Universal Bots facilitate a scalable, modular approach to Bot building by helping you link several standard Bots into one. The Universal Bot executes the tasks and functions of the linked Bots by routing relevant utterances to the corresponding standard Bot.
Once you publish a Universal Bot, changes made in the linked Bots automatically reflect in the Universal Bot. As a creator or developer of a Bot, you can add any Bots (published and configured) to a universal Bot and access their underlying tasks and functions. When you publish a universal bot, the end users can only access the tasks that are published in the linked bots.
Before starting with creating a Universal Bot, let us understand how Univeral Bots work and how they differ from the Standard Bots.
Bot Responses
Universal bot responses vary with the number of bots and tasks that match the user intent along with their relevance (exact matches or suggestions). The Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine processes the utterances sent to the linked bots, detects the user intents, and ranks them based on relevance. As a developer, you can test and train the bot responses as explained in Test the Universal Bot.
Following the table shows how universal bot responses operate in various possible NLP outcomes:
| NLP Outcome | Bot Response |
|---|---|
| Only one exact match found from any of the linked bots | Executes the task with the exact match |
| Exact matches found in more than one linked bot | Shows the names of the bots to the user and prompts them to select one |
| Exact matches found with two or more tasks of a single linked bot | Shows all the matching tasks to the user and prompts them to select one |
| Suggestions found in more than one linked bot | Shows the names of the matching bots to the user and prompts them to select one |
| Suggestions found with two or more tasks of a single linked bot | Shows all the suggestions to the user and prompts them to select one |
| Only one suggestion found | Shows the suggestion to the user asking if they would like to select it |
| No exact match or suggestion found | Executes the universal bot’s default dialog in the specified language. |
Standard Bots vs. Universal Bots
Universal Bots connect multiple Standard Bots into a single bot. They support most Standard Bot features with a few exceptions.
Enabled Features and Configurations
This section assumes that you understand the fundamentals of standard bots. Details relevant to the Universal Bots alone are listed here. We recommend you to refer to the relevant standard bot documentation for help with the basics.
The Feature column entries in the following table provide URLs to the standard bot documentation.
The Learn more links in the Description column refer to the universal bot documentation.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
Natural Language |
|
| Testing | Since the universal bot links together standard bots, the Natural Language Processing (NLP) settings are optimized to accurately recognize the relevant bot and intent. You can test and train the universal bot like a standard bot with small differences. When you train the task it happens at the linked bot level. Learn more. |
| Standard Responses | The universal bot will hold a limited set of standard responses that are relevant to bot level functions like greetings. Go to Natural Language -> Default Conversation, to access the Standard Responses section to edit the relevant standard responses. |
| Batch Testing | Universal bots only support testing Custom-defined utterances and not Developer-defined utterances and Succesful user utterances. The Custom-defined utterances test suites remain similar to the standard bots’ except that the JSON Dataset file that you upload should contain a bot name along with the intent and input for every test case. Also, the downloaded batch test report shows the results with corresponding bot names. |
| Default Dialog | Universal bots come with a default dialog task that gets triggered for unidentified intents. You can customize this task or import a new one. Learn more. |
| Help | When a user types Help during a chat, a standard bot responds with the list of tasks that it can perform, allowing the user to select a task name to execute.
When it comes to Universal bots, if a user types Help, the bot responds with the names of linked bots. The user cannot select or execute a task from the list. |
Channel Configuration |
|
| All | Universal bots do not obtain the channel configurations of the linked bots and need an independent channel configuration. You can set up new channels for the universal bot independent of the linked bot channels. The published tasks in the linked bots execute from the universal bot channels. Learn more. |
Settings |
|
| General Settings | Universal and standard bots share the same general settings. |
| Language Management | Universal bots do not obtain the enabled languages of the linked bots. You must enable default and additional languages explicitly for the universal bot. But when user utterances are made in an enabled language, the universal bot routes it to only those linked bot tasks that support the language. For example, if German is enabled for the universal bot and a user utters in German, the NLP engine looks for all the linked bot tasks that support German and sends the utterance to those tasks. Learn more. |
| Developer Collaboration | Works similar to standard bots. Once you share a Universal Bot with other developers, they can link and unlink bots. |
| Change Logs | Universal bot change logs record all the changes applicable to the standard bots, plus the following:
|
| Delete bot | Like standard bots, you can delete the unpublished universal bots. |
API Extensions |
|
| SDK toolkit | Enabled with the following events – on message, on hook, on event, on alert |
| Agent Transfer | Agent Transfer can be configured for a Universal Bot. The Agent Node needs to be added in default dialog and addition of any subsequent nodes after the agent node is not allowed. |
| WebHook Node | Multiple webhook nodes can be placed in the default dialog. When a webhook node is reached during the conversation, the platform invokes the BotKit similar to that of a Standard Bot. |
| SDK as Channel | Enabled |
Analyze |
|
| Chat History | All the Universal Bot chats get recorded. Any initiated training will affect the individual linked bot. |
Publish |
|
| All | You can select one or more linked bots and publish the Universal Bot like any Standard Bot. Learn more. |
Event Management
Let us see the behavior of Universal Bots for the following BotKit events in Linked Bots:
- On Message
- Agent
- Webhook
- Event
- Alert Events
When a child bot is in context i.e., a task from a child bot is in progress, then the events related to the child bots will be triggered based on the configurations set up by the developer:
- If an event is enabled in child bot, then the event will be forwarded to child bot BotKit
- If an event is not enabled in child bot and
- if that event is enabled in Universal bot, then the event will be sent to Universal bot BotKit
- if that event is not enabled in Universal bot as well, then the event will not be forwarded to any BotKit.
Following table summarises the above scenarios and behavior:
| Event Name | Child Bot Status | Universal Bot Status | Expected Behavior |
|---|---|---|---|
| On Message | Enabled | – | Event sent to child bot BotKit |
| Disabled | Enabled | Event sent to Universal BotKit | |
| Disabled | Disabled | Invalid scenario. The event does not trigger in this case | |
| All other events | Enabled | – | Event sent to child bot BotKit |
| Disabled | Enabled | Event sent to Universal BotKit | |
| Disabled | Disabled | Same as the current behavior. E.g. dialog reaches Webhook node but ‘on Hook’ event is not enabled |
Unsupported Features
Universal Bots do not support the following features:
- Natural Language
- Training
- Intelligence
- Import, Export & Variable Management