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How do I create and manage shared canned messages?
2775 views | Last updated on Jan 08, 2024 canned messages admin
Canned messages are a great way to store commonly typed chat messages to guests. The canned messages act as timesavers and ensure consistent messaging to guests across operators.
Shared canned messages are stored in pools. A canned message pool contains a grouping of canned messages which are assigned to particular operators. For small organizations, you may only need a single canned message pool to which all operators are assigned. For more complicated workflows, you can set up canned message pools per department, branch, etc to ensure the right canned messages are available to the right group of operators.
Each subscription includes unlimited canned messages and pools.
Pro tip! Canned messages are only available to operators staffing chat in the webclient. Operators can also create their own personal canned messages within the webclient.
Creating a Canned Message Pool and Adding a Canned Message
1. Click on the pencil icon in the left side navigation toolbar in the admin dashboard (separate from the webclient) to go to the canned messages management page.
2. To create a canned message pool, click on the purple '+ Create New Pool" button at the top of the page. (Remember, you can create as many message pools as you need!)
Pro tip! Canned messages are organized into message pools so before you can add any canned messages you must have at least one message pool. The message pool serves as a folder of sorts to house a group of messages which are assigned to specific operators. Groupings might be by topic, by department, or by something else relevant to your workflow. For example, a message pool titled 'Greetings' could contain a list of messages used to greet guest such as How can I help you today? Thank you for contacting the library, or Hello, may I have your name please? If you aren't going to create a ton of canned messages or only have a single department and want to keep it simple you only need a single message pool.
3. A box entitled "Create new canned message pool" (shown below) will appear. Give your message pool a descriptive name. This name is shown internally to operators, but never revealed externally to guests. By default, any operator assigned to a canned message pool will be able to use the canned messages contained in the message pool when chatting with guest. If a message pool should not be available to all operators, uncheck the box below the pool description field.* Then click "Create" to finish creating the new canned message pool.
*If you uncheck the checkbox labeled "Assign all users", a list of users will appear. You can unassign any assigned user by clicking on the "x" before the username.. Click CREATE when done.
Protip! You will have the opportunity to edit this list of user assignments later so if your list is long or if you are unsure about the assignments at present, simply select at least one user for the time being and then you can add other users later when you manage your canned message pool.
4. After creating the message pool, you will see the option to add canned messages to the message pool. To add canned messages to your message pool, click the blue circle with a '+' in the canned messages area for your new message pool (our example message pool is named 'General' in the screenshot below).
Important Note: The canned message editor is a Rich Text editor which means that if you copy content from another Rich Text editor (like Microsoft Word) formatting will be preserved. If you do not wish to preserve the original formatting, there are two options. 1) If you happen to use Chrome, you can use the "Paste and Match style" option. 2) You can use the "Raw mode" button in the editor; if you click "Raw mode" and then paste the formatting will not carry over and the pasting will work exactly as it used it since the "Raw mode" editor is not a Rich Text editor.
5. Type the content of the canned message and click SAVE when finished and the canned message will be added to your message pool.
Protip! Canned messages can include HTML, which makes it possible to include hyperlinks or do markup (bold, italics, etc).
Managing Canned Message Pools
Once you have at least one canned message pool within your subscription, you can use the dropdown menu at the top of the page to select a canned message pool to manage.
Once a canned message pool is selected, you can:
- rename the message pool
- delete the message pool
- change user assignments to determine who can see the canned messages within the message pool
- add/edit/remove canned messages within the pool
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