Bots that use your own systems and documents

This is an optional part of a bot. OmniBrand engineers set it up for you on request; there is nothing to configure in your workspace.

What it can do

• Send your standard documents: a company profile, a price list, a menu, a brochure — files you keep online. You give each one a name and a link; the bot sends the one the customer asks for.
• Look up data in your system while chatting: the customer gives, for example, an invoice or order number, the bot asks your system, and replies with the answer — "Invoice 204 is paid", "Your order is out for delivery".
• Send a document your system produces, such as that invoice's PDF, using the link your system returns.
• Send the collected answers to your system, for example to create a lead in your CRM.

The document arrives as a file in the chat: on WhatsApp as a document message, by email as an attachment, and in website chat as a file the visitor can open. In your inbox thread the bot's message shows the file name with 📄.

What OmniBrand needs from you

For standard documents:

• The name of each document as customers will ask for it, and a link to the file that starts with https:// and can be downloaded without signing in. On WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger the messaging service fetches the file from that link; for email and website chat OmniBrand downloads it (at most 25 MB) and sends it from its own storage.

For looking up data in your system:

1. The address (URL) of the service in your system that answers one question, starting with https:// — for example https://erp.example.com/api/invoices/{number}, with the place where the customer's value goes.
2. Whether it is called with GET or POST.
3. The credential: an API key or token, and the name of the header it goes in (usually Authorization). Send it through the channel support gives you, not in a public message.
4. One test value that exists and one that does not (for example a real invoice number and a made-up one), so the engineers can test with your real data before going live.
5. A short description of the answer: which fields it contains (for example status, amount, pdf_url) and which of them the bot may tell the customer.
6. How your system says "not found": it must answer with HTTP status 404. Any other error is treated as "the system is not available".
7. What the customer must give to prove who they are before the bot reveals data (for example the phone number on the invoice), so the bot asks for it.

How your data is protected

• Only https addresses are accepted.
• Your credential is stored encrypted. After it is saved, OmniBrand staff see only its last four characters; it is added only to the request to your system and is never shown to customers.
• The values customers type are safely encoded into the address; with POST they are sent as JSON.
• OmniBrand's servers refuse to call internal or private network addresses, and check every redirect again. When your system redirects to another address, your credential is not sent there.
• Each call waits at most 10 seconds and reads at most 256 KB of the answer.
• Every change to these connections and every test is recorded with the name of the engineer who did it.

If your system does not answer

When your system is down, slow, answers "not found" or returns an error, the bot follows the path designed for that case — for example "We could not find that invoice" — or hands the conversation to your team with a note such as "Nothing found in invoices." or "The invoices data source failed: …" (each with its Arabic line under it). Your customers are never left without a reply.

If a document cannot be downloaded from its link (for email and website chat: not a public https link, or larger than 25 MB), the bot hands the conversation to your team with the tag bot-error and a note that names the document.

Related

• Inbox bots: what they do and how to get one
• Where the bot saves what customers tell it
• Contacting support