You can set up your Ada bot to work through the Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger interface instead of Ada’s usual web interface. This approach can work differently from Ada’s usual behavior and has both benefits and limitations you should be aware of, but it can be a good alternative example if you want to use more of Zendesk’s features.
The chatter experience in Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger is very similar to Ada’s default web experience in a lot of ways. Here are some basics:
Chatters can use the same conversation window to exchange messages with both your bot and with agents, with seamless handoffs to Zendesk Messaging in between.
You can also enable multi-conversation functionality, so chatters can create more than one conversation at a time, with Sunshine Conversations’s Conversation List feature.
Chatters and agents can send files to each other. For information on how Sunshine Conversations validates files, see File Validation at Sunshine Conversations docs.
After the chatter has been handed off to an agent, the chat window is reserved for their conversation with the agent. Only the agent can disengage the conversation by marking the ticket as “solved.” After this, depending on your organization’s trigger settings, Zendesk automatically marks the ticket as “closed.”
Until the ticket is marked as “closed,” any messages the chatter sends go to the agent, not the bot. The chatter has to wait until the ticket is closed to be able to send messages to your bot again.
You can use Ada’s multi-bot routing feature. For more information, see Connect Zendesk social channels to multiple bots using Sunshine Conversations.
There are some features that you may have built into your Ada bot that won’t translate to Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger.
There are several blocks and features that work differently from Ada’s default chat in Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger. For additional information, see Feature compatibility.
Metavariables: You can’t set metavariables in Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger. If your Answer flows require access to metadata, you can contact your Ada team for assistance, or use an HTTP Request block to request data from Sunshine Conversations’ API. For more information, see Sunshine Conversations’ API documentation.
Chatter persistence: Instead of using Ada’s settings, use Sunshine Conversations’ SDK settings to adjust how you want to retain users or conversations. For more information, see Browser storage at Sunshine Conversations’ documentation.
Branding: Instead of using Ada’s settings, use Sunshine Conversations’ SDK settings to adjust how you want the chat window to appear. For more information, see Display Style at Sunshine Conversations’ documentation.
File extensions: Instead of using the list of accepted file extensions in the File Upload block’s settings, Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger has its own list of extensions it won’t accept. For more information, see File Validation at Sunshine Conversations’ documentation.
Setting up your bot to work with Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger requires some work in your bot, in Sunshine Conversations, in Zendesk, and finally in your own website. If you have any trouble with any portion of these procedures, don’t hesitate to contact your Ada team for assistance.
Before proceeding, do a quick check to see that you have the following:
Access to Zendesk Agent Workspace
A subscription to Zendesk Suite Professional, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus, or a standalone Sunshine Conversations license add-on
Access to the Zendesk Conversations API through Zendesk Admin Center, so you can create API keys
A completed Sunshine Conversations integration in your Ada bot. For more information, see Connect Sunshine Conversations with Ada.
Additionally, contact your Ada team to make sure your bot is ready for the next steps. There are some features you may need Ada staff to enable on your behalf that you can’t proceed without.
After you’ve verified that you have everything you need, you can use the Sunshine Conversations API to create a new channel.
To use the API, you should have an API client program, like Postman, installed on your computer. You may find it helpful to download the API collection so you can see those calls pre-formatted in your client program.
In Zendesk Agent Workspace, go to Apps and Integrations > APIs > Conversation APIs. On this page, find the following API attributes and copy them:
appID
key
This should be the same key you used to set up your Sunshine Conversations integration. For more information, see Connect Sunshine Conversations with Ada.
secretIn your API client, set up your authentication. Depending on your setup, you can choose to use these settings for all of your Zendesk API calls, or just this one call.
Set the authentication type to Basic Auth.
For your Username, use the key from your API details.
For your Password, use the secret from your API details.
Make the following API call, replacing the appID placeholder with
the value you got in your API details. In the API collection, it’s
called Create Integration. With this call, you’re creating a new
integration for your Sunshine Conversations account:
Depending on the integrations you have set up, you might have multiple integrations come back in your response; each one will look like the below. Look for the integration that has the following two attributes:
"status": "active"
"type": "web"
For that integration, copy the id attribute.
Now that you have your integration ID, you can embed your bot on your website. To do that, you’ll need to insert two scripts into your website.
As with all website integrations, we recommend testing this code in a staging environment before making it available publicly. That way, if you want to troubleshoot or test out improvements, you can do so without impacting your chatter experience.
In your website’s <head> tag, towards the end, insert the
following script. Replace the ADD-INTEGRATION-ID-HERE portion at
the end with the ID you got from Zendesk:
Use the following script to initialize your bot, again replacing the
ADD-INTEGRATION-ID-HERE portion at the beginning with your
integration’s ID. You can use it in a different script, or you can
put it in your website’s <body> tag, inside a <script> tag, to
load every time your website does:
Make sure you don’t change the integrationOrder,
notificationChannelPromptEnabled, or canUserSeeConversationList
attribute values. These are required to disable Sunshine
Conversations features that Ada doesn’t support.
With both of these pieces of code in your webpage, you can test your bot. If it worked correctly, when you load your webpage, you should see the chat bubble appear on the page.
If you followed these instructions and are still having problems, or if your bot is loading but not responding to your messages, feel free to contact your Ada team for assistance.
After making sure your bot is working, you can customize how it looks, by modifying the second code snippet above. You can see a full list of customizations you can make at the Smooch Web Messenger documentation, but the most common ones you may be interested in are:
businessName - The bot’s name that appears at the top of the chat
window
businessIconUrl - A link to the image you want to display at the top
of the chat window
This image only appears at the top of the chat window. It’s not the bot avatar, which you can change in your Ada settings. For more information, see Customize the chat window.
customColors - Branding colors that you can apply to your bot. All
of these values must be 3- or 6-character hexadecimal color codes,
without the hex sign at the beginning
brandColor - The color of the chat button when the window is
collapsed, and the header of the window when the window is open
conversationColor - The color of the chatter’s chat bubbles, and
quick reply bubbles that they can select
actionColor - The color that highlights actions that chatters can
take, like the outline of the field where the chatters can type in
messages to the bot
All of the above customizations go into the initializing code snippet above. Here’s an example of a completed snippet with all of the above attributes populated:
The more attributes you have for your bot, the more difficult it can get
to remember which is which. In the above sample, we have
// commented-out content, where the script ignores everything between
the double slashes and the end of the line. Using these comments can be
really helpful for troubleshooting and maintaining your bot over time.
Rather than the usual platform-specific handoff blocks used elsewhere in Ada, if you’re using Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger, you need to create handoffs using API calls.
On the Ada dashboard, go to Build > Answers, and create or open an Answer you want to put a handoff into.
Click and drag an HTTP Request block into the end of that Answer.
Create a POST call with a URL in this format:
{appID} with the same appID you found when you were
finding your Zendesk API key.{conversationID} with the automatic
sunshine_conversation_id variable.Under Headers, add your authorization token.
Authorization.Basic, then enter the
automatic sunshine_basic_token variable.Under Body Content, add a switchboardintegration attribute.
switchboardintegration, and in
the dropdown list, select String as the data type.next.Under Body Content, create a metadata attribute, in which you
can add additional information.
In the field on the left, enter metadata, and in the dropdown
list, select Dictionary as the data type. With this data type,
there is on field on the right to add a single corresponding value;
instead, you can nest other attributes within it.
Beside the metadata attribute, click Add 
to
add a row under the metadata attribute.
This attribute tells Sunshine Conversations which was the first message in the chatter’s most recent interaction with your bot. That way, the agent can see the whole conversation for context, instead of the default behavior of only the last 10 messages in the conversation.
first_message_id, and in the
dropdown list, select String as the data type.Optionally, add additional metadata, using Zendesk’s metadata fields. For example, if you want to attach tags to the tickets you create through your bot:
dataCapture.systemField.tags.ada_bot, automatic_handoff).Choose an Answer to display if there’s an issue completing the API call.
Turn on the Count as Handoff toggle.
With this flow, you can hand chatters off to Zendesk for escalations, and you’ll be able to see these handoffs in your analytics.
Here’s an example of a completed HTTP Request block handoff:
Lastly, to allow your bot to start interacting with chatters, you have to connect your bot with Zendesk. For more information, see Connect your bot with Zendesk Admin Center.