Adding an AI agent for messaging to a social messaging channel

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This functionality is part of AI agents - Essential.

You can create an AI agent for messaging and make it visible on your social channels to start deflecting those commonly asked questions.

This article includes the following topics:

• Before you begin
• Adding an AI agent to active social channels
• Removing an AI agent from social channels
• Functionality differences from web and mobile messaging

Before you begin

Before you can add an AI agent to a social messaging channel, you must connect a social channel and create an AI agent for it using the following steps:

• Connect your social messaging channels (see Add your social channels ). Note that each available social channel has its own enabling instructions. You can add an AI agent for messaging to any social channels that are connected to your Zendesk account.
• Create an AI agent for messaging (see Creating an AI agent for your web and mobile channels ). When you publish the new AI agent, you’ll be able to select the social messaging channel(s) you want to connect the AI agent to.

When you have connected a social channel and created an AI agent for messaging, you can add a previously-created, unused AI agentor an AI agent that is already in use to a social channel.

Adding an AI agent to active social channels

You can add an AI agent you’ve already created to your social channel.

• Adding an unpublished AI agent to social channels
• Adding a live AI agent to your social channels

Adding an unpublished AI agent to social channels

If you choose to add an AI agent to a social channel that is currently unpublished, you can publish the AI agent to your social channel.

To publish an unused AI agent to a social channel

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to publish.
4. Click Publish AI agent.
5. In the channel selection screen, select one or more channels to connect to your AI agent, then click Publish AI agent.

Adding a live AI agent to your social channels

If you have published an AI agent to a web or mobile channel and want to now deploy that AI agent to social messaging channels, you can do so in the AI agent’s settings.

To add a live AI agent to a social channel

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to use.
4. In the Settings tab, expand the Brand and channels section and select the channels you want to connect to the AI agent.
5. Click Save.

Note: If the selected channel already has an AI agent connected to it, that AI agent will be disconnected from the channel and replaced with this new AI agent. If no other changes are made to the AI agent, the live channel is not impacted by this process.

Removing an AI agent from social channels

You can remove an AI agent from a social messaging channel if you no longer wish to use it.

To remove a live AI agent from a social channel

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to use.
4. In the Settings tab, expand the Brand and channels section and deselect the channels you want to remove.
5. Click Save.

Functionality differences from web and mobile messaging

AI agents for messaging on social channels have the following differences in functionality than compared to native channels:

• Greetings. On social channels, the AI agent is not able to send the greeting message to begin a conversation. The user must speak first, and then the AI agent will follow normal behavior when receiving a free-text message and attempt to find a conversational shortcut.
• Automatic translations. Social messaging channels do not pass the locale, so automatic translation for AI agent messages, text, links, variables, and so on, is not available for a social messaging AI agent.
• Language support. Social messaging AI agents automatically detect a user's language based on the following information provided by the Sunshine Conversations platform (determined in order):
  • Locale or language information sent by the source channel.
  • The content of the user’s messages.
  • The Zendesk account’s locale.

    If none of these can be determined, the AI agent sends messages in English.

• Quick reply options experience. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) For channels like WeChat and X (formerly known as Twitter), quick reply options aren't supported, and will degrade to a text-based experience to list the options for the user. The AI agent will say “You can say” followed by the options configured in bot builder. The AI agent can't be configured per channel at this stage and will be enabled across all Zendesk integrated social channels, including Sunshine Conversation integrations.
  Note: Quick reply options are currently available on WhatsApp using Sunshine Conversations integrations.
• Data capture. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) Data capture is not available on social messaging channels. For instance, if an answer includes the Ask for details step requesting information from the customer, the AI agent will skip that answer and move to the next one in the flow.
• Intent characters limitation. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) The AI agent intent title and the presented options for social media have to fit the limit of 20 characters.
• Authentication and messaging metadata variables. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) Messaging authentication and messaging metadata variables are only available for the Web Widget and mobile SDK channels.

For a summary of all social channel capabilities, see Sunshine Conversations: Channel capabilities.