How to proactively send message to a clients cell phone without them messaging the bot first

Rasa Open Source
1

Product manager trying to understand the architectural flow of a tool I’d like to build.

Q: If a bot is integrated with a business’s Twilio account, would I use Twilio’s programmable SMS function to proactively initiate a conversation between a new client and my bot or use a custom action?

A little background: I want to welcome a new client to my business. The back-end that will send my Bot data via an api is integrated with a CRM tool through the CRM’s API. I see that a new client has been entered in the CRM through the CRM’s webhook api and I save this to our db and can now send it anywhere. I want the bot to text this new client to welcome them and I will create stories to answer FAQ’s, and run a number of other stories with custom actions. Do we do the proactive reach-out through rasa using a put to conversations (I don’t know why I think this is possible but maybe I miss something) or through the twilio API as a new conversation? Then the bot would essentially take over because it is listening to this channel in Twilio?

I’m struggling with thinking this through, thanks for any help!

2

You could overwrite the ActionSessionStart (see Rasa SDK). It is the first action executed, by default the bot does not utter something, but you could change it to greet your user. Let me know if that helps.

3

Could you please give us a example? Not the slot the example.

I customized the ActionSessionStart, to utter message dispatcher.utter_message(text=“hello”), between SessionStarted() and ActionExecuted(‘action_listen’), but when /restart session, the bot can’t utter hello proactively.

4

Sorry for the late reply. So the message is shown when you start the bot, correct? The /restart does not result in the action ActionSessionStart but rather in ActionRestart.

5

@Tanja Thanks! I used the Skype for Business, and expect the Rasa can proactively say “Hello, Name” when user open the chat dialog. rasa_s4b_channel, I used this as the channel connect rasa to Skype.