Getting started and setting up chat
This guide takes you from turning chat on to a working messenger on your website. It takes about ten minutes.
Before you start
- Chat must be turned on for your account. Chat is switched on for a whole HelpGuides account at once. If you don't see Inbox in your project's sidebar, contact HelpGuides support to turn it on.
- Publish some articles. The AI agent answers only from published articles, so the more you've published, the more it can answer. See Welcome to HelpGuides.io for creating and publishing content.
The AI can answer from several projects in your account, and you choose for each one whether answers link to its articles. So alongside your public help center, you can keep a project just for the chat, such as a sales playbook or internal notes, whose articles inform answers but are never shown or linked to visitors. Each project must be ticked under Knowledge sources before the AI uses it. See Chat Knowledge Sources.
The AI can also call your own systems while it answers. For example, DailyStory's chat quotes license prices by calling DailyStory's pricing API. See Chat Actions.
1. Choose the project for your messenger
Each messenger belongs to one project. Its inbox, settings and conversations live in that project. Pick the project that best matches where the chat will appear, for example your main documentation project for a chat on your website. The messenger can still answer from your other projects.
2. Open Messenger settings
- Open the project and click Inbox in the sidebar.
- Click Messenger settings at the top right.
Messenger settings is split into tabs. The open tab is kept in the page address, so you can bookmark or share a link straight to one.
| Tab | What's on it |
|---|---|
| General | Turning the messenger on, support hours, and appearance (including the Help tab) |
| AI agent | How the AI behaves, and which knowledge sources it answers from |
| Rules | What happens for particular kinds of question |
| Test | Try questions and keep a set of saved tests |
| Team members | The AI agent's logo and each teammate's photo |
| Notifications | Teams, Slack and email alerts, and emailing visitors |
| Actions | Lookups in your own systems the AI can make, such as prices |
| Proactive messages | Messages that start the conversation on chosen pages |
| Saved replies | Canned responses for your team |
| Install & security | The install snippet, identity verification, allowed websites, and whether visitors can send files and images |
3. Configure the essentials
| Tab | What to set |
|---|---|
| General | Switch on Turn the messenger on. Under Appearance, set the brand color, position, team name, greeting, intro, expected reply time and the message shown when nobody on the team is online. Show help articles in the messenger adds a Help tab where visitors browse and search your help center, and Help articles from picks the one project it shows. Optionally set Support hours; see Chat Support Hours. |
| AI agent | Give the agent a name, choose a tone and answer length, and add a welcome message, suggested questions and any guidance. Under Knowledge sources, tick the projects the AI may answer from and describe each one. See Configuring the Chat AI Agent. |
| Team members | Upload the AI agent's logo and your teammates' photos. Changes here save straight away. |
| Notifications | Add a team with its Slack channel and email addresses. See Chat Notifications and Teams. |
| Install & security | Let visitors send files and images is on by default. Turn it off to stop visitors uploading; your team can always send files. See Sending Files and Images in Chat. |
Appearance defaults
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Brand color, Position | #2563eb, Bottom right | |
| Greeting | Hi there 👋 | Signed-in customers are greeted by first name ("Hi Mason 👋") when your website passes their name. Put {first_name} in the greeting to place the name yourself; it reads "there" when the name isn't known. |
| Show help articles in the messenger | On | Adds a Help tab for browsing and searching your help center inside the messenger |
| Help articles from | This messenger's project | The one project the Help tab shows and searches, chosen from the projects in your account. The AI still answers from all your knowledge sources. A knowledge source with Link to articles off is never shown. |
| Team name | Your account's name | If your account has no name, the project's name is used without words like "Documentation", "Docs" or "Help Center", so "DailyStory Documentation" becomes "DailyStory". Shown to visitors when your team is handling a conversation, and in alert and email subjects. |
The Rules, Actions, Proactive messages and Saved replies tabs are optional. You can set them up later. See Chat Question Rules, Chat Actions and Chat Proactive Messages.
Click Save settings at the bottom of the page. It saves every tab at once. Team member pictures and saved replies save on their own.
AI agent defaults
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Let the AI agent answer first | On | Off sends every conversation straight to the team |
| Agent name | AI Agent | Shown to visitors with an "AI" tag |
| Tone | Friendly | Friendly, Professional, Neutral or Playful |
| Answer length | Standard | Concise, Standard or Thorough |
| Welcome message | Blank | The AI's first message in every new conversation, inside and outside support hours. If blank, a generic intro is shown. Outside support hours it's replaced only if you write an Out-of-hours welcome. |
| Suggested questions | Blank | Up to 4, one per line. Shown as buttons under the welcome; tapping one asks it. |
| Guidance | Blank | How the AI should behave. It still answers only from your articles. |
| Ask "Did that help?" after answers | On | Adds That helped and Talk to a person buttons |
| Offer a follow-up form when a visitor shows buying intent | On | For questions like "can I get a quote for 50 seats?" or "can I book a demo?", the AI still answers, then asks for a name and email under its answer so sales can follow up. Once per conversation, and never when you already have their email. The prompt is editable. Sending the form hands the conversation to your team. |
| Check in when a visitor goes quiet after an answer | On, after 2 minutes | One short follow-up about that answer while the visitor still has the page open |
| Hand off when a visitor is frustrated | On | |
| Hand off the first time the agent can't answer | Off | When off, the AI hands off after two misses in a row |
4. Try it
On the Install & security tab, click Try it on this page. The real messenger opens on the settings page, so you can ask a question your articles cover and watch the AI answer.
Open the Inbox in another tab while you test. You'll see the conversation appear under AI live, with the answer streaming in.
To check answers without starting a conversation, use the Test tab. It shows the answer a visitor would get and the articles it cites, and you can save questions to re-run after every change. Tests use your saved settings, so save first. See Testing the Chat AI.
5. Install it on your website
Copy the snippet from the Install & security tab and add it to your website. See Installing the Chat Messenger on Your Website. If your visitors sign in, also set up Chat Identity Verification.
Next steps
- Learn the inbox: Using the Chat Inbox
- Get alerts on your phone: Using the Chat Inbox on Your Phone
- Start conversations on key pages: Chat Proactive Messages
- Track results: Chat Reports