Make bot start the conversation

[Edi1]

It appears that the bot always waits for the first move e.g. Hi. It would be useful if there was a tick box "Start conversation automatically" where the bot starts e.g. Hi, I'm you bot...

[Anonymous]

If the system can identify a new user added to application or someone has entered your website, having the bot initiate the conversation would be great. 

[TaylorNation]

At this point people are just making apps to have an app! 99% of them aren't needed! 

[Pershadtech]

Good Idea, I would fully support if bot can start a conversation and greet the user before he/she ask any question.

[renatoromao]

Great idea, many people need this feature! 🙂 

[4LB3r7]

Currently the auto-triggered welcome message is not enabled for web canvas (It is enabled in Teams and Facebook Channel). To be able to trigger the welcome message in web canvas, a hidden event activity need to be sent to the bot by the canvas.  The activity type="event" and name="startConversation".

There are some sample code on  how to implement in canvas:

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerVirtualAgentsSamples/blob/master/BuildYourOwnCanvasSamples/1.start...

[renatoromao]

Thanks for your suggestion @4LB3r7 ! 🙂 

[4LB3r7]

Should we mark this idea as completed?

[lyleadams58]

Please don't mark this idea as completed since we want it "out of the box" without any web canvas coding. Does that make sense? Thanks. 

[ggupta]

We'd love to hear your thoughts on a couple specific questions regarding this:

1. Do you see this as a per bot or per channel setting? Meaning, should the bot author determine that the bot should have greeting turned on or would this be configured in the channels configuration per channel?

2. Since we have a way to enable on Teams and Facebook (see the community thread here), is this request specifically for the web channel?

Thanks in advance,
Gitika

[Jesor]

It would be great to have something to start with in general as a pre-greeting.  So when you see the bot to start, you just have some basic message.  Such as, "Hi, I'm Botty the bot, say 'Hi' to begin a conversation with me".  Right now, it's not really a great start as the canvas does not have any way to start when embedded.