External API Integration

This is an advanced feature only available in Enterprise plans.

This Bot Builder box is useful when you want to call an external API (via a POST request) when the chat reaches a specific state. For example, you may want to write the user responses to an external database. This box also allows the API to set user profile field values and/or save the returned response into a variable.

You may specify your own custom JSON body, such as { “a”: “{user_name}”, “b”:”hello” }; note that fields will be converted. If no body is specified, SmartBot360 will pass to the specified external API a JSON object that contains:

  1. All user profile fields, including built-in ones like user_fname, user_lname, user_phone, user_city, and user profile fields collected by the bot like user_concern.
  2. All non-user profile fields collected by the bot so far, e.g., insurancename.

The API is expected to return either:

  • a JSON object with a set of user profile fields and non-user profile fields. These returned values will overwrite the current values of these fields in the bot execution. If the returned JSON contains a key that is not already a variable in the chatbot, a new custom variable will be created.

    OR

  • a String

Go to CHATBOTS to create a Flow Diagram bot. Insert the External API box where you want it to be called. Specify the URL that will be used to make a POST request.

Below is an example of an API JSON response that follows the correct format, where the key is a user profile field or a non-user profile field name (if not, a new non-user profile field will be created), and the value is the value to assign to this field.

You may check that the values have been indeed updated by adding a Message box with message {lead} on the Success path, which should display “Yes” for the above example, when the bot is executed.

Tip

  • You can set input values using Set Field Value boxes, before the External API box. For example, you can add a Set Field Value to set the variable securitytoken to 123456, if this input is required by the POST call.

Advanced

  • If a returned key is a system (restricted) user profile field (such as SDFuserid, password) then the key will be prefixed with “API”. For example, if the key is SDFuserid which is a restricted user profile field then the key will be “APISDFuserid”.
Was this article helpful?