How to use custom fields to make your bots more personal

In this article, we will cover what a custom field is and how you can use them to improve make your bot's conversations more personal to your visitors.

What are custom fields?

Custom fields are simply fields that are used to store information from your visitors conversations.

We have default custom fields for the important information about your lead's like name, email and company name.

So for example, when you use a name object, we will store the answer given from your visitor in the @name custom field.

This stored name will then be displayed on the lead profile and you can use it in your bots conversation!

To use it in a conversation, add the @name custom field in your messages, so it would look like:

"Thank you @name"

But would be shown to your visitor as:

"Thank you David"

Creating and using custom fields

Continually will have default custom fields for name, email and company, but you can also create your own custom fields and store information in them.

Part 1 - Creating the custom field

In the bot builder, click the @ button to open your custom field panel.
OR
On the Bots page, click the @ button to open your custom field panel.

Next click on the Create new custom field button

You can name your custom field, set a fallback option and set the text styling

Finally, hit save and you can now store information from your visitors' conversation in this new field

Part 2 - Storing answers in your custom field

To store your visitors answers in your custom field, you have to click on the question object that you want to store the answer from

In the editing modal, toggle the switch @ Save as custom field

Next, you will have to select which custom field you want to store the answer in, so click on the drop-down and select your custom field

Finally, hit save on your object and this object will now store your visitors answer to this question in your custom field

Part 3 - Using the stored answer from your custom field

To use the answer stored in your custom variable, open the object you want to add it to

Next, on the message field, click on the @ icon to open your custom field menu and select your custom field

Finally hit save and your custom field is ready to go

Now, when your visitor reaches this object, we will recall any information stored in your custom field and present it here

Important note:

When you want to use a custom field in your message, you must select it from the list. Typing the custom field name will not work.

Setting fallback answers

A fallback answer is used when your custom field has no information stored to display.

So for example, if you set the fallback answer for the @name field to "there" and you use this custom field but have not captured your visitors name yet, it will look like this:

"Hello @name"

But would be shown to your visitor as:

"Hello there"

Text transformation

You can also transform the text on any answer that gets stored in your custom field.

For example, if you're capturing an email, you might want to make sure the visitor's answer is all lower case.

Or if you are capturing a name you might want to Capitalize the answer so that it is grammatically correct.

None: This is the default value, we will leave the value of the field as it is.

Capitalize: We will capitalize each word of the field's value.

UPPERCASE: Make all letters as uppercase.

lowercase: Make all letters as lowercase