Responding with canned text to speed up chat interactions

Canned text includes quick texts, quick links, and questionnaires that agents use when chatting with the end users so that the interaction speeds up for both the agent and the users.

Agents can create their own quick texts and URLs or administrators can create quick texts, URLs, and questionnaires for agents.

Types of canned text

Type of canned text	Description	Example
Quick texts	Quick texts are common messages or questions that agents use. Live Chat includes sample quick texts that you can use. For example, Good Afternoon, How may I help you?, Have a great day., Hello <username>, my name is <agentname> and I will be assisting you today. Who can create quick texts As an administrator, you can create quick texts for agents. Agents cannot edit these quick texts. As an agent, you can create quick texts for your own use. Additional quick text options Quick text groups—Quick text responses can be grouped together to make them easier to find. Such groups are helpful if many quick text responses exist and finding them in a long list is time consuming. For example, an agent can use a Customer Greetings group that contains quick text responses related to initial greeting messages, such as How are you?, Hello! How can I help you today?, or Can I help you today? If quick text grouping is enabled, then quick texts that are not added to any group is displayed under Ungrouped Quick Texts. If an agent searches for a quick text from a group, the results are displayed based on the following conditions: If the search text matches a quick text group name, all texts under that group are displayed. If the search does not match any group name, then the system searches for quick text itself and not the group, and displays the matching texts. If the agent selects a group while searching for a quick text, the search is limited to only those texts under the selected group. Quick Text Type Ahead—A quick text response can have an associated type-ahead prefix that enables an agent to type only a few characters to locate the associated quick text. You can search for a particular quick text response by typing # and a few characters to locate the associated quick text. The type-ahead prefix is case insensitive. For example, an agent can type #VER or #ver to bring up the quick text response What version of the software are you using? The type-ahead search for quick text is performed on the content in the Label and Quick Response Text fields.	The following image is an example of grouped and ungrouped quick texts: The following image is an example of canned text that is displayed when groups are disabled:
Quick links	Quick links are links that agents frequently share with users to troubleshoot and resolve issues. URLs are the hyperlinks that agents copy and paste in a chat message during a conversation. By default, the URLs pasted in a chat message are not clickable. Who can create quick links and URLs As an administrator, you can create quick links for agents. Agents cannot edit these quick links. You can also enable clickable URLs from the Live Chat Administration Console. As an agent, you can create quick links for your own use.
Questionnaire	Questionnaires include a series of questions that agents commonly ask the end users. Live Chat includes sample questionnaires that you can use. For example, agents typically need to know basic system information before troubleshooting a problem. The user must respond to the current question before the script asks the next question. Who can create questionnaires As an administrator, you can create questionnaires for agents. Agents cannot create questionnaires for themselves.

How canned text is displayed to agents

As an administrator, you can control the visibility of canned text to agents by defining the company and support queues. This ensures that agents can view only those canned texts which are relevant to them.

Canned text is displayed to the agents in the following ways:

Company and no queue defined—Global canned text, visible to all agents.
Company defined—Canned text visible to all agents in the company.
Company and one support queue defined—Canned text visible to all agents belonging to that company and support queue.
Company and multiple support queues defined—Canned text visible to agents belonging to that company and at least one support queue.
Quick texts and questionnaires created by agents are for their own use and are not visible to other agents.

Before you begin

If you want to include quick texts, make sure that the administrator or you have created the quick texts.
If you want to include quick links, make sure that you have created the quick links and the administrator has enabled pasting clickable URLs into the chat.
If you want to include questionnaires, make sure that the administrator has created the questionnaire.

To create quick texts and quick links for your own use

As an agent, log in to Smart IT and open the live agent console.
In an active chat session, click the # button.
A list of predefined quick text questions is displayed.
Select Add/Edit.

To create quick texts

Click Add Canned Text.

Enter the following information:

Field	Description
Label	Enter a suitable name for the quick text with a maximum length of 20 characters. For example, Greetings. Ensure that the value in the Label field is unique across all the quick texts. Important: If you have upgraded from an older version of BMC Virtual Chat and have existing quick texts, the Label field would contain the truncated quick text by default. The administrator must update the Label field with some meaningful text.
Content	Enter the response or question for the quick text with a maximum length of 254 characters. You can use placeholders in the text for the end user's username and agent name.
(If quick text groups are enabled) Group	Select the group to which the quick text message should belong. This option is available only if an administrator has enabled the Use Quick Text Groups check box in Question Text UI in Live Chat Administration Console. To create a new group, select Add new group, and enter the name of the new group. To change the group for an existing quick text, select the group. To remove the quick text from an existing group, select Clear. Important: Group names are automatically removed from the list if all the quick texts under it are either removed or moved to another quick text group.

Click Save.

To create quick links

Click Add Canned Text.
Click to add a quick link.

Enter the following information:

Field	Description
Label	Enter a suitable name for the quick link with a maximum length of 20 characters. For example, BMC. Ensure that the value in the Label field is unique across all the quick links records.
Content	(Optional) Enter the message that is sent to the user when the agent shares the URL with the user. The maximum length of the message can be 1024 characters.
	Enter the label that you want to appear on the hyperlink for the URL. The maximum length of the link label can be 255 characters.
	Enter the complete URL for the quick link. The maximum length of the URL can be 20148 characters.

Click Save.

You can now use quick links and quick texts in chat.

To include quick texts and quick links and to run questionnaires in your chat response

Log in to Smart IT and open the live agent console.
In an active chat session, click the # button.

To include quick text in your response
1. Select the text or response from the list of quick text messages.
  The available quick text messages are displayed. If Quick Text Groups are enabled, all the quick texts within a group are displayed under the group name. The quick text groups are sorted alphabetically.
  The following image shows the quick text messages under the group Start.
To include quick links in your response
1. Select the link from the list. The quick links are denoted by .
  The link is sent to the user along with the message defined for the link.
Quick links have an associated type-ahead prefix. You can search for a particular quick link response by typing # and a few characters to locate the associated link. The type-ahead prefix is case insensitive.
For example, you can type #BMC or #bmc to bring up the BMC Home page quick link.
The type-ahead search for quick links is performed on the content in Label, Message, Link Label, and URL fields.
To run a questionnaire
1. Select the questionnaire from the list.
  The questionnaire is denoted by curly brackets { }.
  
  In the Questionnaire dialog box, click Run to start the questionnaire.
  To close the questionnaire menu without selecting any questionnaire, from the Questionnaire dialog box, select Close.
  
  (Optional) To cancel a questionnaire, click anywhere in the questiionnaire while it is running.
  The remaining questions from the questionnaire are not sent and the questions that are already sent are disabled.
The questionnaire runs and displays the first question to the self-service user. When the user responds to the question, the script continues with the next question. The agent cannot interrupt the questionnaire after it has started.
If an agent tries to start a new questionnaire while the current questionnaire is still running, the following error is generated:
A Questionnaire is already running. To run a Questionnaire, wait until the current one is finished.
A questionnaire has an associated type-ahead prefix. You can search for a particular questionnaire by typing # and a few characters to locate the associated quick text. The type-ahead prefix is case insensitive.
For example, you can type #INI or #ini to bring up the questionnaire Initial Welcome and Gather User Information.
The type-ahead search for a questionnaire is performed on the content in the Question Script Name and General Question Script fields.