows the code to paste on your page, with Copy Code. With the live preview open, Try in Preview opens the preview on that trigger, bringing it back up if it is minimised (save the trigger first, then restart the preview).

Use the arrows to reorder triggers and the cross to remove one, then choose Save Changes.

Notifications

Choose the members of your team who are emailed when a visitor leaves their details or asks for a person. The email links to the conversation; it never contains the chat itself. With nobody chosen, nobody is emailed, and new chats still appear under Conversations.

The Uncog AI onboarding team can't see your member list, so they can't choose who is emailed.

Live Preview

Choose Open Preview at the top of the page to chat with your assistant as a visitor would, even while the smart agent is off. The preview opens in a panel at the bottom right of the window and starts straight away. You can keep editing the tabs while it is open.

After you save a change, choose Restart Preview to see it.
Use the arrow in the panel's header to minimise it to a bar and to bring it back. The preview keeps running while it is minimised.
Use the cross to close it. Closing ends the preview, and the next one starts a new chat.

Preview chats never appear under Conversations. To check just what your knowledge gives the assistant for a question, use Try a Question under Knowledge (see Knowledge).

Delete the smart agent

Under Danger Zone, choose Delete Smart Agent. Its conversations are deleted too, including visitors who left details but weren't added to your contacts. Your knowledge is kept under Knowledge, and a new smart agent is connected to it automatically when your account has one set of knowledge. Contacts keep the chat summaries on their timelines. The embed code on your site stops working. This can't be undone.