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Control how many users see your bot

In some cases, you may want to have your default chat button visible to only a certain percentage of users. This can be useful if you're still working on your bot, and want to do some testing with a portion of your audience before using your bot with all of your visitors. You might also be transitioning your website from one bot to another, and want to do it in stages. You can do all this by adjusting your rollout percentages in your bot's settings.

Before you begin​

Before setting your bot's rollout percentages, here are some things you should understand:

  • These settings only affect how often chatters see bots that load automatically when the page loads. They don't affect on-demand embed methods, social media channels, third-party SDKs, or methods that bypass the default chat button to launch your bot.

    For example, if you've used the Ada Embed Directory to make your bot load every time a user clicks a custom button, your bot will load every time any user clicks that button, regardless of what the rollout percentage for that bot is. In this case, if you want to reduce the number of users who see that button, you'll have to use code on your website to make that button visible to only a percentage of your users.

  • You can split your customers by percentage into not seeing any bot, seeing the current bot, seeing a second bot, or any combination of the three. If your percentages are split, Ada rolls a virtual dice with your probability percentages to assign each customer a category when they first load the page. Customers then stay in that category until either they clear their cookies, or you change the percentage for any bot to 100%. If you change your percentages in the middle of the rollout (e.g,. increasing a bot's visibility from 20% to 50% to customers), those new percentages only affect customers that Ada hasn't already assigned a group.

  • If the two bots have different chatter persistence settings, those settings will apply for each bot.

  • If you're rolling out multiple bots and use the Zendesk Messaging handoff, you can only use that handoff for one bot at a time. For the second bot, we recommend using a non-Zendesk handoff until your transition is complete.

  • The two bots use the same Embed2 script.

    • Both bots use the embed from the bot you put your rollout settings in. This means that any metavariables that would load for your first bot automatically load for your second bot as well, and that you can't set any metavariables to only load for the second bot.

    • If you're using the npm package version of Embed2, make sure you're using v1.7.0 or newer.

Preview a different bot on your website​

If you want to progressively roll out a second bot, you can start by previewing the second bot on your website. To do this, make sure your bots meet the following criteria:

  • Your current bot is already launched and live on a webpage.

  • In both bots' approved domains, at least one domain is common between the two bots so they can load.

  • As a best practice, don't configure duplicate launch settings in your second bot. If you do, Ada will ignore those settings and follow the settings in your current bot instead.

With the above configurations in place, you can preview your bot.

  1. On the Ada dashboard, go to Settings > Integrations.

  2. Under Channels Integrations, beside Ada Web Chat, click Configure. The Configure Web Chat window opens.

  3. Click the Launch controls tab.

  4. Under Launch controls, in the New Ada subdomain field, enter the subdomain for the bot you want to preview. If it's a valid subdomain, a preview section appears.

  5. In the preview section, you can enter a URL where your first bot is already embedded, so you can preview what it will look like when your second bot appears on that same page. Then, you can use the buttons to either copy the preview URL or open the page in a new tab.

  6. Click Save. As long as the new bot is set to be shown to 0% of your customers, your bot remembers its subdomain for the future when you're ready to launch it.

Change your bot's rollout percentages​

To change the percentage of users on your site who see your bot, or to start rolling out a second bot, follow these steps:

  1. If you're using these settings to roll out a second bot, make sure your setup meets the criteria for previewing it above.

  2. On the Ada dashboard, go to Settings > Integrations.

  3. Under Channels Integrations, beside Ada Web Chat, click Configure. The Configure Web Chat window opens.

  4. Click the Launch controls tab.

  5. Under Launch controls, enter the percentages for each case:

    • Customers who never see a chat button load on your website

    • Customers who see your current bot

    • Customers who see your second bot

    The sum of all of your percentages must be 100% to save your launch settings.

  6. Click Save.

Have any questions? Contact your Ada team—or email us at .